Too many business owners assume that inbound and outbound marketing are mutually exclusive and have little, if any, impact on one another. The truth is that both forms of marketing reinforce the other. Inbound marketing is best thought of as a “pull” style of marketing that makes use of premium content, referrals and an array of other means to bring in customers through online channels. Outbound marketing is more of a mass marketing effort that attempts to reach a wide audience. It pushes the service or product directly to the audience rather than relying on them to find it on their own.
Inbound and Outbound Marketing: The Importance of Recall Value
Business owners, managers, and marketing managers are finding that inbound marketing greatly enhances outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a somewhat covert means of advertising that keeps the business’s services and products on the minds of potential customers. Furthermore, the company itself, including its brand, remains at the forefront of the customers’ minds. The importance of this ubiquity cannot be overstated. This is the “recall value” that companies and marketers strongly desire.
Consider a target customer who is exposed to a company’s product, service, and/or brand by way of inbound marketing channels over and over again. Such a customer is able to rapidly recall his familiarity with the product and its features after being exposed to the selling points through outbound marketing campaigns. This means inbound and outbound marketing efforts reinforce one another in an effective manner.
Another Layer
Inbound marketing also enhances outbound marketing by providing an additional layer of depth to the overarching marketing picture. As an example, a traditional outbound advertisement on TV that motivates a prospective customer to visit the advertiser’s Twitter or Facebook page to learn more about the product or service gives the customer another way to engage with the company, its brand, and it’s product/service. This is an important additional layer to the product’s marketing. Inbound marketing really does provide a prospective customer with the opportunity to interact with the business, its offerings and even fellow consumers. This in-depth experience is much more important than functioning as passive observers who are subjected to conventional outbound marketing efforts.
Covert and Overt Marketing
Inbound marketing engages the target customer with the company’s offerings as well as its brand. It really makes customers feel as though they found the company’s products/services on their own. This experience provides customers with a sense of empowerment that has truly organic roots. Whether it is a web search, social media, or a referral that brings the consumer to the product, the point is the customer did it on their own so they value the connection with the product that much more. This phenomenon builds a unique style of brand loyalty as the consumer finds the product or service on their own rather than receiving it in a traditional top-down outbound advertisement.
A consumer who finds a product or service through inbound marketing and later sees the company name, brand or a specific offering in an outbound marketing effort will likely be that more receptive to the message. They already identify with the company and its offering, as their own actions connected him to the seller’s inbound marketing efforts. It is a spontaneous sequence of events, making it that much more legitimate from the customer’s perspective. This is the magic of reinforcing inbound marketing with outbound marketing. It is the perfect way to inspire brand loyalty across posterity.
