When was the last time you brought in the mail and thanked your lucky stars for the various advertising pieces that came? In the last month, have you sat through a commercial and thought, “I’m sure glad I saw that ad!”? Do you typically answer calls from numbers or companies that you don’t recognize?
No? Rarely? Never? I’m hardly shocked. With more than 2000 advertising messages interrupting our daily lives, we’ve had to implement some serious defenses to block them out. Caller ID, spam email filters, DVR, and Sirius satellite radio are all tools that help us avoid interruption-based marketing, also known as outbound marketing.
With the shift in consumer behavior toward more consumer-control over what information we receive and how we receive it, traditional outbound strategies seem to be dying a slow death. Wielding a powerful set of tools and the ability to dominate the research process from the comfort of their own office, customers no longer need to attend expensive seminars or tradeshows to learn about your product or service.
Rather, they now have the opportunity to explore tons of solutions through the online demo videos, webinars, eBooks, or whitepapers that your competitors are likely providing. You see, at least 32% of brands have decreased spending on outbound methods in order to spend more on inbound strategies. And that number is expected to rise.
In this digital age, marketing has undergone a radical shift from utilizing interruption-based strategies to implementing a permission-based approach, also known as inbound marketing. If consumers are out on the web doing 57% of the research that a typical buying process requires, businesses are capitalizing on that by providing the content that customers use to shape their decision through enhanced internet strategy.
To generate more leads and nurture them into buyers, it really all boils down to providing consumers with what they need, when and how they want it.
Here are some facts in the case of Inbound vs. Outbound:
- Because 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content, they are also more likely to buy from that company. (source)
- 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them. (source)
- 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. (source)
- Per dollar, content marketing produces 3 times more leads. (source)
- 85% of people skip television ads. (source)
- 200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers on the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list. (source)
- By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human.
- 57% of customers feel that salespeople are poorly prepared or not prepared at all at initial meetings.
- 55% of buyers say they spend more time researching purchases than they did in the past. (source)
- Buyers go through about 57% of the purchasing process before ever talking to sales. (source)