Today, I attended the Whiteboard training session put on by the Ohio Rainmakers group. It was about 2 hours long and went through several excellent marketing concepts. I’m going to share one with you right now.

They showed a picture of a funnel:

It’s all about the Law of Permission. What is the law of permission? It’s simply getting someone to raise their hand to send you more information about their business.

It starts with a database, then goes to blog/social media. Then, you hace a face to face interaction and they become a cutomer. The customer becomes a referral and finally your referral source becomes an evangelist.

This is word of mouth marketing at its finest and the most cost effective form of advertising that you can have.

Sadly, most business owners don’t get this at all. They spend all their time in advertising and sales mode while churning through short term customers and aren’t building deep relationships.No wonder so many businesses are going broke. Please learn this stuff if you don’t know it already. It can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

If all this went right over your head, maybe you should attend the next Rainmakers Whiteboard Meeting. Rainmakers does them every month for free at Groundz4Living at The Greene. See www.RainOhio.com for details.