Definition: Outbound marketing (n) is the traditional form of marketing where a company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience.
Outbound marketing had been labeled as traditional marketing or push marketing. Traditionally, its function is to disrupt and draw attention to the message. Examples of outbound marketing strategies are:
- TV commercials
- Magazine print ads
- Radio commercials
- Direct Mail
- Telemarketing
- Trade shows
- Email blasts
- Pop up digital ads
- Banner ads on websites
Outbound marketing can be a very effective source of qualified leads if the campaign strategy includes:
- Predictive modeling
- Buyer personas
- Segmentation
- Marketing automation
- Personalization
- Content marketing
- Analytics
A multichannel campaign using inbound and outbound strategies will outperform any single channel. Using a Call to Action that drives visitors to a websites or landing page makes cross channel marketing trackable and accountable.
The future of TV advertising, an outbound strategy which had been losing favor over the last decade, is discussed in a Point of View paper titled The Future of Advertising: Looking Ahead to 2020 produced by Scott Puopolo and Leszek Izdebski of Cisco. The paper argues that TV advertising will become more relevant as the industry adopts the newest technologies including personalization, interactivity and analytics. Click here for a link to the paper.
If you think that Outbound marketing is dying, think again. It’s adapting to technology and trends, and will only get stronger.