Career Advice by Randy

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The man Business Week calls “the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age” explains “Permission Marketing” — the groundbreaking concept that enables marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it.

Whether it is the TV commercial that breaks into our favorite program, or the telemarketing phone call that disrupts a family dinner, traditional advertising is based on the hope of snatching our attention away from whatever we are doing. Seth Godin calls this Interruption Marketing, and, as companies are discovering, it no longer works.

Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted commodity — time — Permission Marketing offers consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily. Now this Internet pioneer introduces a fundamentally different way of thinking about advertising products and services. By reaching out only to those individuals who have signaled an interest in learning more about a product, Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness — and greatly improve the chances of making a sale.

In his groundbreaking book, Godin describes the four tests of Permission Marketing:

1. Does every single marketing effort you create encourage a learning relationship with your customers? Does it invite customers to “raise their hands” and start communicating?

2. Do you have a permission database? Do you track the number of people who have given you permission to communicate with them?

3. If consumers gave you permission to talk to them, would you have anything to say? Have you developed a marketing curriculum to teach people about your products?

4. Once people become customers, do you work to deepen your permission to communicate with those people?

And in numerous informative case studies, including American Airlines’ frequent-flier program, Amazon.com, and Yahoo!, Godin demonstrates how marketers are already profiting from this key new approach in all forms of media.

Review:

Seth Godin is the Vice President of Direct Marketing atYahoo,and before that founded the successful web startup Yoyodyne. Inthis book he tells us what he has learned about 20th century marketing and how it is evolving as a result of media saturation. Media saturation is making traditional forms of marketing less effective. Seth refers to traditional marketing practices as Interruption Marketing and contrasts this with Permission Marketing. There is room for both forms of marketing in Godin’s universe, but Seth exhorts most marketers to begin creating a permission-based marketing system for immediate and long term survival. The alternative to a permission based marketing system is the current interruption based marketing system that consists of big budgets for wow advertising that is meant to capture your interest long enough to deliver simple branded messages. Interruption marketing is about being clever at getting attention. You get attention with a great ad campaign where consistent attention grabbing messages are repeated in various media. Marketing research has demonstrated that over time familiarity can build trust in a brand as the solution to a particular class of problems. Trust equals profitability. Relying on interruption marketing techniques to attain "brand trust" is very expensive but can and has been done. TV, radio, and newspapers are required to create initial interest in your product and services. Godin argues that there is no getting around this cost of marketing. To build brand trust, however, you should try to use your interruption marketing to develop a permission based marketing system. In a permission based marketing system, the customer is asked for their permission to receive messages from the marketer. Often the marketer will offer an incentive that makes it worth the customers while to give their permission. The marketer will need to continue to offer incentives for the ongoing permission of the customer. In return, the marketer has permission to educate the client about their product or service and to build trust in their brand. This is most often done through email. In fact, Godin’s book could be read as the authoritative guide to managing opt-in email lists for profitability. Saying that the book is about email is not to denigrate the scope of this book. Email is the internet for alot of people. Email is the killer app! Email marketing needs to be understood and mastered by anyone calling themselves a marketer. Godin’s book has alot of good advice for marketers who would like to expand their marketing savvy into the domain of permission based marketing systems. On the surface, Permission Marketing is mostly about opt-in email and how to manage it over time. I think that you will find, however, that it has alot to say about how any technology involving personalization should be managed over time. All such technologies are likely to require substantial amounts of permission before they can become effective. Personalization is about more than filling out a form with your name, address and phone number on it. It is about collecting data on users over the long term, looking for patterns in the data, and adapting your interaction with the users based on those patterns. The precondition for this heartier form of personalization is the perception by the user that they can trust you with the data being collected on them. Getting the users permission is central. Godin discusses a variety of techniques and case studies that show how permission can be attained and increased over time. Permission marketing can be done honestly or dishonestly. All you know is that you have to offer free goodies frequently and try to trick the customer into a higher level of permission. I can imagine that many permission marketing systems are run in this manner. They may even be successful. Alternatively, permission marketing may reflect the ethical manner in which you choose to do business with your clients. You ask for permission to educate first and strive to retain that permission by consistently delivering superior value. This form of permission marketing has been practiced by many successful business people over the ages and it is hoped that Seth Godin’s book will help us to see this method of business in a clearer light.

Working at home isn’t all about working at some low level job that can be done by anyone with the time to do it. Many people want to work at home and earn enough money to support their families, and they don’t want a home business; they want a job. So many people ask about the highest paying jobs available to be done from home.

Honestly, which jobs pay the best doesn’t matter so much on the whole. What really matters is which jobs you can do from home that pay the best.

Certainly some jobs pay better than others, but most people won’t be qualified. A software engineer working from home can earn very good money, but if you aren’t a skilled software engineer, and don’t have what it takes to become one, that piece of knowledge isn’t going to help you all that much.

Basically, if you have the skills to get a high paying job outside the home, you have a better chance of getting a high paying job at home. If you don’t have the skills, it’s not going to happen. Reality can be annoying that way.

So How to Pick the Highest Paying Work at Home Jobs You Do Qualify For?

If you want to know what the best paying work at home job you can get is, you have to start by looking at the jobs you’re qualified for already or that you can get trained for in a reasonable time, probably on your own and at your own expense. From there, you can start looking for the ones that pay the best.

In general, the higher the skill level required, the higher the income potential. That’s not perfectly true, but if you can do work that not every other work at home job hunter can do, odds are the pay will be better.

Some jobs can pay pretty well even without high skill levels required to get a start, but the people who earn the most are usually quite skilled at what they do. Inside sales jobs, for example, can pay quite well, but the best sales jobs pay on commission, and until you learn how to close sales, your income may be quite low. More basic home based sales or customer service positions may not pay all that well. You can check with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to learn what jobs typically pay, although their stats do not separate out work at home salaries.

Just keep in mind that if you can’t do the work, you aren’t going to get the job, and if you somehow manage to get the job, you probably won’t manage to keep it.

Don’t Forget Freelancing

While you may want a job rather than a business, don’t rule freelance work entirely out as an option. Sure, you’re working for yourself, but your clients will have certain expectations of you too.

There are a number of sites out there that list freelance opportunities. You can find all kinds of positions on freelance job posting websites. It’s a great way to build your skills and resume if you don’t quite have the experience for the job you’re really after. Still hard work, of course, but it’s something to do while trying to find that steady job. You might even find you love freelancing enough to stick with it rather than the job you think you want now.

C’mon! Gimme Some Job Titles to Consider!

Really? You want more job titles than stuff like software engineer or inside sales? Fine.

Graphic artist, medical transcriptionist, technical writer, translator, public relations professional, virtual assistant, accountant, teacher… not in income order or anything, and your mileage may vary. These can pay reasonably well, but no promises!