The Surprising Truth About Outbound Marketing

It Works, But Not In The Way You Might Think!

Outbound marketing, also known as “push” marketing, is often declared as dead (or quickly on its way out) in favor of inbound marketing. And when you look at it on the surface, you can easily see that it looks like outbound marketing is stale, old-fashioned, and no longer profitable, especially when compared to more consumer-driven options like blogging, SEO, and pay per click.

So why even ask, “is outbound marketing dead?” when all the surface indicators say that it is? The truth is that you have to dig a little deeper below the surface. When you do, you’ll see that outbound marketing is not only very much alive, but it continues to thrive.

Remember Email?

So many times throughout the last 30 years, people have declared the very same about email. When Web 2.0 was catching on, email was sure to be on its way out. When social media came of age, it was the death knell for email. When video streaming caught on and smartphones became an everyday part of our lives, text and video messaging heralded the end of email.

But yet email is still here, chugging along as one of the oldest internet technologies still in use today. That’s because no one can deny that despite the fact that it’s old, email is still an insanely good way to get your message out to people who are eager to receive it and who want to hear from you.

In its early days, email marketing was just sending an announcement out to a huge list without caring who saw it or whether or not they were interested. Of course, that will promptly get labeled as spam today, showing just how far email marketing has actually come.

Outbound marketing is the same way. You can’t judge it by looking at the sheer amount of spending that you’d have to do on something like television ads in order to get people to take action.

Outbound Marketing in Action

With inbound marketing, you’re creating content that’s meant to be consumed, and from there, distilling user information based on certain criteria that your customers possess. With outbound marketing, on the other hand, you have a large swath of users that, based on your research, are likely to be interested in what you have to offer. An example of this would be Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences. So you tailor an ad precisely to this audience. It’s still outbound and marketer-driven, just like the TV and radio ads of old, but it’s also much more targeted and precise.

From there, you can use the data gathered to further refine your campaigns, just as you would for inbound marketing. As you can see, both methods are not and shouldn’t be viewed as being separate and in their own respective silos. They overlap in parts, and this is exactly what should be happening.

Outbound marketing is in a state of evolution, just like email was. Even though these push-based messages are still marketer-driven, they can and should be targeted just like emails and other types of advertising are. Obviously, we’re not saying that you should go out and blast anyone and everyone with email ads or any other type of ad.

But when you broadly target your message, make sure that, just as you do for your email campaigns, that it’s targeted, precise, and matches up with your other promotional efforts. Over time, as you refine your message and your audience, so too does your audience refine their perception of your brand.

Keeping your message on point (even if it feels repetitive to you) will help it attract the right kind of customers as well as re-solidify what’s important to your brand and what you want your target audience to be aware of when they think of it.

Creating a Unified, Understandable Brand Message

Tailoring your brand awareness, tone, and message for both inbound and outbound marketing can be tricky, but no one said you have to do it alone. Here at Workdom, our senior advertising professionals have years of experience working with brands large and small to create captivating ad campaigns for both inbound, outbound and mixed marketing initiatives.

Contact us today and learn more about how our outbound marketing strategies can be used to help boost your business, connect with more of your perfect customers, and position your brand as the best possible solution for their needs.

Originally published at https://www.workdom.io on January 29, 2021.