Inbound vs. Outbound: detailed customer survey of marketing method

Translator's Note: This article is from Moz. inbound/outbound marketing， There is no good unified translation method in China. Here we quote the analysis of Baidu Encyclopedia, "Inbound Marketing, also known as inbound marketing Marketing It is a marketing strategy that allows customers to find their own home. It is a 'relationship marketing' or 'licensing marketing'. Marketers use their own strength to win customers' favor, rather than traditional advertising methods to attract customers (outbound marketing). "Inbound/outbound will be directly reserved as a term.

Translator: Tiandi Hui Zhuhai Branch Source: Yeyan

It is said that consumers have been bombarded by 5000 advertisements every day for a long time. But if consumers don't want to be bothered by these ads, they can also completely isolate them. You can use the keyword "How to block ads" on Google, and you will get 832 million returned results.

More and more consumers block advertisements, which makes marketing management More and more people and advertisers have headaches. Recently, Adobe found that the number of people who block advertisements has reached 198 million, which caused quite a stir. Nowadays, advertising blocking mainly happens on desktop computers, but soon various mobile devices will converge. For example, iOS9, which will be released by Apple, will add the function of advertising blocking in its Safari browser. So we expect that a large number of netizens will block advertisements on their mobile devices.

A recent survey by Fractl&Moz found that 56% of the respondents used the advertising screening function in different forms.

It is obvious that people are more and more resistant to these low value and high noise disruptive marketing methods. Are these marketing strategies and channels still marketing management What about the effective part of? More importantly, does it mean that consumers prefer inbound marketing?

For this reason, Fractl and Moz once again jointly conducted relevant exclusive research to verify the function and efficiency of various marketing strategies.

The whole research will be divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the function of marketing strategies. We will share the research results of various traditional and digital marketing and advertising channels in attracting users' attention, driving users to take action and influencing consumers' purchase decisions; In the second part, we will focus on the efficiency of these different media, and see how different effects will be achieved by marketing through different channels with an investment of 100000 dollars.

Part I: Functions – What are the available options

Survey overview

Before going deep into the detailed and comprehensive research results, we need to take a general look at the results of our research:

Strategies that are most likely to have a positive impact on users' purchase decisions : customer reviews, search results, online articles, traditional advertisements, direct mail
Strategies that are most likely to have a negative impact on users' purchase decisions : Mobile app ads, display ads, paid search, email marketing
The most effective strategy to attract business : Direct mail, content marketing, display of search results
The most popular way of user self-education (discovery) : Search, view the company's website, and other customers' comments
Digital ads that are most easily noticed by users : display ads, media ads, mobile app ads
The best outbound channel to attract users' attention : Traditional advertising, email marketing, social media advertising

It should be noted here that the results of our survey do not include all marketing models. These results are more about providing new insights into ways that may not have been considered effective before. For example, you may not believe that direct mail is still so destructive as we are. In addition, our findings may enable you to enhance the existing current marketing mix, or propose new strategies for users' consumer behavior, especially in online user discovery.

1. It is noted that there are many online advertisers, but more than half of the respondents do not like this/or even block these advertisements

Most respondents have noticed various online advertisements. Three quarters of them have noticed the existence of these advertisements in the last month, and most of them have also noticed the various advertising methods we asked about.

More than half (53.8%) of the respondents did not click any of these advertisements within a week

Nearly a quarter (24.4%) of people click on social media ads within a week, which is more than any other online advertising.
Surprisingly, sponsor links ranked second in the number of clicks, reaching about 18%.
16% of the respondents will click on display ads, which means that most of the respondents are likely to have enabled the advertising screening function.
Less than 10% of people will click pay per click advertising

2. In outbound marketing and payment channels, traditional advertising, email marketing, and social media advertising are the best ways to attract users

In comparison, the following advertising methods have no special effect on attracting users' attention:

Paid advertising is only below 10% in attracting attention
16.5% of respondents think that application advertising attracts them
Sponsor story ads attracted about 18% of respondents' attention

3. More than 88% of respondents get more information about a company through online search, and 98% of them have used this method in a week

Online search is ubiquitous in our daily life, so it is not surprising that 88% of respondents use this method to understand a company. The other 85% will visit the company website, and 81.9% will check the feedback of other users.

Other independent education methods are much less than search. 27.5% of more people will follow a company's social media account to get more information, and 10.7% will download the corresponding materials on the official website to get more information.

Understanding the respondents' online behavior in a week will give us a deeper understanding of the frequency of their online information retrieval, so that the company can carry out targeted marketing.

In the last week, almost all respondents (93.2%) will search for information about a product or company:

89% read an online soft message
More than half of the people downloaded materials from the company's website and left their e-mail addresses to the corresponding companies
More than a quarter (28.5%) of people follow a company on social media

It should be noted that the number of people who download materials is the same as the number who leave an e-mail address. It is estimated that the reason is that these company websites need to leave an e-mail address for relevant downloading.

