What is permission marketing, and how does it work? To grasp the concept of permission marketing, you must first grasp the concept of interruption marketing.

Marketing by permission vs. marketing by interruption

Interruption marketing is a kind of conventional advertising. With more clutter than in the previous days, when advertising was mostly restricted to newspapers, radio, and network television stations, the Internet has made disruption marketing worse.

Permission marketing, on the other hand, employs a plan to persuade prospects to grant you varying degrees of permission to sell to them, increasing their receptivity to your message.

To compete with interruption marketing and stand out, saturation marketers are compelled to alter advertising more often in order to keep the message fresh and capture the prospect's attention. This is costly and has low response rates, particularly given the prevalence of ad fraud nowadays.

Permission marketing, on the other hand, makes permission the most valuable asset. It's less about acquiring new customers and more about selling more to existing customers in order to increase the value of the client acquisition.

It's the distinction between reach (the quantity of prospective consumers you can contact with a campaign) and frequency (the frequency with which you can reach them) (the number of times you touch each person with your message).

I have came across an excellent description of sales versus marketing that will assist clarify the notion of reach and frequency.

Marketing is a business-defined endeavor to communicate with the general public. Marketing is a one-to-many strategy that often use disruption marketing to raise brand recognition.

Sales, on the other hand, is when a company's sales representative interacts with a prospect face-to-face. Permission marketing is utilized to lead a prospect along your value ladder in sales, which is more of a one-on-one strategy.

As a result, interruption marketing is usually linked with a company's marketing activities, while permission marketing is usually associated with sales.

Permission marketing is distinguished by the fact that it devotes more time and effort to a small number of prospects as opposed to interruption marketing, which casts a broader but porous net and often fails to meet the degree of contact frequency with a prospect required to close the transaction. A few examples may help you visualize this concept:

Assume you have 100 seedlings and 100 daily water dosages. Will you take your 100 seeds and merely water them once, hoping that they would survive?

Would you rather choose the best three seeds, toss the others, and water each of the three seedlings every day for a month? Which option do you think you'd go with? Permission marketing is about frequency, while interruption marketing is about reach (more seeds, less water) (less seeds more watering).

If interruption marketing were like courting, it would spend a lot of money on a new outfit and seek out a bar with people that resemble their eventual spouse's demographics. It would approach each potential partner, identify itself, and propose marriage to them. Permission marketing, on the other hand, resembles conventional dating.

It would come up, identify the finest prospect in the bar, devote all of its attention to this one possibility for the duration of the evening, and recommend a second date at the conclusion. Who do you think would have a better chance of finding a partner?

To begin the permission marketing process, you utilize bait or anything of value that you give away in order to develop a reputation that promotes trust so that the prospect eventually buys what you propose. You've gone from marketing to sales after you've gained their approval and trust.

Scale of permission marketing

It's all about trust when it comes to gaining a prospect's consent and advancing them up the permission marketing ladder. Permission is always provided in some form or another in permission marketing.

According to Seth Godin's book "Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers," the customer may provide five degrees of permission, each of which increases the company' autonomy and the consumer's level of confidence in it.

1. Contextual marketing

The authorization "Situational Marketing" necessitates the client initiating the interaction first. Situational marketing may begin after the client makes the initial contact.

Permission marketing in its most basic level is situational marketing. Situational marketing is exemplified by the question, "Do you want fries with that?"

Situational marketing is tailored to the unique conditions and requirements of a single consumer.

Maybe you dialed your newspaper's number and said,

"I'd like to put my newspaper on hold while I'm on vacation."

The individual on the other end of the line in situational marketing could respond,

"Sure," she says, adding, "Oh, I see you're a loyal customer." Would you want to switch to the monthly payment, in which your credit card is charged directly each month?"

When a consumer contacts a company via situational marketing, the company is free to upsell.

2. Brand reputation

Permission to use your "Brand Trust" is costly to gain, but once you have it, you may charge a premium for your product or service.

