In Part 1, I discussed how traditional marketing is no longerworking the way it used to. This is happening for a variety ofreasons -- people have too many mass media choices,they're bombarded with way too many marketing messages,the Internet is adding accountability to advertising, etc.

So if traditional marketing is no longer effective, then howwill you get the word out about your products or services?

What Internet Marketer Seth Godin, author of the bookPermission Marketing, calls permission marketing.

Permission marketing is when your customers give youpermission to market to them. This is opposite fromtraditional marketing, also known as interruption marketing(another term coined by Godin).

Interruption marketing works by interrupting you. Nobodywatches television for the commercials. Nobody flipsthrough a magazine for the ads. But that's how interruptionmarketing gets you to buy something.

Permission marketing is completely different. Withpermission marketing, customers look forward to hearingfrom you. They LIKE receiving information about yourproducts and services. That's because they've agreed toenter into a relationship with you. And if permissionmarketing is done correctly, you'll eventually develop astronger relationship with your customers than you everwould have with interruption marketing. (But that doesn'tmean interruption marketing doesn't have its place. More onthat later.)

Permission marketing isn't new. In fact, it's older thaninterruption marketing. Back before there was mass media,business owners routinely developed long-termrelationships with their customers. And customers expectedto be involved with the selling process from the beginning.

Now, of course, we no longer need to be dependent onbuilding relationships face-to-face. With the Internet, wehave a whole host of low-cost options available to us, whichmakes permission marketing easier now than it wasbefore.

Here's how it works. You start by developing something thatyour customers find valuable enough to give you permissionto contact them on a regular basis. E-newsletters or e-zines,which are e-mail newsletters, are popular and so are Webblogs. Web blogs are like online journals. For a fun sample,check out http://www.boingboing.net Or Seth Godin has hisown blog -- http://www.sethgodin.com

But e-zines and Web blogs aren't the only things of valuepeople sign up for -- you can offer them classes deliveredvia e-mail or tips or contests or points programs or specialoffers or whatever your creativity can come up with.

While it is possible to develop a relationship with customersusing only offline techniques (for instance, a printednewsletter you mail to your customers) it's less expensiveand more effective to use the Internet. It's quick and easy foryour customers to sign up via your Web site and it's cheapfor you to send it out via e-mail.

However, in order to get people to sign up, you first need totell them about it. That's where interruption marketingcomes in. You still need to get the word out about whatyou're offering. Then once they sign up, you can startbuilding the relationship.

Is this a lot of work? Yes. Is it more work than interruptionmarketing? Yes again. But is it more effective thaninterruption marketing? It can be. Especially sinceinterruption marketing isn't working the way it used to.

I feel that permission marketing favors small businessowners. That's because permission marketing only workswhen customers and businesses form a relationship, andcustomers prefer forming relationships with people ratherthan entities. Customers want to know the person behindthe business, not just the business itself.

But that doesn't mean big corporations can't employpermission marketing techniques. They just need to getcreative about it. Perhaps developing a spokesperson or abusiness "personality" or a forum or group of people.

The important thing is to start thinking about how marketingis changing and what you can do about it.

(Resource for article: Seth Godin, Permission Marketing)

Michele Pariza Wacek owns Creative Concepts andCopywriting, a writing, marketing and creativity agency. Sheoffers two free e-newsletters that help subscribers combinetheir creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywritingprinciples to become more successful at attracting newclients, selling products and services and boostingbusiness. She can be reached at http://www.writingusa.com