Permission marketing in practice

I kept on reading about permission marketing for years. Yet being a product of the corporate culture, where marketing often equals spamming, I had a hard time imagining how this concept might work in practice.

Suddenly I found myself on the other side — making my own little product. Thinking of creating a marketing campaign was something that I didn’t quite want to dive into, so I let it dwell. I thought: — Let’s go with the launch first. Have this part over with. Then I will worry about marketing.

Once the product was out though, it took a life of its own. It got first purchased by my colleagues and ex-students — people who knew my work, and were likely to trust the thing I made. Then, these people stated talking about it. On Facebook. On LinkedIn. Saying that they were happy and proud to have such a cool thing in their possession. Suddenly, the people who were interested in buying were not anymore the people I personally knew. They were the people who decided to spend 35 bucks not because they had a clue who I was but because they trusted the other guys.

So, without much intention, I found myself getting a grasp of the notion of permission marketing in practice. I saw that I didn't have to shout from the top of my lungs that I have made something. I could whisper that into the ears of the people who were potentially interested. And they took the message further.

Obviously, such an approach has limitations. The product was created in two language versions: English and Polish. Right now, the Polish version gains momentum (which is quite natural realizing and I am a Polish person living and working in Poland). In order to get a bigger range I will need to expand the marketing strategy. Yet, I believe now that permission marketing is not a term coined to sound cool. It is something that exists in nature and can become an amazing carrier of any given product. Without spamming. Without shouting. With offering value.