Permission Marketing

This relates to all marketers, no matter at what stage of the marketing process they engage with customers, and as a Small Business owner and Entrepreneur, you ARE a marketer and the most important marketing asset your business has. Whether you like it or not, the excuse that someone else should care about your business’s marketing does not hold water.

So, now that we are clear on this, have you ever heard of Permission Marketing? This concept was introduced by one of the biggest marketing minds of our era, Seth Godin, in his book “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers”.

The book was initially published in 1999, but the concept has picked up and increased in popularity with the development of digital marketing in the 2010s and become more important and, I would dare to say, necessary in the 2020s for several equally important reasons.

First, it is a lot less invasive than the direct, call it “traditional” (although I personally refuse to accept that this is a “tradition”), pushy, blind marketing approach based primarily on the capability to deliver a certain message to a person that, for some reason, we consider fitting into company’s target group. Thus, instead of generating resentment and annoying people you want to talk to, when you ask and get permission to communicate with them, you are actually building relationships and creating a steadily growing population of loyal followers (no, not talking JUST social media followers, this can be many other things, including a loyal buyer of your product/service or subscriber, member etc…). Second, it’s a low-cost, and both effective and efficient method to steadily grow your pipeline of high intent revenue opportunities (HIRO) for your business.

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.

Pay attention is a key phrase here, because permission marketers understand that when someone chooses to pay attention they are actually paying you with something precious. And there’s no way they can get their attention back if they change their mind. Attention becomes an important asset, something to be valued, not wasted.

Real permission is different from presumed or legalistic permission. Just because you somehow get my email address doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because I don’t complain doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because it’s in the fine print of your privacy policy doesn’t mean it’s permission either.

Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, and they ask where you went.

Permission is like dating. You don’t start by asking for the sale at first impression. You earn the right, over time, bit by bit.

One of the key drivers of permission marketing, in addition to the scarcity of attention, is the extraordinarily low cost of dripping to people who want to hear from you. Email, social media and other techniques mean you don’t have to worry about stamps or network ad buys every time you have something to say. Home delivery, which in the modern days can be translated into your personal email or social media inbox, is the milkman’s revenge… it’s the essence of permission.

Permission doesn’t have to be formal, but it has to be obvious. My friend has permission to call me if he needs to borrow five dollars, but the person you meet at a trade show has no such ability to pitch you his entire resume, even though he paid to get in.

Subscriptions are an overt act of permission. That’s why newsletter subscribers are so valuable, and why they are worth more than social media followers or trade show booth visitors.

To get permission, you make a promise! You say, “I will do x, y, and z, I hope you will give me permission by listening.” And then, this is the hard part, that’s all you do. You don’t assume you can do more. You don’t sell the list, rent the list, or demand more attention. You can promise a newsletter and talk to me for years, you can promise a daily feed and talk to me every three minutes, or you can promise a sales pitch every day (i.e. the way Woot does). But the promise is the promise until both sides agree to change it. You don’t assume that just because you’re running for President or coming to the end of the quarter or launching a new product you have the right to break the deal. You don’t!

Permission doesn’t have to be a one-way broadcast medium. The internet means you can treat different people differently, and it demands that you figure out how to let your permission base choose what they hear and in what format.

If you promised you will send me an email with the proposal, that means ONE email. No follow-ups, no new products, no last-minute offerings. Than again, if you promised (and I agreed in an obvious way) you will keep me up to date with price changes or product updates, than yes, absolutely send me your end of the quarter deals, specials, promos and product updates. If I said I want them, it means I am probably evaluating my options and waiting for the right time (or right product/service) to buy. A deal’s a deal. The way you act also shows me that you can respect one. And I, as a human AND a buyer, want to build relationships with people who stick with a deal we made.

If it sounds like you need humility and patience to do permission marketing, you’re right! That’s why so few companies do it properly.

The best shortcut, in this case, is no shortcut at all.

If you feel like listening to the whole book, here is the Spotify link:

If on the other hand, you are more traditional and like to hold it in your hand and actually read it (which is the category I belong to), you can order it for $10-$15 on Amazon.