Is Outbound Marketing On The Decline?

I've been asking myself this question a lot lately due to the increasing popularity and buzz around inbound marketing.  And, truth be told, I've also been asking myself this question because the majority of the consulting work I do focuses on enabling marketers to design and execute outbound marketing campaigns more effectively and efficiently.  With this provocative question in mind, let me first define what outbound and inbound marketing is.

What is Outbound and Inbound Marketing?

Outbound Marketing refers to more traditional marketing methods that actively engage a target market such as direct mail, e-mail, phone, advertising and other marketing vehicles.

Inbound Marketing focuses on getting potential customers to "discover" your business by creating and publishing content that they want to see and perhaps even share with friends.  Examples of inbound marketing include: search engine optimization, blog/website content publishing and viral marketing enablement.  In a nut shell, inbound marketing focuses on:

• Creating and publishing content that "draws people in" to learn more about your company and its offerings
• Providing the tools for people to recommend your companies products or services (i.e. providing links on your product pages that visiters can post to their social networking sites)

Interestingly, as I was researching the Internet for the above definitions, I was reminded of push and pull marketing.  I remember these terms from marketing courses that I took in college (in the early 90's).  That said, I'm wondering if the terms "outbound" and "inbound" marketing are conceptually the same as "push" and "pull" marketing, but simply have different names and reflect the newer marketing channels and techniques leveraged today.  Perhaps I can have someone on my upcoming podcast (coming soon) to answer this question.

What's the Research Say?

In my anecdotal research to find out whether outbound marketing is on the decline, I went to the Internet (essentially Google and Yahoo searches) and I posed this question to numerous marketing professionals.  In short, the answers I got ranged from "Outbound marketing is on its way to extinction" to "Outbound marketing is absolutely not on the decline" and everything in between.  That said, the research I performed didn't really tell me definitively (one way or the other) whether outbound marketing is on its way out.

Note:  Not surprisingly, my research uncovered that many of the strong proponents of inbound marketing were individuals and companies that sell products and services related to inbound marketing (and vice versa).

So, What Do I Think?

What I think can be summed up as follows:

• Acquisition oriented outbound marketing to unsuspecting audiences (i.e. the "carpet-bomb approach") is on the decline because the cost for this type of marketing is increasing and people have too many marketing interruptions today to process yet another mass marketing message.  Plus, there are too many other (more effective) acquisition marketing alternatives in the marketplace today to have to resort to the "pay and spray" method of marketing.
• Permission based, outbound marketing to existing opt-in customers and prospects isn't going away anytime soon, as it's a proven method to effectively convert prospects into customers and increase business with existing customers.  A portion of outbound (optin) marketing budgets may shift to inbound marketing initiatives though, but I don't believe that outbound marketing budgets will evaporate all together.  In fact, a friend of mine started an e-commerce business a few years ago leveraging (only) inbound marketing channels to initially promote his business.  Now that he has a reasonably large customer database of optin customers (with profile and purchase information) he is leveraging outbound marketing to help increase business with existing customers.
• Smart marketers will add inbound marketing options to their marketing tool kit
• Really smart marketers will figure out how to integrate inbound and outbound marketing into their overall marketing strategy
• With the recent explosion of search marketing, blogs, social networking...etc., inbound marketing is the latest buzz.  That said, I believe we need to let the hype and buzz die down a bit before we can make any definitive statements about the future of inbound and outbound marketing.
• It will be interesting to read this posting 10 years from now to see if any of my predictions are correct!

That's what I think.  What do you think?

Note: A special thanks to the following sources that I referenced for this posting:

• Hubspot for their blog post on Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
• DoshDash for their blog post on Push Marketing V.S. Pull Marketing

Comments

[Kolb Learning]

I feel that while outbound marketing campaigns are not going to go away anytime soon, their effectiveness will decrease as consumers get tired of them. For now it looks like that inbound marketing is the future.

[Kevin Deeb]

Being a direct marketing professional specializing in mailing lists, I do not see outbound marketing campaigns fading anytime even in the next ten years. There was a large hype to save marketing dollars in the beginning of 2000 with email marketing, which is not effective at all in prospecting for new clients. Direct mail marketing has been the most consistant form of marketing and will continue to be for years to come. It will surpass the social media craze for sure.

[Matt @ Social Media Management]

I encourage the businesses to do both forms of marketing. Inbound marketing can be very effective but it is also a much more passive. I tend to think the best approach is to build using inbound marketing channels for the long-term and then supplement this activity with highly effective outbound marketing such as email marketing, social media blasts, or even PPC.

[Emily]

This is interesting to read - and now a year since posted - I believe that inbound marketing is getting bigger and is on the up. Social media, mainly Twitter, I feel has become increasingly popular and is something I use on a daily basis. I think inbound marketing finds customers that would never have been found otherwise. I do still think outbound marketing has a purpose and that it won't be leaving us any time soon - but I do think that organisations will value inbound marketing more.
I have just written an article with recent stats which could be useful - and also some tips on inbound marketing, feel free to read http://www.lucidica.com/blog/emilys-corner/is-inbound-marketing-the-new-way-forward/