Nel precedente post abbiamo visto come le tecniche di inbound marketing siano meno costose e più efficaci di quelle utilizzate nell’outbound marketing. Però, nonostante questa evidenza, in genere, per sviluppare un Piano di Demand generation è consigliabile utilizzare un mix di inbound e outbound marketing.

Come sottolineano Mike Schulz a Michelle Davidson, anche se le tecniche di outbound marketing sono più costose,

that doesn’t mean, however, that firms should abandon all outbound marketing tatics (direct marketing, email, cold calling, etc.). They might cost more, but they can be incredibly effective. Some prospects and clients respond better to those and don’t even have social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook on their radar.

The best approach is to apply a mix of both. Continue to use your prefered outbound, or push, tactics – tactis that have traditionally performed well for you – but also make sure you have a strong website with quality content that is optimized for search engines. Then begin to test the social media water with perhaps a blog or activity on LinkedIn.

The key is to measurably test different tactics, analyze the results, and determine which work best for you. 

Andando più in profondità, possiamo riprendere il pensiero di Dan McDade che sottolinea come

the right outbound/inbound balance depends heavily on variables like company size. Indeed, recent survey show larger companies continue to emphasize outbound marketing …

L’indagine realizzata da HubSpot, denominata 2011 State of Inbound Marketing, oggetto del precedente post, evidenzia come le piccole imprese (da 1 a 5 dipendenti) stanno pianificando di spendere il 49% dei loro budget per la demand generation utilizzando le tecniche dell’inbound marketing. Invece, le medie e grandi società (oltre 50 dipendenti) stanno pianificando di spendere solamente il 36% nell’inbound marketing.

Al contrario, le piccole imprese stanno destinando solamente il 10% del loro budget per la Demand generation all’outbound marketing, mentre le medie e grandi società stanno pianificando di spendere il 28%. Secondo l’indagine:

Medium-to-large businesses plan to spend more of their budgets on outbound methods, including trade shows, direct mail and telemarketing.

Secondo Dan McDade:

large companies can’t depend on longer time-to-leads cycles of inbound – they have to proactively assure market coverage and seek out opportunities  for their pipelines.

Inoltre,sempre secondo Dan McDade, molti decision maker di alto livello

have not yet embraced – and may never – the role of self-education via social media.

In un articolo pubblicato il mese scorso, Dan mcDade specifica meglio il suo pensiero. Nelle vendite complesse, che richiedono un tempo molto lungo prima di arrivare alla decisione d’acquisto,

the risk is that letting high value prospects progress that far without proactive engagement – and instead relying too heavily on inbound marketing and marketing automation to find, nurture, and convert them – can result in losing deals to the competition …

Because inbound marketing generates contacts and supports self-education over a period of time, it’s easy to miss opportunities that could be deep in the current pipeline …

A primary advantage of a proactive outbound approach lies in the way a company can reach out early to connect with a qualified decision maker and begin to build a business relationship.

Questo pensiero è, per molti aspetti, condivisibile. A mio avviso, però, per comprendere meglio come bilanciare inbound e outbound marketing, bisogna fare un passo ulteriore, partendo da questa osservazione suggerita da Ardath Albee:

What we really want is to create extended engagement that manifests itself with the results of more time spent with our content vs. that of competitors and is considered valuable enough for prospects to share with others.

La base da cui partire diventa quindi il “contenuto”. Utilizzando le parole di Teena Gomes, il problema è

how and where content stategy fits in this whole inbound-outbound equation. 

Quindi,

as a marketer where you place this content and how you use it is what determines whether you are using it for inbound or outbounad marketing. For eg.: If you send out an email to your prospect telling him – “Hey, there is this webinar you’ll like, please register and attend”, it becomes an outbound technique.

On the other hand, you create a search engine friendly landing page, talking about the webinar and you prospect land on it, via search, and then registers for the webinar; it becomes an inbound marketing technique …

A webinar is inbound or outbound based on the vehicle used to market it. But it’is not just about webinar, any content resource can be similarly used both for inbound or outbound marketing.

Fonte: Teena Gomes, Inbound or Outbound – When it Really matters

Come decidere quale tecnica usare?

A mio avviso, Teena Gomes risponde nel modo migliore a questa domanda:

Deciding on which marketing technique is to be used is also dependent on how quickly you wish to see results. While inbound marketing provides you with higher quality leads (have come looking for you), outbound marketing is no doubt a way to getting more leads quickly. So using both techniques toghether whenever possible lets you cover more ground and get better results …

Having a clear cut marketing strategy which not just focuses on content quality and quality but also on content accessibility and usability is what is needed today.

Credo che questa sia la risposta migliore alla domanda contenuta nel titolo di questo post.