Your marketing budget is huge. You’ve got more funds than you know what to do with. And the C-Suite keeps insisting that you increase your marketing spend. Sound like your situation? Of course not. There’s not a marketing pro on the planet who can identify with that scenario!
In all likelihood, quite the opposite is true. You have a modest budget that is rarely increased, and you work hard to get the biggest bang for your precious bucks. That being the case, why are you still relying exclusively on outbound marketing when inbound marketing is SO much more cost-effective and just flat out more effective?
Outbound vs. Inbound
For many years now, outbound marketing has been earning some less than flattering nicknames: “old school marketing,” “shotgun marketing,” or my favorite and perhaps the most descriptive, “interruption marketing.” The notion that you can continually “get in the face” of your target personas until you finally wear them down just doesn’t hold true. In today’s highly connected world, your consumers have too many options and too many opportunities to engage with other companies in a more relaxed way. The truth is that pressuring them to look at your offerings actually drives them away.
On the other hand, inbound marketing, or content marketing, has earned the monikers of “relationship marketing”, “engagement marketing”, and “connection marketing.” Creating great content about your products or services, providing it to your audience with few if any strings attached, and then enjoying a dialogue with them on subjects you are both truly passionate about is a highly effective means to winning their interest and eventually their loyalty.
The Ultimate Cost of Outbound
If your company is considering a move to inbound marketing but you want to understand the relative costs, I encourage you to look at dollars and cents, but also the “cost” in terms of your relationship with your prospects.
Pure cash dollars
The cost per lead with outbound marketing is much higher than with content marketing. That has to do both with the expensive “traditional” channels you use (television, radio, etc.) and the materials (brochures, sales letters, etc.) you must produce and distribute in mass quantities in the hope of getting some attention.
Lack of measurability
One of the beauties of inbound marketing is your ability to get very precise measurements of the effectiveness of a campaign, or even a specific piece of content, with a marketing automation tool like HubSpot. (We are a proud HubSpot Partner agency here at 30dps.) Outbound allows for no such measurement, leaving you essentially in the dark about your marketing efforts.
Alienating your audience
Over the years, consumers have developed very restricted filters when it comes to outbound marketing. What percentage of direct mail pieces go straight into the recycle bin without so much as a second glance? I’d wager that it’s an extraordinarily high number. Perhaps 80 to 90 percent? And don't even get me started about those noisy banner ads! Inbound marketing succeeds at getting prospects to let down their guards. That's the first step toward a conversation that can take a person from curious to customer.
Turning Waste Into Wins
The above are just some of the ways marketing budgets are wasted on outbound marketing. As an experienced Colorado Springs inbound marketing agency, we have a proven track record of turning waste into wins. Our clients across the country use our skills and our in-depth knowledge of HubSpot to develop highly effective content marketing programs that fill their sales funnels and build their brand. We’d love to help you do the same. Please give us a call.
