What is outbound marketing?
Outbound marketing is the opposite of inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing isn't about pushing marketing out, but rather attracting potential customers via e.g. knowledge content and marketing automation. This makes online inbound marketing a much less aggressive way for companies to market themselves.
Examples of outbound marketing include more traditional forms of marketing and advertising, such as TV commercials, radio ads, print ads (newspaper ads, magazine ads, flyers, brochures, catalogs, etc.), trade shows, sales calls (cold calling.
Outbound marketing is generally harder to track and less profitable than inbound marketing. Companies looking to improve their sales and ROI are therefore advised to allocate a larger amount of their marketing budget to inbound marketing rather than outbound marketing.
Is outbound marketing dead?
There are more media platforms than ever and people are overwhelmed with data and information. As more people have chosen to avoid advertising, outbound marketing has become less effective than it once was. However, outbound marketing still has its place in any organization. B2B toolbox.
Outbound marketing is still relevant, especially for high-end products that require personal contact with decision makers, but it should always be supported by inbound marketing, backed by strong content strategy and consistent use of social media. Ultimately, it's important to have a combination of both and use the data you got from your inbound marketing efforts in your outbound marketing and vice versa.
The downside of outbound marketing
Outbound marketing presents some problems as it is a little more difficult to work with. Problems with outbound marketing can be:
- Difficult to measure the value - your return on investment (ROI)
- Blocking: There is a growing trend of people not wanting calls from salespeople, emails going to the spam folder, etc.
- High price, low yield.
Inbound and outbound marketing synergies
But if outbound marketing is so effective and is better at converting leads into paying customers, you might be wondering how exactly outbound marketing fits into your marketing strategy. It's important to remember that it's often the combination of activities from both inbound and outbound marketing that is most effective.
As your business starts to grow, your marketing focus is constantly shifting between branding, advertising, SEO, content marketing and social media as well as between inbound and outbound marketing. The use of all the tools available is essential for B2B lead generationBalancing your inbound and outbound focus to find the right level requires fine-tuning and a lot of trial and error.
