What’s the difference between Inbound, Content, and Permission Marketing?

If you ask me, it’s a game of semantics. Not unlike all buzzworthy trends in marketing, the definitions of the two terms are endless and often intersect. Really, the only time the difference is even relevant is when you’re dealing with day-to-day operations in your own company for clarity’s sake.

The content vs. inbound debate is no different than any other:

  • What are the stages of a pipeline?
  • When is something a lead?
  • How do we define an opportunity?

The answer is only relevant within the context its being used: your organization, your social setting, your classroom.

Like the chicken and the egg, content vs. inbound is a hermeneutic circle, both concepts intrinsically related and overlapping to the point where their distinction, pragmatically speaking, is moot.

Okay, if the terms don’t matter, than what are we talking about? Community relations. Before everyone starts jumping up and down because I’m throwing yet another synonymous buzzword in the cue, let me explain. I’m not talking about “community relations marketing”. 

Community relations is not a ploy, or a tactic, and it’s definitely not some new “get sales quick and jump on the bandwagon” stunt.

Community relations is a fact. We all do it everyday–in business, in our personal lives–everything. From a business perspective, increased revenue is a by-product of great community relationships, not the goal of it. Are there companies who fake it ’til they make it? Sure. Seth Godin writes about this strategy in his book All Marketers Are Liars (Tell Stories). You build up a promise, you proliferate that promise, and then you authenticate that promise.

Let’s back it up to the smallest scale: community relations at the most granular level.

I, Stephanie, am a person. I’m a member of a community, nay multiple communities.

In fact, all of these communities can be broken down into even smaller subsets. Think of the forum subsets you find online. You may have a general “Marketing Professionals” forum. But then you also have smaller sets of specialized forums such as “B2B Marketers”, “Digital Marketers”, “Life Science Marketers”. All of these communities we belong to have their own culture, norms, mores, and values. Our decorum in each is different.

What we say and share, how we say and share, and why we say and share adapt based on the community we are engaging with at any given moment. The values of these communities are dynamic: what’s important, trivial, and offensive differs from each but also evolves within each.

Staying engaged, an active participant, in our communities is the only way to know and participate in the community.

Inbound, content, permission marketing are all relative terms used to describe the tactical and logistical efforts surrounding one big concept: Becoming active in your organizations’ communities. All these buzzwords go back to what has worked for mom-and-pops and non-profits since the dawn of time: becoming active, relevant, useful, helpful, productive, collaborative community members.