Recently I gave a talk at the Business Show in London about the different types of marketing . Rather than using the usual official title (yawn) we named it “What the #!?% is marketing anyway!?”
It was the second time I’ve given this talk and the second time we packed a room full of people, keen to know more about the crazy world of marketing.
So…that got me thinking. I figured that as the talks have been so successful I’d put a series of blogs together around the wonders of marketing and what that really means to you. So here goes!
Now, you’ll have to forgive me and my analogies throughout these blogs, but hey, you’ve clicked on an article called “What the #!?% is marketing anyway!?”, so I guess I don’t have to worry about offending you too much, now do I?!
SCENARIO NUMBER ONE –
You walk into a crowded room and shout at the top of your voice “Hello everyone, my name is (insert your name here) and I am really good in bed!”
That, my friends, is Outbound Marketing and it’s basically going out and trying to win new business via a more traditional or, as we like to call it, “interruption based” marketing technique.
If you have ever heard a sales person say “if you throw enough mud at a wall some of it will stick”, they were most certainly talking about outbound marketing.
Now before you run outside with a couple of handfuls of mud, there are a few more things you need to know about good old outbound marketing techniques.
There are two fundamental types of outbound marketing; Indirect and Direct.
The “good in bed” approach I used before falls firmly in the Indirect camp. It is the old fashioned, traditional mud-throwing technique in all of its great (but slightly outdated to say the least) glory.
Anyone who has ever run advertising in the press, tried leaflet drops or advertised on the TV or Radio will tell you that the uptake can be very low.
Now you can and should focus your outbound efforts into a certain area or demographic to try to maximise the results from your mud-throwing.
Advertising the latest set of tools to help you “re-bore your V8 for an extra 35 break” may not be best placed during children’s cartoon time, but in the advert break of a TV show like Top Gear will probably get you better uptake.
The internet can help you track this uptake if you use voucher codes or custom landing pages for your adverts.
Do you need to track the uptake?? Urm, hello, of course you do! If you don’t, how are you going to find out if things are working or not?
In the next article I will return to that crowded room, look around and then go up to a specific person to tell them that “I am good in bed”.
Yes, that’s right … Direct Outbound marketing here we come!
