What kind of future does outbound marketing have in this era of the internet?

Outbound marketing is one of the most popular forms of pro­mo­tion­al com­mu­nic­a­tion for con­tact­ing customers, informing them about products or services, and ideally gen­er­at­ing sales. The un­der­ly­ing principle behind it is that the company actively ap­proaches customers in order to make them aware of any company news, for example, by creating TV adverts or using outdoor ad­vert­ising such as posters. Different tactics are used to make the offer appealing to them. But are these outbound marketing measures still mean­ing­ful now that online media exists?

When it comes to outbound marketing, ad­vert­ising messages are dis­trib­uted on different channels. Ir­re­spect­ive of the channel, the following always applies: the company initiates contact with the customer and provides them with the latest in­form­a­tion on products, pro­mo­tions, offers, and services – without the customer having expressed any interest in making a purchase. Outbound marketing, often referred to as 'old' marketing, is the tra­di­tion­al method of marketing, whose reach depends entirely on the channel being used.

Outbound marketing is any ad­vert­ising measure in which a message is un­so­li­citedly sent to the potential customer. Synonyms for outbound marketing include 'push mar­ket­ing' and 'in­ter­rup­tion mar­ket­ing'.

The most common methods for outbound marketing are direct ad­vert­ising, poster campaigns, cold-calling, or sending e-mails (mass e-mail campaigns). Spon­sor­ing events, trade fair present­a­tions as well as ad­vert­ising on TV, radio, print, and direct personal contact are outbound marketing strategies that can be en­countered on a daily basis.

There are basically four types of channels:

• Print media: press ad­vert­ising, flyers, and leaflets that can be found in your mailbox, are a form of outbound marketing – be it ad­vert­ising from the pizza supplier or from the local painter
• Outdoor ad­vert­ising: in addition, outbound marketing also includes bill­boards and ad­vert­ising on lamp posts. Ad­vert­ising in public spaces is also called 'out of home media'. Outdoor ad­vert­ising also includes bus and train ad­vert­ise­ments
• TV and radio: TV and radio ad­vert­ise­ments are also a form of outbound marketing
• Internet: ad­vert­ising banners on external websites are counted as outbound marketing

Depending on which ad­vert­ising channel you use, the aim is to draw the target group’s attention to the ad­vert­ised product or service. The push strategy is used to achieve this. The dif­fer­ence between this and a pull strategy is shown here:

• Push: the man­u­fac­turer wants his goods to be displayed in as no­tice­able a way as possible on the retailers’ shelves in order to be seen by as many customers as possible
• Pull: as a result of massive branding efforts on the company’s part, there is a demand by customers for a certain product, so retailers are prac­tic­ally forced to include it in their product range

The company tries to convince the customer that they need this product by means of ad­vert­ising or other measures, such as trial products. A classic push strategy in outbound marketing is sale stickers. These encourage customers to buy products that they may never have thought of pur­chas­ing. Other push strategy methods are:

• Discount campaigns
• Price discounts
• Catalogue sales

When it comes to catalogue sales, customers are presented with a portfolio of products that they can choose from. The best-case scenario is that the moment the customer looks at the offers, they feel the need to buy something. The same goes for re­com­mend­a­tions in online shops – customers usually receive un­so­li­cited re­com­mend­a­tions based on fixed al­gorithms ('Cus­tomers who bought this item also bought… '). The re­com­mend­a­tions are intended to arouse further interest among customers and to make them more familiar with the shop’s products and services.

Outbound marketing measures can, in most cases, be iden­ti­fied as ad­vert­ising even if they are not clearly marked as such, meaning it’s no surprise to the customer. This is def­in­itely the case with classic examples of outdoor ad­vert­ising: passers-by read ads on bill­boards and the products become stuck in their minds. Also with TV ad­vert­ise­ments: ad­vert­ising melodies and images are un­con­sciously linked to a certain product and influence people when they decide on a brand or product.

The point, however, is that most people are able to see right through outbound marketing methods and are already tired of them. This results in the onlooker ignoring obvious ad­vert­ise­ments and becoming immune to them (this is known as 'banner blind­ness'). Nowadays, consumers have to filter out countless pieces of in­form­a­tion every day, which means that anything that doesn’t im­me­di­ately appeal to them, will be ignored.

For this reason, marketers are forced to use new forms of outbound marketing (an extreme example of this is guerrilla marketing) – or even to com­pletely forgo it. It goes without saying that it is important to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the location, the target group, and what you’re ad­vert­ising. For the local coffee shop, leaflets and circulars may be the best choice. However, a start-up that wants to promote its in­nov­at­ive product may opt for a com­pletely different strategy, such as an ad­vert­ising campaign on social media.

Another problem with outbound marketing is that the re­la­tion­ship between the cost and the success cannot be verified because there is no direct feedback. Ad­vert­ising e-mails, for example, are often sent to the recycling bin without being opened. This means that the target group could be passed by. The worst case is that potential customers could start to have negative thoughts about the brand since they’re being annoyed by all the ads. In order to prevent this from happening, it is advisable to keep current e-mail marketing trends in mind

Nowadays, outbound marketing is much less sig­ni­fic­ant than it used to be and is often replaced by web-based inbound marketing. This is not least due to the change in the media landscape.

For a long time, outbound marketing was the most popular method for a company to draw attention to its products. Flyers, posters, and bill­boards, as well as radio and TV ad­vert­ising meant that potential customers became more aware of the company and its products. However, push marketing and outbound marketing have been in­creas­ingly losing their impact.

Due to the ever-expanding rise of the internet, outbound marketing has changed somewhat: ad­vert­ising banners, un­so­li­cited ad­vert­ising e-mails, etc. are still on the agenda. However, more and more companies are switching to inbound marketing. Clever search engine op­tim­isa­tion (SEO) and ad­vert­ising (SEA) are just as much a part of this as content marketing (which has become wide­spread in the meantime) or in­creas­ingly targeted customer care via news­let­ters and other mailings.

The ad­vant­ages of inbound marketing are lower costs and higher sales op­por­tun­it­ies. After all, the customer’s interest has brought them this far.

In summary, the main dif­fer­ence between inbound and outbound marketing is that with 'outbound marketing', the customer is addressed directly by the retailer, even though the retailer doesn’t know if the customer is in­ter­ested or not. When it comes to inbound marketing, on the other hand, customers come looking for relevant products and services. Therefore, unlike outbound marketing, companies do not have to fight for the customer’s attention. All you have to do is make sure you are in the right place at the right time.

However, many online marketing companies have realised that a healthy mix of inbound and outbound marketing measures are often the way forward. Online mar­ket­places (e.g. Amazon) are pioneers in this respect. Because of their extensive databases, which are created by customer activity on their site, they can display relevant ad­vert­ise­ments and re­com­mend­a­tions, etc. for their users in order to make their products even more at­tract­ive. Ideally, a customer only sees products that really interest them.