The deluge of postings about Facebook’s recent misstep with the implementation of Beacon’s ad platform, and Mark Zuckerberg’s apology has privacy issues on my mind.

Although the news is about controversial consumer advertising within a social networking site, the fundamental privacy issues also apply to business-to-business marketers. Privacy matters. And a failure to respect the rights and requests of your audience is a surefire way to alienate the very group with which you are trying to build loyalty.

No doubt you have a prospect database somewhere (or many unrelated sources and a swivel-chair CRM system) filled with names, E-mail addresses, and if you’re lucky, the interests and behaviors of your target audience. But how did that information get there? And do you have permission to use it? Or any idea on how those people wanted it to be used?

Too often, the wishes of the audience are an afterthought. B-to-B marketers, striving to fill the lead pipeline, often act as if any piece of knowledge is fair game. An “unsubscribe” link in an unsoliticated, mass distributed generic E-mail to everyone from a salesperson’s contact list isn’t a good example of addressing privacy concerns. Or of respecting your audience.

Let people receive communications from you on their terms. (Not the outdated ones from 2003 posted on your web site.) Give people control over how and what information they share. And ask them what they want. If they can’t change their preferences on how they receive information from you, why should they change their preference to your product?