Interruption marketing is advertising in the traditional way. The internet has made interruption marketing even worse with more clutter than in the old days. Permission Marketing, in contrast, uses a strategy to get prospects to provide you with permission to market to them making them far more receptive to your message.
To combat and stick out in all the clutter of interruption marketing, saturation marketers need to change ads more often to keep it fresh and get the prospect’s attention.
However, in permission marketing, the permission is the asset. It is less about new customer acquisition and more about selling more to the same customer to make the customer acquisition more valuable. It is about the difference between reach and frequency.
I once saw a great definition of sales vs marketing that can help make this concept clearer.
Marketing is an effort defined by the business to communicate with the masses. Marketing is a one on many approach and is where interruptions marketing is often used to create brand awareness.
Sales, by contrast, is a sales rep from the company communicating with a prospect in a face-to-face fashion. Sales is a more of a one on one approach and is where permission marketing is used to drive a prospect through your sales funnel.
For example, suppose you have 100 seeds and 100 daily doses of water. Would you take your 100 seeds and water each of them only once and hope that they survive? Or, would you take the 3 best seeds, throw away the rest, and water each of the 3 seeds every day for a month? Which option would you choose? Interruption marketing is about reach (more seeds) while permission is about frequency (more watering).
In another example, if interruption marketing was like dating, it would spend lots of money on a new suit and find a bar with patrons that represent the demographics of their future spouse. It would walk up to each prospective spouse, introduce itself, and deliver a marriage proposal. Permission marketing, however, is more like traditional dating. It would show up, find a prospect, focus its attention on the other party, and suggest a second date.
In permission marketing, you can either use bait or something of value that you give away in exchange for permission to market to them or you build a reputation that breeds trust so that a prospect will buy what you recommend. After you have their permission or trust, you have moved from marketing to sales. In permission marketing, you use an incentive or trust to move the prospect through the permission scale.
How can you incorporate permission marketing into your business?
