Marketing Series:
Inbound vs Outbound Marketing
by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional
Marketing is the art and science of connecting people with products. Marketing is the process of moving products from conception to consumption. Marketing is everything we do to manage the flow of goods and services through channels of distribution from producer to consumer. Marketing’s purpose is to bring buyers and sellers together.
There are many components to the marketing process. In the diving industry we deal with product management, strategic planning, market research, customer behavior, competitive analysis, advertising, communications, promotion, sales, packaging, delivery, and information technology. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
A Degreed Marketing Professional working in the diving industry needs to have a firm understanding of all the components that make up the marketing mix. I prefer to profess that Degreed Marketing Professionals need to master all of these components, continually, consistently over time because they are all interconnected and interdependent upon each other. The need for annual professional business development training goes without saying, for all Marketing Professionals, degreed or not, working in all of the stakeholder groups of the diving industry. The business of diving and the technology we use to manage our companies changes too rapidly not be stay currently informed and updated.
To better understand the marketing process, we need to look at the three major sectors of the process. Product Management – Customer Management – Communication Strategy. Although Marketing plays a large part in all three sectors, it’s the Communication Strategy that brings Products and Customers together. In marketing, we are communicating between buyers and sellers about products. One-directional sales, marketing, promotion, and advertising messaging does not work effectively in the 21st Century. Communication by definition is a two-way process.
Marketing in the diving industry has changed dramatically in the past six years since the global pandemic. Changes in consumer behavior have had a lot to do with that. So has the change in the average age of the majority of consumers. Consumers buy differently today. They do more research prior to purchasing than their parents and grandparents did. Unfortunately, many of the diving businesses in the market today have not modernized their sales and marketing departments. That’s not criticism, it’s just the way it is. Many old timers believe that if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it. The trouble is, without measuring their sales and marketing performance, they don’t know that things are broken.
Marketing in the 21st Century is exciting. Armed with the knowledge of our industry history combined with the education we are getting about 21st century marketing tools and technologies, we are able to identify strengths and weaknesses in our current industry and foresee possible opportunities and threats to new ways of doing business. My marketing toolbox looks like something out of an old traditional wedding rhyme. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. We are looking at more than marketing tools and technologies, we are looking at marketing messages, vehicles, and platforms. We are now looking at more than what we are using, we’re looking at how we are using them. Another exciting change in marketing is the way we integrate outgoing and incoming messaging. It’s the successful hybrid application of inbound and outbound marketing that makes two-way communications and increased conversions possible in today’s business environment.
Before the invention of the internet, marketing and advertising were considered active marketing. In other words, marketing and sales professionals would be actively trying to reach the consumer to make sales. As websites became a standard form of advertising, we called it passive advertising because consumers could now seek out companies and products they were interested in. As websites became more sophisticated, technology developed ways for buyers to contact the sellers directly. Analytics made it possible for business owners to track customer journeys from contact to contract. We now call that inbound marketing.
Outbound Marketing: There are many ways to participate in what we call outbound marketing today. It’s the process of sending out messages to an intended audience. It could be in a print format, in some type of digital configuration, or in the face-to-face mode. We call it outgoing because it originates from the seller and is intended to reach a potential buyer. It could be a one-way directional message, which means we never know if it has reached our intended audience. When we think of advertising and promotional campaigns of the past, we think of billboards, radio, television, newspapers, and magazines ads. I remember learning 40 years ago that a company had to run an ad seven times before it reached its intended audience. And still there was no way to tell if it reached your audience, or if any sales resulted from the ad campaign. That type of one-way messaging has been radically changed, updated, and improved by modern marketing tools and technologies. Don’t get me wrong, outbound marketing is still used but in a much more modern way.
Modern Outboard Marketing: Outboard marketing campaigns have gradually refined themselves over time. The first step was to change one-way messaging into two-way communications. Outgoing messages can include a call-to-action or link in the message that readers could choose to take the next step in their purchasing journey. Direct contact using a hot link can set up a dialog between a buyer and seller and begins the communication process. A link to a marketing platform can capture contact leads and be read by analytics. Analytics measure contact behavior and pre-planned data. Analytics allow us to define contacts, engagements, and consumer data history.
Inbound Marketing: They used to say that if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door. Well, it doesn’t and it never has. But if you Build a better marketing platform the world will beat a path to your inbox. We are attracting more website visitors and automatically importing them into our Customer Relationship Management (CRM), using our Marketing Automation Software (MAS) platform. We are able to follow up with our new contacts and develop relationships with them. Because of inbound marketing we are converting inbound traffic to sales. The customer journey from contact to contract is the most straight and narrow pathway for successfully achieved planned outcomes that I have ever experienced in business. Welcome to the world of CMS, CRM, and MAS.
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