This post originally appeared on the Louisiana Technology Park blog.
It’s no secret that most of the “heat” in marketing today is on inbound marketing, in which companies draw customers to them through the content they create. It seems every innovative business out there is striving to be a thought leader by publishing on topics that will be of interest to people they can potentially turn into customers.
But old-fashioned outbound marketing still has a place, experts say. This is the more overt type of outreach, everything from advertising to conventions to cold calling. Part of the new appeal of inbound over outbound is obvious: It generally costs a lot less. For the price of one 30-second TV spot, you could produce a slew of high-quality articles for your blog.
However, outbound still holds lots of potential to make a timely impact. One rapidly growing area is social media advertising, which can target an audience at a very granular level — and for a fraction of the cost of legacy media ads.
Leveraging Inbound with Outbound
Don’t think of inbound and outbound marketing as being intrinsically separate, says Thomas Smale, founder of FE International, an M&A advisory firm for online businesses. He says outbound can be a terrific tool, especially when a company is starting out.
“Outbound marketing is a great way to get your name out there and become known in the early stages of your business when people are not yet familiar with you. Cold calling, direct emails, reaching out to blogs and proposing strategic partnerships are all effective ways of gaining traction early on,” Smale says.