By Dan Boudreau

A few years ago you couldn’t sit down to family dinner without a barrage of calls by telemarketers. Now, marketing techniques that interrupt are more likely to push customers away than to attract them. Today’s entrepreneurs are challenged to find smarter ways to market, methods that don’t annoy or alienate consumers.

Here are a few of the permission marketing methods that are effective in today’s wildly evolving marketplace.

1. Website. Ten years ago, less than ten percent of my workshop participants owned computers; today almost everybody has one and more than 90 percent are conversant with the Internet. A website doesn’t have to cost a lot and it makes your information available globally and 24/7 to an increasingly savvy and expanding audience.

2. Blog. This is a short term for weblog, which is a personal journal published on the Internet. Blogs are more personal and less formal than a website. They’re presented in journal style with new entries added frequently, and they typically welcome interaction from visitors. Blogs offer a warm friendly way to connect with your audience.

3. E-zine. A short term for electronic magazine, or newsletter. Technology has made it easy to publish your own e-zine to communicate with your clientele. Electronic magazines offer a number of advantages: the recipient has full control, she determines whether or not to read your communication, she can read it at a time that works for her, and she is free to opt in or out of your subscriber list at any time.

4. Email. Email offers an inexpensive and efficient way to reach out to a large audience. Never send spam (unsolicited, unwanted email messages) unless you want to be hated by everyone. Be sure to include your contact information in the signature or footer for your email messages

5. Ebook. Ebooks are electronic publications that can be downloaded from websites or distributed as email attachments. They are easy to create and distribute. While they can be simple Word documents, the PDF format is much more common and can be read by anyone with a PDF reader like Adobe or Foxit.

6. Discussion Groups. The Internet has thousands of discussion forums, each organized around a particular interest. Anyone with an Internet connection can use forums to share expertise. By sifting through the right discussion groups and contributing valuable information, you can steadily increase your profile as a valued resource for your area of expertise.

7. Business Card. It’s hard to beat the good old business card as a marketing tool. Cards are small and easy to carry and share with others. They can serve as a reminder for appointments or the key elements of a conversation. Most importantly, your business card can serve as a printed reminder of the links to all the digital marketing methods mentioned above. I tend to keep others business cards only until I’ve entered the contact information into Outlook.

Interruption marketing is out and permission marketing is in. Consumers have access to infinite channels of communication and they vote with a click of their mouse. If they don’t find value within seconds, they’re gone. Savvy entrepreneurs are attracting and connecting with customers across the globe using methods that provide value while not offending or encroaching on the customers’ privacy.

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