Inbound Marketing vs Traditional Outbound Marketing

Inbound marketing contrasts with traditional outbound marketing, where businesses push their messages at consumers. With techniques that include direct mail, telemarketing and trade shows, outbound marketing has become less effective over time as buyers have behaviorally and technologically (e.g. 'do-not-call' lists, spam filters, DVR) tuned these interruptive campaigns out.

Inbound consistently delivers a cost per lead dramatically lower than outbound marketing.  Survey participants were asked to report the distribution of their spending and their average cost per lead.  Respondents who spend more than 50% of their lead generation budget on inbound marketing channels report a significantly lower cost per sales lead than those who spend 50% or more of thier budgets on outbound marketing channels.

Blogs, social media and organic search maintained the top slots as least expensive marketing channels that produce below average cost per lead.  Blogs had the highest instance of being reported as "below average cost."  52% of companies who blog indicated leads from this channel were "below average cost."  Trade shows, direct mail, and telemarketing were most frequently ranked as more expensive.

By taking a more granular look at the different outbound channels, we notice that the largest drop has been in relation to telemarketing.   In 2009, telemarketing was 10% of the total marketing budget on average.  In 2012, it became half of what it used to be.  Marketers are allocating more of their lead generation budgets to social media and company blogs for 2012.

* The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing (HubSpot)