Brand trust refers to a consumer's anticipation that a company's product, service, or corporate conduct will live up to its claims.

Starbucks is an excellent illustration of brand loyalty. Starbucks is regarded as a high-end brand that warrants a greater price for a cup of coffee.

The target degree of permission marketing is often brand trust. Brand trust, on the other hand, may be shattered by a single blunder. When Coke debuted its New Coke recipe, for example, it almost lost all of its brand credibility overnight.

3. Personal relationship

Authorization to solicit a person based on personal trust is known as "Personal Relationship" permission.

Permission is often granted to the hairdresser rather than the salon itself when it comes to beauty salons. Permission is granted by the person, and if the beautician quits the salon, the clients are not automatically retained.

I have a good rapport with my vehicle mechanic, and when he tells me I need a repair, I frequently tell him, "You are the expert, make it happen."

Personal connection permits have the disadvantage of not being scalable and having no resale value since the persons are free agents. Furthermore, if the individual commits a mistake, all confidence is lost.

4. Purchase subject to approval

When a consumer joins up for a program, they accrue points with each purchase that may be redeemed later. This is known as "Purchase on Approval." The client is aware that purchase points are accruing and makes transactions with the firm freely.

Purchases on approval might include frequent flier miles or loyalty cards.

Purchases on approval have the disadvantage of creating a liability for the corporation to deliver on the promise. The company's amount of obligation is often unclear since many points are not redeemed.

Chance marketing, sometimes known as giveaway marketing, is a kind of purchase-on-approval marketing that avoids the risk of unknown responsibility. Points are used in chance marketing to represent the amount of chances a person has to win a certain reward. As a result, each point enhances a person's chances of earning a certain amount of rewards.

5. Intravenous permission

The most desirable permission marketing level is "intravenous."

The provider owns the decision and execution when intravenous authorization is granted. The client is entirely reliant on the corporation to make choices and follow through with them.

Intravenous permission differs from personal relationship permission in that the customer must still give permission to proceed with the execution with personal relationship permission, whereas with intravenous permission, the supplier makes all decisions and executes them, and the customer has agreed to pay for it regardless of the final cost.

During a medical surgery, intravenous consent is the amount of authorization you offer your surgeon. During a procedure, the doctor may give you whatever via your IV and perform whatever is medically required, as long as you agree to pay for it. You grant him complete authority to make choices for you without additional consultation throughout an operation.

Book or Wine of the Month Clubs are another form of intravenous authorization, in which a committee picks a new book or bottle of wine each month and mails it to you with a charge.

All of this trust has a value proposition in that the authorization provided saves the consumer time and money.

Permission marketing in action

Permission marketing is a step-by-step procedure. It is not going to provide quick benefits. It's like a slow-moving flywheel that picks up speed over time.

• The steps below will assist you in putting your permission marketing plan into action:
• To accomplish situational marketing chances, provide the consumer a selfish incentive to join your value ladder, such as giving away free material or using price tactics to drive membership.
• To develop brand trust, consistently under-promise and over-deliver on your offerings.
• Use DataAxle's LifeStyle Database to discover more about your consumers, and follow the Maverick Principles when communicating with them to develop a deeper and more personal connection.
• Customers will trust that you are looking out for their best interests.
• Reward repeat consumers by applying gamification tactics to attain buy-on approval status or by using pricing strategies for repeat business, such as loyalty programs.
• Finally, look for methods to delegate the need for consumers to be educated, as well as ways to save them time and money if they make bad choices. Provide consumers with the option of outsourcing complex decision-making processes and the implementation of those choices to your company without involving them in the process.

You will attain the coveted position of top-level permission marketing by continually providing solutions that are in the best interest of the consumer at a reasonable price.
How can you put a permission marketing plan in place for your company?

Thanks to Steven Imke at Business 2 Community whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.