Inbound/Outbound Marketing

Can a company today survive on inbound marketing alone? Why or why not? What is the role of outbound marketing?

Should we pull customers in or push our message out?

I believe in today's market inbound marketing is the best package among marketing methods. It is generated by the onset of internet such as free tools and trials, blogs, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media sites, such as Linkedln, Facebook and YouTube. Inbound marketing produces better results because of the relationship factor, which results in higher client conversion.

The loyalty factor results in repeat sales and the implementing methods are far less expensive than outbound methods. It is highly trackable which allows you to easily adjust your method to improve results. Furthermore, there are lots of easy to use, ready-made tools for technical challenges.

Outbound marketing includes things like telemarketing, direct mail, print advertising, TV and radio and other traditional forms of marketing. The success of this marketing depends on its ability to effectively interrupt consumers. Outbound marketing doesn't work as well as it used to. That is probably because the average consumer is bombarded with anywhere from 250 to 3000 messages a day depending on how much time they spend watching TV, being online, listening to the radio or reading magazines and newspapers. Consumers are so used to these interruptions that they are already prepared to dodge them. For example, as soon as we see a popup ad, we close it or look away. Very rarely do consumers actually sit there and read them.

HOWEVER, even though I think Inbound marketing is superior, I do not feel that it can stand alone. If we rely on inbound marketing alone, we will sacrifice the traditional consumers that best respond to traditional forms. In any marketing campaign we need to decide what target market we want to focus on. Once they are identified, we need to understand how they behave as consumers and what forms of marketing are appropriate for those specific consumers.

Also there are some instances where inbound marketing will not work at all. For example, with a brand new product that no one has ever heard of, people are not going to be searching for it and therefore the keywords used in SEO will not be used.

Here's a website with a ton of links to great articles on inbound marketing, click away:

http://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing-hub/