Interruption marketing or outbound marketing is promoting a product through continued advertising, promotions, public relations and sales. It's the opposite of
permission marketing
Permission marketing is a type of advertising in which the people who are supposed to see the ads can choose whether or not to get them. This marketing type is becoming quite popular in digital marketing these days. Seth Godin first introduced t ...
. It is considered to be an annoying version of the traditional way of doing marketing whereby companies focus on finding customers through
advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
. (Confusingly, the ambiguous term outbound marketing is sometimes used as a label for interruption marketing. This gives rise to an ambiguity because in the past the term had a different meaning, namely that information about finished product capability was flowing out to prospective customers who have a need for it i.e. benign
marketing communication and
product marketing
Product marketing is sub-field of marketing that is responsible for crafting messaging, go-to-market flow, and promotion of a product. Product marketing managers can also be involved in defining and sizing target markets along with other business ...
.)
Types of interruption marketing
Interruption marketing can be via various techniques,
[Mirna Bard]
NuReachGlobal
21/03/09 such as:
*
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
: promoting a good or service on the news feed or elsewhere on their platform
*
Telemarketing
Telemarketing (sometimes known as inside sales, or telesales in the UK and Ireland) is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequen ...
: act of promoting a good or service over the telephone
*Print media advertising: promote a product via newspapers or magazines
*
Cold calling
Cold calling is the solicitation of business from potential customers who have had no prior contact with the salesperson conducting the call. It is an attempt to convince potential customers to purchase either the salesperson's product or servic ...
: the solicitation of business from potential customers who have had no prior contact with the salesperson conducting the call
*
Direct mail
Advertising mail, also known as direct mail (by its senders), junk mail (by its recipients), mailshot or admail (North America), letterbox drop or letterboxing (Australia) is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. The d ...
: promotional circulars sent directly via mail
*
E-mail spam
Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming).
The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoida ...
: electronic mails sent to large mailing lists
*TV/radio advertisements: promote a product via television and radio
Usefulness of interruption marketing
The usefulness of interruption marketing to a business depends on what the company wishes to achieve. If the company has sufficient funds to invest in an advertising campaign and that the management wishes to have quick results, then interruption marketing may be most appropriate. Most businesses depend on interruption marketing to bring in their profits. Site Pro News has stated that the main difference between permission and interruption marketing is that interruption marketing gives quick results and allows for a more scientific way to measure sales.
[Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing]
Note that the article uses the ambiguous terms inbound and outbound marketing.
Problems encountered with interruption marketing
With outbound marketing, marketers are often expected to find different ways to cope with the rejections from potential customers. Also, advertisements have expiry dates and once the expiry dates have been reached, the campaign will have to be started again. Thus, the return on investment of advertisement campaigns is rather low most of the time. Outbound marketing is often considered to be a poorly targeted technique as it cannot be personalised to specific customers. Moreover, advertisements often interrupt customers and as such, they may be wrongly considered by potential consumers.
Permission and interruption marketing
To the opposite of interruption marketing,
permission marketing
Permission marketing is a type of advertising in which the people who are supposed to see the ads can choose whether or not to get them. This marketing type is becoming quite popular in digital marketing these days. Seth Godin first introduced t ...
is more about getting found by customers. The main components of permission marketing include
content
Content or contents may refer to:
Media
* Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers
** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...
,
search engine optimisation
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "organic" results) rather than direc ...
and
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
. With permission marketing, the company is encouraged to build up a long term relationship with customers which can be beneficial in the long run. Also inbound marketing allows for a more targeted traffic on websites which increases the conversion rates.
In fact, with technology, permission marketing is often considered to be more effective and less costly.
As per Brian Halligan, CEO and Founder of
HubSpot
HubSpot is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.
Its products and services aim to provide tools for customer ...
, interruption marketing techniques are becoming less effective, stating:
Your average human today is inundated with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day and is figuring out more and more creative ways to block them out, including caller ID
Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call i ...
, spam filtering, TiVo
TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...
, and Sirius satellite radio
Sirius Satellite Radio was a satellite radio (SDARS) and online radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Holdings.
Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially lau ...
. Second, the cost of coordination around learning about something new or shopping for something new using the internet (search engines, blogs, and social media sites) is now much lower than going to a seminar at the Marriott or flying to a trade show
A trade fair, also known as trade show, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and ...
in Las Vegas.
However, most people are more accustomed to interruption marketing and this often results in companies spending more of their marketing budgets on outbound marketing.
[Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing]
/ref> To be able to gain additional advantages, some companies are combining both inbound and outbound marketing and making use of multiple channels to reach a larger audience.
See also
Differences between interruption and permission marketing
Methods of interruption marketing
(in German)
Criticism
References
{{Reflist
Promotion and marketing communications