Permission marketing might seem like the holy grail of marketing to many, in fact it might seem like an imaginary promised land that couldnt possibly exist! But it does indeed, and it is helping countless businesses to make a huge amount of money from their marketing. This basically means that you are marketing to people who have given you explicit permission to market to them!
Permission marketing may seem like the perfect scenario for a marketer and in many ways it is. This is a form of marketing whereby the individual has given you permission to market to them and permission to advertise in some cases.
How is this possible?
Well, it actually happens all the time, however the extent to which this is explicit permission vs implicit is what varies a lot from case to case.
Whenever someone signs up to your email mailing list, that is effectively an example of permission marketing: by signing up, they are giving you permission to market to them. In this case though, that permission is somewhat more implicit. After all, they are not asking for you to market to them they are asking for you to email them with useful information. However, they are likely to sign up with the understanding that some of your messages will likely be marketing! And this is actually one of the big benefits of using email marketing over something like PPC marketing which doesnt involve permission.
This is also why it is so important not to buy mailing lists. If you buy a mailing list, then you have no guarantee that the members of that list ever gave permission to be marketed to. Not only that, but when you buy a mailing list, you can guarantee they didnt give permission for you specifically to market to them.
This in turn means they may be angry to receive your emails or confused. Either way, they may end up deleting them, overlooking them or intentionally ignoring them.
Even with PPC however, there is some unspoken agreement too between the marketer and the audience. They know that by going to Google, they are going to be shown some advertising. This is a spectrum moreso than a binary option.
Fulcrum-Tip: Some element of permission is always crucial then. If someone where to come to your window and push an advert against it, you would likely be frustrated!
This is also why we dont see adverts popping up on our Windows desktops. Likewise, its why we dont see adverts popping up on our phones. Kindle devices do show adverts on the lockscreen if you buy a cheaper version. But again, this is explicitly stated up front, which in turn serves as a form of permission marketing. When you buy that cheaper product knowingly, you in turn are agreeing to the marketing.
Partners for Marketing
Other examples include opt-ins for additional marketing. This might mean that you are subscribing to something you want but you also tick to agree for your email to be passed on or to partners for marketing or that you are happy to hear from the publisher with their own marketing content.
The best form of permission though is when the subscriber or the visitor gives permission explicitly for you to advertise and sell to them. While this might seem difficult, it can happen in a number of unique circumstances. For instance, if you are a site that offers special deals and reports on money off of products, then this will mean that someone might actively ask you to sell to them. That in turn will mean that they will react very well to your marketing messages and wont be frustrated by them. Theyll be much more likely to buy from you!
Another option is to offer to inform someone about a specific service or product that is coming out soon. If someone lands on your website where you talk about a product you are soon to sell and where you make it sound incredible, then you might find that they are so interested in it that they are willing to sign up to your list just to be informed about it when it eventually becomes available. The same can be true for products that are in short supply, or events/services that are the same. This is why it can be very effective to encourage the notion of scarcity and rarity.
This is also a fantastic way to build hype in the run up to a product launch.
There are a ton of different ways to get permission for your marketing, but however you do it, this can make all the difference. Its the perfect form of targeting because not only does it show you that your audience is interested in what youre offering but it also shows you they are ready to buy it and want you to sell it to them. Leads dont come much better than that!