The Biggest Marketing Mistake

Are you permission marketing? In other words, are you sending email to people who’ve asked to receive it? There are still a few of you – you know who you are – that don’t get signups from people visiting your site.

At the very least, I hope the following numbers inspire you. The average reader is worth four dollars per year, as long as they stay subscribed. Some markets are worth more, others less. This is the average.

So if you built a readership of 10,000, that’s worth an extra 40,000 dollars per year. That’s over and above any website revenues. Does that inspire you?

Some complain permission marketing is hard to learn.

I disagree.

Permission marketing is easier than ever. It’s not like the old days when you had to figure it out for yourself. Now there’s all sorts of video tutorials and ‘how-to’ guides online.

Some complain that they don’t like writing. Usually it’s a small minority of folks, in niches they know nothing about. To them writing seems like a job.

You know what? If you don’t like what you’re doing… quit and get out. Time is the one thing in life you cannot get back. Life is too short to be trading it, for something you don’t enjoy doing.

On the other hand…

If you love what you do, you never get talker’s block. So why on earth would you get writer’s block?

If you don’t like to write, jot down a few notes, then open a video camera and talk.

What if you’re camera shy? There are alternatives.

You can report on what’s happened and just summarize what’s already been written. You could source a Youtube video of the week, or the day. Maybe source a quote of the day, a recipe of the day, or even a product recall of the day.

You can subscribe to the blogs and newsletters in your niche. This is especially important for affiliate marketers, because most major manufacturers have newsletters. You can know ahead of time, about new product releases, and have your advertising ready to go, the minute they hit the stores.

You could do interviews with experts and have them transcribed through castingwords.com. (That’s how they maintain their position as leaders and experts. They make themselves available for interviews and other media coverage.)

You can subscribe to Google Alerts and Twitter feeds, (AKA the Goobert conversational marketing method.) Then choose the best content you’ve read and aggregate it back out. You can paraphrase the mood, or comments, interject your own opinion, and fire it back out into the blogosphere.

As a last resort you can invite, or use, guest articles and posts. Or if you really must, outsource your writing to freelance talent on elance.com or odesk.com.

So in the end, it doesn’t matter what you send. The important thing is to get started.

And when you’re ready to start permission email marketing, join me through AWeber, because that way, if you ever need help, I can give you a hand. I’ve been using them to send this newsletter for over 11 years.

If you’re not permission marketing. You’re eating the appetizer, but leaving the meal on the table. This is the biggest mistake marketers make.

Promise yourself – starting tomorrow – that you’ll make permission marketing a priority. Make it commitment. Write it on a sticky note and paste it on your monitor right now. Do it!

And no matter what the economy decides to do, next year will be your personal best.