The who, what, where, when, and why of Trusted Source Marketing™ will be the focus of this blog for the time being.
Seth Godin’s book, Permission Marketing, led the way from interruption marketing that yells “hey look over here” to a kinder gentler “may I send you some information that you can view at your leisure.”
The goal of the permission marketer is to grow the relationship to one of trust. To that end the permission marketer uses regular communication via email. Well done it requires two way communication. It works very well compared to interruption marketing. There are companies all over the globe successfully using Permission Marketing. Groupon is one of the greatest examples of Permission Marketing’s effectiveness.
We all have sources who we trust. Mom, Dad, friends can all, even should all be trusted sources for some information.
For our purpose today, a Trusted Source is a company who takes their responsibility to provide access to products and services to their workforce or membership seriously.
These are most commonly called Employee Benefits. A company who provides work, gets people paid, provides contacts, keeps their money safe, and pays bills for people has a measure of trust that the average retailer will never have.
These trust relationships can be leveraged to everyone’s advantage by establishing intent to communicate with specific, stated purpose. This intent includes the intent to influence.
Essential to ethical influence is choice. The people being influenced must always have choice to view, consider and decide.
A short list of companies who may use Trusted Source Marketing™ and bring its advantages to their constituencies include employers, credit unions, sourcing companies for Independent Contractors, government at all levels. The list can also include unions, associations and charities who will seek to provide access with responsibility.
Who might be interested in the principles of Trusted Source Marketing? Those people who know that their companies offer benefits ranging from participatory 401k plans to dental insurance; Pre-Paid Legal Services to pet insurance; full coverage health plans to High Deductible Health Plans with Health Savings Accounts but don’t understand how they can benefit from their benefits. This is the group with the greatest potential advantage if their company employs Trusted Source Marketing.
Others will be those companies who don’t understand why their voluntary benefit programs don’t have many volunteers. Human Resource people who try to arrange a great array of benefits and the vendors who work with them are also looking to increase their effectiveness.
Trusted Source Marketing’s essential focus is how to effectively influence people to make good decisions to everyone’s advantage.