Have you ever heard of outbound marketing? Outbound marketing is a marketing activity that is considered a traditional type and is very common. With a brief explanation, you can guess what type of outbound marketing it is.
Even if you rarely hear the term outbound marketing, you have often done the activity yourself. Especially for those who are trying to develop a business from a marketing point of view to make an even better impact.
Besides outbound marketing, there is also inbound marketing. But for this time, let’s discuss outbound marketing in detail here. You can learn about its importance, benefits, and application of the information summarized below. Check out the full information!
Definition of Outbound Marketing
As explained above, outbound marketing is a marketing activity that is actually considered traditional and is commonly done by different types of businesses. If you read the word “traditional” in the explanation of outbound marketing, you can find all the examples of this marketing strategy.
Some examples of forms of outbound marketing are television advertising, radio advertising, magazine advertising, newspaper advertising, flyers, brochures, catalogs, and others. But not only that. There are still exhibitions, telemarketing, and email spam included in this outbound marketing.
From some of the examples given, it is clear how the form of outbound marketing itself is. You must have seen television commercials or newspaper ads many times. Now, that’s a form of outbound marketing that is often seen by the broader community, but they don’t understand what the term is in the world of marketing.
In terms of the ad itself, it’s been around for a very long time. That is, for decades outbound marketing has been used by the business world. But over time, this type of advertising is less liked by the public.
The main reason why outbound marketing falls out of favor is its repeated, excessive and obvious appearance. This treatment annoys many people and eventually, they no longer care when it appears.
If we talk about television advertising, we can see the trend of viewers who are not focused when the TV station is in the middle of an advertising session. Surely, potential consumers will immediately try to find another channel when the ad is first viewed.
This behavior makes the ad irrelevant for attention. Although the advertiser desires the public to see the ad and know about the product, service, or promotion.
For advertising on the Internet itself, many people prefer ad blocker applications. By activating them, the ads that often appear on various websites, search engines, blogs, social media, and others disappear. People are not bothered by the presence of these ads.
So, you could say that outbound marketing has been abandoned by the community. However, there are still many companies that rely on marketing strategies. Of course, the choice is not wrong at all, because there is still a large part of the public that is affected by outbound marketing style advertising.
Advantages of Outbound Marketing
Let’s see what are the advantages of outbound marketing. Even though it is obvious from the above explanation that outbound marketing is gradually abandoned, it doesn’t mean that you don’t even use it for advertising. Here are the benefits of outbound marketing.
- Prospects have more confidence in the product or service because the form of advertising feels more real.
- Creativity in advertising makes the product or service more attractive.
- Ads from outbound marketing can be easier to remember and even go viral.
- There are still many people who prefer to see advertisements on television or in newspapers.
- Although the advantages of outbound marketing are quite great, there are still some disadvantages, namely:
Difficulty in tracking return on investment (ROI).
- Improve blocking techniques (block cell phone numbers, ad blockers, spam filters, and others)
- High cost
- It looks old and outdated.
- The marketing goal is not clear as it is thrown directly to the broader community.
- Written for product requirements only.
- Still looking for potential customers.
- Not flexible and one-sided.
- May interfere with content consumption.
Advertising techniques with outbound marketing present many obstacles. However, many believe that this technique has become a kind of tradition in business, so it is very difficult to abandon it.
In the end, many companies do outbound marketing but do not forget about inbound marketing, which is more modern and relevant today. Inbound marketing and outbound marketing are indeed viable to achieve maximum results.
Pros and Cons of Outbound Marketing
As written above, many companies are doing outbound marketing, although they are increasingly abandoned. Something traditional is gradually being abandoned, but there is still a separate “market” that can only access this traditional advertising.
Advantages and disadvantages in outbound marketing are no longer foreign words. Especially for companies running outbound marketing campaigns, although they already have advanced digital technology to switch to inbound marketing. The difference between inbound and outbound is quite pronounced when it comes to implementation and methods.
The advantages and disadvantages of outbound marketing include:
Professional
- Broad coverage: outbound marketing can capture a wide range of potential consumer marketing because almost anyone can see the ads, even if they are not the target market for the company or product.
- Quickly visible results: Many see that the results of outbound marketing are quickly visible because it is a direct message to broad consumers. This can even be done at any time without having to wait for consumers to arrive (e.g., ads on billboards that can be seen by the public 24 hours a day).
Counter
- Considered ineffective: Because it directly targets the broader community, not all outbound marketing ads have a positive impact. It was deemed ineffective because it was not clear who the target audience for the ads was. The quality and number of leads generated are low.
- Short-term effect: after the outbound marketing ads end, there is nothing to profit from there. For example, advertising on television. By the time the ad has disappeared from circulation, sales may have dropped dramatically.
- Annoying: back to the original problem, namely outbound marketing ads are annoying. Content marketing ads from outbound seem to ask potential customers to pay attention to the messages in the ad. Another example is the commercials on television that always appear. This is what ultimately causes outbound marketing ads to be abandoned.