I have a feeling I’m not alone in this sea of irony. See if you can relate:

• I was over the moon when we finagled a free DVR from our satellite TV provider — and now I gleefully fast-forward through the commercials when I want to watch my favorite shows (I’m admittedly a rabid fan of The Office, 30 Rock and Medium).
• When the Do Not Call list first came into existence, I was an evangelist, spreading the word among my colleagues, friends and family, even signing up my grandparents without internet access.
• I even joined GreenDimes, an organization dedicated to stopping junk mail and saving our natural resources, and gave the gift of their services to several of my loved ones.

What’s up with that? Oh, it’s only the biggest shift in marketing we’ve ever seen.

As one of the participants in Allison Nazarian’s fantastically informative, five-week marketing teleseminar series (featuring 20 experts in a variety of social media-related fields), I listened to Dave Evans, author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, as he described his own journey into social media-based marketing. He, too, found it ironic that in his personal time he utilized all available tools to deflect advertising messages. He started to wonder, “If we couldn’t interrupt people, how would we reach them?” That, among other events, led to his publication of a white paper on the rise of Web 2.0 technology, and ultimately to his career as a social media consultant.

Evans points out that traditional marketing views consumers’ attention as an unlimited resource. Traditional marketers compete for attention in an ongoing struggle to “break through the clutter” and to control or drive business. Problem is, just how much attention can we pay when we’re inundated with thousands upon thousands of messages (aka interruptions) daily?

With social media-based marketing, on the other hand, we view consumers’ attention as limited even as we realize their choices for information are unlimited. We know that prospects won’t sit through unwelcome interruptions that don’t interest them. Instead, they fast-forward, blog, Digg, write and share product reviews, upload video, bookmark and follow. Or un-foll0w.

So what’s a marketer to do when all the rules are changing?

As Evans says, instead of “driving” prospects into that golden purchase funnel, our tactics must necessarily shift — toward participation in social media, as a peer. Toward listening, and then engaging with potential customers in meaningful, two-way communication. (All in a way that’s completely transparent — Evans emphasizes that you must disclose your true identity as a brand ambassador.) And according to Evans, these new behaviors can actually serve to “amplify” your traditional marketing efforts.

All of which reminds me of what I’ve read in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research). They define the “groundswell,” or the new behavior surrounding Web 2.0, as:

A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

Great food for thought as you execute your promotion plans in 2009. I think this is an extremely exciting time to be in marketing, don’t you? How do you plan to turn your prospects into customers? Better yet, how will you turn your customers into over-the-top evangelists for your brand?