Are you an outbound marketer or an inbound marketer?

Traditionally, companies have used 'outbound' marketing to communicate their messages to large numbers of people. Examples include, radio advertising, TV, national press, local press, cinema & outdoor posters. In over 20 years of marketing with Britain's best brands I have done plenty of mass 'outbound' advertising.

But traditional mass 'outbound' advertising is costly & often unaffordable for smaller companies. Increasingly much of this advertising is wasted as a large proportion of the audience (that are paid for) may not be the brands target audience. e.g. By placing an ad in a magazine you pay to reach all readers, even if only a small percentage are the ones you want to reach. The web is not immune to this e.g. banner advertising & emailing a cold audience can also suffer if old thinking is applied to new technology.

Secondly, people are so bombarded with marketing messages that we have all got pretty good at filtering out these 'interruption' based messages: either by using systems (e.g to detect junk email) or just mentally ignoring stuff that is not on our 'personal radar'. When I speak at seminars, I always ask the audience, how many marketing messages they recall seeing that day. They will have been exposed to thousands of messages but typically only a few people can recall two messages.

Looking for a needle in a haystack
When I talk with my B2B clients, I often say traditional 'outbound' marketing is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Potentially, there might be a huge number of companies across the UK that would benefit from their expertise. There could be over 500,000 companies within 80 miles of their location. However, only a small proportion of these prospect companies would be thinking about their solution in any particular week. The chances of reaching the right individual in the right company at the right time with the right message is like finding a needle in a haystack. For many companies the cost of doing this using traditional outbound marketing is prohibitive.

The effectiveness of inbound search
Increasingly, businesses & consumers search online as part of the research process before making a purchase decision. Comscore reported there were 135 bn searches across the world in Feb 09.

Inbound marketing is about making it easy for target prospects to find you and contact you when they are ready to buy. It includes search engine marketing (such as search engine optimisation & Pay Per Click) social media, blogging, podcasts and smart email marketing using autoresponders. e.g. With Pay Per Click advertising you decide which keywords should trigger your ad to appear and then only pay if the click the ad to be taken to your website.

Permission marketing not interruption
Outbound marketing is about interrupting consumers, hoping the messages stick long enough until the recipient is ready to buy. Inbound marketing is about attracting target prospects to visit your website, when they are ready to buy. It is about seeking their permission to follow up with smart marketing that addresses their individual problem.

Your website is critical for success
If new inbound marketing is about attracting target prospects to your website, then it is obvious that the website needs to perform. However, in my view 95% of websites fail to deliver. Just sticking a logo on a brochure wasn't good enough for a web site 13 years ago and it certainly isn't good enough now.

It requires well thought out optimised content, with appropriate offers relevant for the target prospects & designed to convert visitors to leads or customers. It depends on regular analysis of website performance against key metrics or key performance indicators.

Companies that want to succeed, especially in tough times, need to switch their focus from outbound to inbound permission based marketing in order to maximise their marketing ROI.


Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing specialist with Brand New Way, a UK web marketing agency which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.