NU6 - by ML New Applications for Permission Marketing R100022

New Applications for Permission Marketing
R100022

Permission marketing is in itself a fairly new practice. The term was actually popularized by Seth Godin (who is the author of the book I will be reporting about in my Special Report). Godin said that in traditional marketing, marketers have overwhelmed consumers with too much information and consumers have now become too hard to reach because they, or rather we, have become so used to advertising noise that we have learned to ignore these. Permission marketing is different from other more traditional forms of marketing because marketers obtain permission first from the consumer before proceeding with the actual marketing. We can see this in action in opt-in email newsletters, Facebook Fan Pages, and Twitter accounts where consumers can subscribe to updates about companies and its products. My ideas below take the concept of permission marketing further.

1. Ad subsidized downloadable movies/TV shows

Websites like iTunes.com and Amazon.com sell downloadable movies and TV shows online. In iTunes for example, movies usually sell for $14.99 and TV shows for $2.99 per episode. My idea would be to subsidize these downloadable files with advertising similar to how TV shows are subsidized by commercials on TV. These subsidized downloadable movies and TV shows could then be sold for a lower price than non-subsidized downloads. Consumers would then have the choice of buying either the subsidized movies/TV shows and watching the ads, or paying more for the ad-less version. They key here is not to force the ads on the consumers but to give them a choice. People who despise ads would be more than willing to fork over the extra cash while people who don't mind watching ads will most likely go for the subsidized version. This form of marketing can be targeted as well, since advertisers can put their ads on movies or TV shows which they think their demographic would be most likely to watch. For example, if an advertiser would like to target teenage girls, he could probably put his ads in episodes of Hannah Montana or the movie Twilight. :-)4

2. Subscription based product sampling

We all know that one of the most common marketing tactics of beauty companies are giving out samples of their products. However, sampling that is not targeted can be ineffective and inefficient. My idea is to give out samples to those who actually want them and those who will be most likely to buy such products in the future. I actually got this idea from a US based company called Birchbox. It is a membership company where women pay to receive random beauty product samples monthly by mail. I can set up a company similar to this here in the Philippines. For starters, I will partner with several beauty companies and arrange an agreement with them to distribute samples of their products. I will consider charging these companies for this privilege since I will be certainly doing them a valuable service by giving out samples of their products to potential customers. I can offer two types of subscriptions: high end (where subscribers can receive samples from companies like Shu Uemura, Shiseido, Bobbie Brown, MAC, etc.) and mid range (where subscribers can receive samples from companies like Lloreal, Maybelline, Cover Girl, etc.). Fees for high end subscriptions will of course be more expensive than that of mid range subscriptions. Each subscriber can also pick out product types that they are interested in (like lengthening mascaras or liquid foundations) as well as fill out a profile (like hair color, skin tone, etc.) to ensure that they will be getting colors appropriate for their type. 4