A recent article by HubSpot suggested that marketing budgets are typically 90% outbound marketing and 10% inbound marketing and that the ratio should be flipped. OK, so what are outbound and inbound marketing?
Outbound marketing in short is the traditional approach - putting out messages to target audiences through advertising, e-mails, mail shots, exhibitions and all the other marketing tools. The article argues that not only is the average person subjected to 2,000 marketing interruptions a day, but has figured out means of blocking or filtering some of them. For example Sky+ allows a TV programme to be viewed and advertisements skipped. Spam filters reject e-mail messages. You can sign up to opt out of mail shots and telephone cold calling. There are even street signs advising that you are in a "No cold calling area". So yes messages get filtered, but a lot gets through. So how about inbound marketing, how does that work and should 90% of the marketing budget be spent on it?
I bought a new style of mousetrap at the weekend and was reminded of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation, " build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." OK - so how does the world know you have a better mousetrap then? Well the conventional approach would be to send outbound messages, the inbound approach seems to advocate hanging out where people are looking for mousetraps. And it is probably not in the High Street anymore, but an out of town shopping mall or superstore, or of course the Internet. And hanging out on the Internet increasingly is about compelling and relevant content and social networking to encourage the target audience to come to you - in short they beat a path to your door. Sounds great!
No comments:
Post a Comment