Permission Marketing in India-how feasible?

Thank you

Can you think yourself as a customer for less than 5 minutes and then read the blog?

Permission means a formal consent or a legal authorization to conduct any activity henceforth. The origin of word permission is derived from permission (n). Permission is also an offspring of permittere meaning permit. As per Oxford, “officially allowing someone to conduct anything”- devoid of this principal you are an intruder or can be deemed un-civil.

India and civility don’t really go well with each other unfortunately.

Little Context

Unsocial or being anything to do with incivility is the last thing a marketer would expect typically to be perceived as. The very purpose of permission is defeated when you try to sneak in, knock the door/windows or sometimes from the roof in the name of marketing.

Things were marketed a little differently in the pre internet era, there were door to door salesmen first seeking permission to sell the product. After direct marketing, internet now for the last two decade or so to enable new forms of digital marketing.  The forms of interruptive advertising like telephone marketing, web mail campaigns, ads that pop-up and spammy mailers even FB ads etc is a No No today. Why? Because they are out of context and Informed people from this sector recently supported tribal marketing and according to this blog he meant contextual marketing.

Permission marketing in India – how contextual?

Doing business in India is complex as the demography of the internet users keeps on changing and currently growing at an enormous rate. A lot of education is required and we are miles behind to achieve what can be done in the Indian market as far as permission marketing is concerned.

Connect=Tell=Engage

The messages should be given at the right time to the right person when he/she needs one. In India, web is still nascent and the tier 2/3/4 cities can display miraculous amount of data if conducted a thorough research as the demand is unique. Now how you tell your story or product will depend on how it’s being showed.

Over to Mobile – here is the Market moving

Conversations matter, last week July (2013) Larry Page, CEO of Google announced that the shift from one screen to multiple screens and mobility creates is an opportunity for them as more devices, more information, and more activity online is happening than ever. Are Indians ready for a mobile based advertising? Yes and No. There are a lot of first time users and the market requires more studies and data to explore good advertising to a targeted audience. First awareness, then consideration and lastly ‘preference’, purchase can happen now, after the preference button is pressed in your favor (your brand). The button marketing through cellular phone is challenging and interesting both.

The New Gmail Functionality

A typical American is exposed to over 30,000 different types of messages related with advertising/daily. Message forms= hoarding, billboards, radio, vehicle ads, metro advertisements when you travel. By the time you reach at work your email will be flooded with more banner ads.

Choose your content-new gmail

The new inbox has put me back in control. Now mails are filtered according to importance i:e  primary+social+promotions, updates and forums. Some people are annoyed by the new function and term it invasive. It’s a catch situation for marketers because the subject line to knock a customer should be unique enough or catchy so that the user let’s you in and explain. When you say permission is everything then you must show what you've got? Improve your products and explain them well, that’s one way to look at it.

FourStepRule

For example the today if you have a product (existing, new) you have to create

1)   A customized plan for each and create great content first (explain and describe).

2)   Present your stuff well and disseminate it through proper channels blogs, web pages, PR, Info graphics, third party syndication, podcast, videos.

3)   Push your content through relevant social channels.

4)   Analyze, monitor, manage, track and plan.  

Customized Content

You can not sell one shirt to all, hence customized content and disseminating platforms should be carefully chosen, for instance the base color of a hospital website can not be Black or Pink. That’s a minuscule part of content planning and presentation, as you go deep you can excavate more forms of inbound marketing. Communication remains the key, Sheth, Sisodia and Sharma (2000) did propose a customer-centric concept-co-creation marketing. Different forms of marketing mix can be deployed here.  Ends