Allbound Marketing: Study Shows Inbound & Outbound Marketing Merging

A joint study between Act-On Software and Demand Metric has shown that 84% of marketers are moving away from inbound marketing.

Instead, what we're seeing is a merge between inbound and outbound marketing – forming something that Act-On and Demand Metric are calling ‘Allbound Marketing'.

The Emergence of Allbound Marketing?

According to Act-On and Demand Metric, marketing across the buyer's journey now requires an “Allbound” strategy to be effective.

Their finding indicate that a campaign should be tailored to a persona or account, and needs to go beyond attracting a visitor to the site. Marketers must engage buyers to help them come to an educated decision.

A balanced approach puts the right content in front of the right person at precisely the right time. Survey respondents underscored the value of an “Allbound” marketing strategy, with 84 percent agreeing that it’s the combination of inbound and outbound that drives their business.

Their study also debunked the notion that marketers perceive inbound marketing as more valuable than outbound.

In fact, most surveyed marketers assigned near-equal numerical values to each approach. On a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 = very unimportant and 10 = very important, they gave outbound a score of 7.3 and inbound 7.4.

The study also covers:

• Which tactics are driving business, leads, and revenue
• Average annual percentages of inbound and outbound spend
• Top inbound and outbound marketing tactics
• Where marketers plan to invest their marketing spend in the near future
• Benchmarks so you can compare approaches

Inbound for Buzz, Outbound for Results

Act-On Software's CMO, Kevin Bobowski, also chimed in with some insights:

“While Inbound Marketing generates buzz, combining Inbound and Outbound Marketing produce real business results.

And as more marketers adopt Account-Based Marketing and the outbound tactics that support it, it will be time to rethink the role of Inbound Marketing.”

It’s time to rethink Inbound Marketing and understand that a balanced approach to marketing drives the business.”

Get your hands on the study here.