4. For most respondents, other users' comments, online searches, and online articles will have a positive impact on their purchase decisions

About 85% of people are positively affected by user comments 。 45% of them are very likely to buy because they see the comments of other customers, and the other 40% are relatively low.
More than three quarters (77%) of people have been positively affected by online search 。 25.7% of them are very likely to purchase through online search, while the other 51.3% are relatively low.
More than half (56.7%) were positively affected by online articles 。 9.3% of people are very likely to buy because of the influence of online articles, while the other 47.4% are relatively low.
Interesting things, Email marketing has the biggest negative impact on people's purchase decisions 。 Of the 44%, 21.4% are very unlikely to buy products promoted in e-mail marketing, and the remaining 22.9% claim that they are also unlikely to buy products for this reason.
Respondents Tend to be neutral about a company's social media articles and press conferences 42.8% and 48.6% of the people will not affect their purchase decisions because of these.

5. In the outbound marketing strategy, traditional advertising has the most positive impact on consumers' purchase decisions, followed by direct mail

Traditional advertising has a positive impact on the purchase decision of about two fifths (42%) of people 。 Among them, 6.2% were greatly affected, while the other 35.8% were slightly affected.
Direct mail has a positive impact on the purchase decision of just over 30% of people 。 Among them, 4.2% received a relatively large positive impact, while the other 27.7% was relatively small.

However, compared with other online search, user reviews, and online articles, the traditional advertising and outbound, which have a positive impact on users' purchase decisions, are a little worthless:

The positive impact of user reviews on users' purchase decisions is twice that of traditional advertising
The positive impact of online articles on users' purchase decisions is 56 percent higher than that of direct mail
The positive impression of the information obtained through online search on users' purchase decision is 1.8 times that of traditional advertising.

On the other hand, some advertising methods will have a negative impact on users' purchase decisions. Compared with other methods, mobile app ads, display ads and pay per click ads have the largest negative impact.

More than half (54.3%) believe that mobile app advertising will bring negative impacts 。 31.4% think it will have a serious impact, while 22.9% think it will have a certain impact.
Nearly half (48.1%) think it is unlikely to buy the products on display advertisements 。 25.7% think it is very possible, 22.4% think it is possible.
Paid clicks will have a negative impact on less than 49.4% of people 。 25.3% think it is very likely that they will not purchase for this reason, and 24.1% think it is certain that they will not purchase for this reason.

6. Direct mail, online content, and search are the most effective ways to attract users

Direct mail and content marketing are among the best, and more than half of the respondents voted that these are smart ways to attract them. Nearly half (48.3%) of the people think that timely appearance of the results they want in the search results can help them make a good purchase.

In addition:

More than one third of respondents believe that traditional advertising (37.6%) and e-mail marketing (34.6%) are very effective ways to capture their hearts
More than a quarter of respondents believe that social media articles (27.4%) and social media advertisements (24.8%) are smart ways to make them buy.
Only 6.6% of respondents believe that mobile app advertising is an effective strategy for them to purchase

Although our survey results show that we agree with the functions of inbound marketing (search, content) and third-party recommendation (user evaluation), our respondents also found that several outbound marketing strategies are effective, especially traditional advertisements that attract users' attention, and direct mail that affects users' purchase intention. But the function is only part of the whole market equation

Part II: Efficiency

In addition to the function, the cost required to obtain the corresponding effect - that is, efficiency, is also a factor that you need to seriously consider in your marketing mix.

Cost comparison of various marketing channels

The cost of inbound marketing is an advantage, while the cost of TV and print media is a disadvantage. To better understand the efficiency of different channels, let's first look at the cost of an advertising campaign that increases users' perception of the product.

CPM (cost per mile) is a common way for various advertising media to measure the cost of every thousand presentations. The calculation method is as follows:

CPM=(advertising investment x 1000)/times of presentation

Because there are many factors that affect the CPM ratio of an advertising media, the following chart is just for providing corresponding explanatory information. However, these data really tell us in the form of price that in order to convey information to a certain number of users, we need to spend huge differences in the cost of different advertising and marketing channels.

Direct mail cost

You may have noticed that direct mail is not listed in the figure above. Because the CPM of the cheapest direct mail goes to $583, it is difficult to place the option of direct mail in the above figure (the highest one shown in the bar above is only $33.85).

Cost of paid search (bidding ranking)

Although paid search will also use CPM for billing, CPC (pay per click) is more widely used, so here we will use CPC instead of CPM as the benchmark for paid search billing.

The cost of paid search will vary greatly depending on vertical search, keywords, and goals. For example, some keywords may only cost a few pocket money to search, while some competitive keywords require you to pay $5 per click. The figure below shows the average CPC data sorted out by 700000 keywords in various vertical fields in 2014.

