I get frustrated when I hear folks talk about inbound and outbound marketing, or more popularly in recent time, inbound VS outbound marketing as if they are mutually exclusive. Why you may ask? Because marketers should know better!
The notion of building an inbound or an outbound strategy ignores the one single most important factor in setting go to market strategy and that is the prospect, the lead, the customer, call them what you will. Do you think your prospect sits at his/her desk and says "Hmmmm, I think I am going to consume some outbound marketing content today or, actually I am feeling particularly daring, today I am going to experiment with some inbound marketing?
My point is, of course, that the words "inbound" and "outbound" are describing an entirely internal view of marketing tactics and ignores the way the customer thinks. This is a dangerous mindset to adopt.
Marketing is about creating and wielding influence over the purchasing decisions of buyers. It is quite clear that these spheres of influence are shifting. The internet has allowed prospects to pull information at their discretion, at their bidding, and in their timeframe. The job of marketers is to ensure that they are visible and considered in the places your prospects go to research their purchasing decision and its true that this falls quite neatly, for the most part, into the "inbound" category of marketing.
Firms need to adapt their go to market plan to include so called inbound tactics. Yet one sphere of influence seems missing from the simplistic notion of inbound and outbound tactics and that is the purchaser's network. This is both the broad network of trusted advisors, former colleagues, reputable analyst firms and consultants as well as the incumbent network, that of existing suppliers, with which they may have been doing business for many years. I would argue that any smart marketing strategy needs to build campaign elements and content that consciously targets these spheres of influence.
It is at the point of engagement with the incumbent network that marketing and customer strategy overlap. Alignment between customer and marketing strategy is important and can yield returns relatively easily compared to cold or even warm markets.
I would urge marketers to build blended got to market plans that explicitly analyse the spheres of influence on your target audience. Subsequent campaigns should be an amalgam of tools and techniques that place your firm and its offerings within those spheres of influence. Simplistic views of inbound vs outbound campaigns and tools are unhelpful at best and expensive and ineffective at worst.