Is Outbound Marketing Dead?

Growing up in the 2000s, the internet was still considered a “new thing”. I would come home from school one day, fight with my bro over the television and had to deal with a bunch of commercial breaks in-between my favourite tv shows.

And do you remember when we would get print newspapers and newsletters in our mailbox weekly (do they still do those anymore?)

Now we head over to today where we can escape the noise, skip those ads and watch our tv shows without any distractions. And if we ever need to catch up on the news, we would go straight to Google or Reddit.

As a business owner, it makes me wonder, is outbound marketing still a thing?

In this post, I’ll share with you what outbound marketing is and its examples. Lastly to answer the important question, is it dead? What are some alternatives to add to your marketing plan? Find out more below.

What Is Outbound Marketing?

To lay off the grounds, it’s when businesses, companies and brands use marketing to start off a conversation and send their messages out to an audience. In simpler words, a term used for traditional marketing/advertising methods to push out a product or service to a broader general audience.

These types of outbound marketing strategies are less effective and much more costly because as we noted above, they’re aimed at the general market and not targetted. The primary objective is to increase sales deprived of providing value to the customers.

What Are Examples Of Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing includes traditional forms of marketing while including strategies that interrupt your audience. Here are a few examples below:

• Print advertisements (things such as magazine ads, flyers, newspaper ads, catalogues you see in supermarkets, brochures, etc)
• Billboards
• Television commercials
• Radio ads
• Outbound sale calls (aka “cold calling”)
• Mass emailing (in other words, “email spams”)

While I did mention that they are “traditional forms”, there are some outbound marketing that can be done online as well. These include:

• Search engines PPC (Pay-per-click)
• Ads you see on YouTube
• Banner ads

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The Real Question: Is Outbound Marketing Dead?

No actually! It’s not dead…if done right.

In my day to day life, I still see up-to-date magazine catalogues at my nearest supermarkets. I usually pick some up (they’re free of course) just to take a look at awesome recipes and look at food inspo. And of course, I would come across multiple YouTube ads because I don’t have the premium version of YouTube.

But here’s the thing. Back when the internet was still a “new thing”, outbound marketing tactics had a higher response probability and were profitable. Nowadays, many businesses now turn to shift their attention to inbound marketing because this new generation is always on their phones (speaking from an older gen-z here). This new shift allowed marketing strategies to gain more attention from people without annoying them too much.

Not being biased here but there are some problems that are associated with outbound marketing including:

• The trouble of tracking “return-on-investment” (ROI)
• Increase in blocking methods (such as spam filters)
• Excessive costs yet low returns

With that being said, to eliminate the complications above, every business needs to install inbound marketing strategies combined with outbound marketing into the mix.

But there’s also a catch when it comes to inbound marketing: it is the “long game”. This means you need to be consistent and patient in order to see the desired outcome. You also need to develop brand awareness, engagement and trust with your potential consumer.

Here’s how you can do that for your business:

• Publishing blog posts (as someone who has written a blog for years, Google Analytics will be your new best friend! So make sure your blog articles are search engine optimised!)
• Create social media content (for example, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, Instagram stories, etc)
• Create video content (such as Tiktok, YouTube, Instagram reels, etc)
• Email marketing (you can start your own email list by having your own website. Use tools like MailerLite or MailChimp for free!)

Conclusions

But does outbound marketing still work? Well, older generations (or older customers), may be more likely to pick up the phone and listen to the gold ol’ cold calls or still watch adverts on television.

But newer generations (aka the younger generation), usually find ways to banish the distractions via the internet. So it’s best to experiment with both to see what works best for your business.

Btw, thanks to these lovely sources on where I got my info from:

• What Is Outbound Marketing?
• Outbound Marketing- What You Need To Know?
• Outbound Marketing

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