According to the above data, the lowest CPC is US $0.38 and the highest is US $4.41. So the compromise payment cost is about $2.40, while the average cost of all CPC data in the figure above is $1.70.

What CPC vs. CPM should pay attention to: both are typical billing methods for paid search, display ads, and social media ads. What kind of charging mode should you choose? It should be based on the purpose and budget of your advertising activities. When promoting brand awareness, CPM is often chosen. If the purpose is to obtain traffic and conversion rate, CPC will be a better choice.

How to operate the budget of 10000 dollars

Based on the above costs, let's see what you can do with a budget of 10000 dollars.

Extremely high CPM: direct mail

With a CPM of $583, a budget of $10000 allows you to send direct mail in the size of ordinary letters to 17152 families. According to the data of the American Direct Mail Association, the average return on investment of direct mail is 12-14%, so the high fees you paid in the early stage may be worth it.

High CPM: local prime time TV advertising

Local prime time TV advertising charges the highest price in the middle CPM, reaching $33.85 (local TV advertising means that your advertising activities are only broadcast in the local market, rather than nationwide), so under the budget of $10000, you can reach 300000 local market viewers. That doesn't sound bad – but remember, these ads only play for 30 seconds at a time, and these expenses only refer to the cost of playing ads. In addition, there are many other advertising production costs to consider, including script writing, editing, commentary, actors, and so on.

CPM: Magazine

The CPM of the magazine is about the middle price. With an average CPM of $14, a budget of $10000 will allow you to cover 715000 readers through the magazine. The cost will vary according to the size of the advertisement, whether it is color or black and white, the position of the advertisement page, and the position within the advertisement page. At the same time, advertising creation costs such as writing and design should also be considered.

Low CPM: Facebook ads

Because of the low price CPM of $1.54, Facebook advertising can be said to be the most budget friendly advertising method. With a budget of $10000, you can cover 6.5 million people. This budget allows you to cover a large number of users at one time, and also allows you to target the same part of users through multiple advertisements for a long time. It should be noted that the CPM and CPC of Facebook ads will increase with the granularity of your target users.

CPC: Paid search

With a budget of $10000 and a CPC of $2.40, you can get 4167 clicks. The same budget will get 5882 clicks when the CPC is $1.70. If the click through rate is 5%, 83330 people will see ads with a CPC of $2.40 and 117640 people will see ads with a CPC of $1.70.

Content Marketing CPM

Because there is no industry standard billing unit to measure user impression and cost per click, the cost estimation method of content marketing becomes very difficult. Fortunately, we recently have an example of content marketing vs. TV advertising costs.

Content marketing can reach the same audience rating as TV advertising – but only part of the cost of TV advertising is needed. Recently, one of our customers put advertisements in BuzzFeed and received more than 3.2 million readers within a few days after the article was published.

According to the above analysis, if you broadcast a 30 second advertisement in the prime time of the local radio station, in order to achieve the same effect, you need to pay about 75000 dollars to cover users of the same size.

In addition, publishing content to different platforms and social sharing will lead to more reading rates, which may require you to invest more than 200000 dollars in TV advertising, not to mention more value brought by increasing reading through SEO.

With 10000 dollars invested in content creation and promotion, the CPM required to obtain 3.2 million readings is 3.13 dollars (please refer to the CPM calculation formula above).

As can be seen from the above figure, Facebook ads can cover more users in a budget of $10000. If this budget is put on highly scalable content marketing, it can not only give you huge exposure, but also bring other benefits. For example, the content of the article can exist on the Internet for a long time (unlike that of Facebook when the advertising time is up), the article can be published to multiple platforms, and the article will also be ranked higher because of the increase in reading, so as to obtain more reading.

Key Summary

Choosing the right marketing mix depends not only on how efficient a channel and strategy are for the KPI you want to achieve, but also on your budget. The balance between function and efficiency is crucial for creating a long-term and sustainable market strategy.

In general, the following are the key points we found:

User attention ：

In terms of attracting users' attention, traditional advertising is more efficient than digital advertising. Email marketing and social media advertising ranked second and third respectively.
Most respondents will use search engines and/or read online content within a week, so we can effectively use this to provide corresponding information for our target users in advance
In order to learn more about a company, most respondents will search, browse the company's official website, or view user comments
Display ads are the easiest for users to notice, but the hardest to impress users.

User conversion rate ：

More than half of the people will download content on the official website or provide personal email information to the company within one week, which may be due to the need to provide email information to download
Customer reviews, searches, and online articles have a positive impact on users' purchase decisions.
In the outbound marketing strategy, traditional advertising and direct mail have the most positive impact on consumers' purchase decisions
Respondents voted that direct mail is the most effective way to attract them to buy
At the same time, respondents also believe that free content or timely display of search results are some very effective ways to reach a deal.

cost ：

According to our survey results, content marketing and social media advertising such as Facebook are the most budget friendly ways to cover the majority of users.