Maybe, Baby
The most fertile soil of Internet marketing lies in that vast land between “yes” and “no.” That’s the word from one of the early practitioners of permission marketing.
Permission marketing, thanks to the pioneering efforts of my good friend (and former boss) Seth Godin, has become the online marketing buzzword du jour. Most people in business now realize the Internet so empowers the consumer that our ancient habits of monologue interruptions just won’t cut it. Web surfers are one click away from anywhere. They’re in charge.
Less well understood is the new paradigm (sorry, but that’s what it is) opened up by permission marketing: the Paradigm of Maybe. In fact, “maybe” is the secret of Internet marketing! Once understood and mastered, it holds the promise of the second Internet revolution in selling and marketing.
Simply put, “maybe” is the very large space between “yes” and “no.” This has been terra incognito for most marketers, who historically view the world in a binary fashion: The prospect says “yes” or “not yes,” and “not yes” equals “no.”
This is so because there is no economic leverage in seeking out the in-betweens. Frequency of contact has a linear relationship to reach. That is, it costs just as much to talk to me six times as it does to talk to six people once each.
The Internet, however, works very differently. This is because once a prospect has been reached – and once that prospect has given you permission to reconnect to him or her – frequency can be really, really cheap. Indeed, it can be almost free!
How? Why? Because permission opens the door for the UN-medium, the dis-intermediated contact via e-mail. Just you and your prospect. Forever and almost for free. The computer adds the ability to customize your message down to a (perceived) segment of one. In other words, we can apply a learning sequence – a curriculum if you prefer – to selling. Thus, our picture now looks like the table atop the next column.
The Net gives us the power to sell slowly – to persuade the prospect, to answer questions, to build relationships. And that’s where “maybe” comes in. Because of the back-end efficiencies of Internet marketing, it behooves the marketer to try to gather the largest number of “maybes” possible and then work slowly, carefully, and deliberately to convert them over time.
In order for a sale to be consummated, the prospect must be ready, willing, and able to transact. “Not yes” often means that at least one of these conditions has not been met. Discovering which one (and why) is the key to turning “not yes” into “yes.”
Many online merchants and marketers decry the low `shop-to-buy’ ratio, the relatively small percentage of store visitors who actually transact. But how many merchants bother to ask the visitor for a statement of “maybe?” How many actually have a contact strategy in place to go after those “maybes” and actually sell them? Almost none! Most have merely taken the offline paradigm of hunting for a constant stream of new potential buyers and literally discarding the non-buyers.
The Net mandates farming, nurturing, and cultivation of prospects. And now that “agricultural marketing” has been developed, the backward hunters will eventually get civilized and become farmers themselves. Otherwise, they will find that the supply of free-ranging “game” dwindles to zero.
“Maybe” is the near-term goal of online advertising and promotion. “Maybe” is the desired response from a prospect. It’s the era of maybe, baby, and if you don’t accept it, it won’t be funny, honey.
