People love to be sold but hate to buy.

Oops.  I got that backwards.

People love to buy and hate to be sold.
It’s important not to get those backwards.

Remember the time you were watching Monday night football and your wife asked you if you wanted to go out to dinner with the neighbors next Monday and you said, “yeah sure.”

Then next Monday rolls around and you are getting ready for the biggest game of the year and your wife asks, “Why aren’t you getting ready for dinner?”

Your thinking…go out to dinner!  This is the biggest game of the year.

You weren’t listening when she asked you about dinner because you were so  into the game and she interrupted your activity and thought process. 

This is similar to interruptive outbound marketing.  You’ve interrupted someone’s thought process or activity with your advertisement. 

What if she had said, “Next week why don’t we fly to Green Bay
and watch the Monday night game in person?”

Then you would pay complete attention.  Her communication relates to what you are already doing.  However, as much as you would love to go, you have to work that morning and won’t be able to get to the game in time.  You only have time to go home and watch it on television.

This is similar to target marketing but still interruptive.

Now what if you wanted to go to the Monday night game so you mentioned it to your wife and she pulls two tickets out of her pocket and says, “Let’s go to the game.”

That is similar to inbound marketing.

The difference.

Inbound– Make it easy to “get found” by customers wanting to buy what you have.  Put yourself in front of customers that are actively looking for your product or service.

Outbound– Push your advertisements and let them compete with 2,000 other ads that humans are exposed to daily. Humans that have made it clear they don’t want to be interrupted and they use TIVO, Satellite Radio, Do-Not-Call Lists, Do-Not-Mail Lists, SPAM filters, etc.

More examples:

Someone is reading the zip code magazine about cooking for the holidays and there is your ad off to the side with your puppy store.

Someone is reading the community magazine about the dog park and there is an ad for your puppy store.  The only problem is this person is allergic to dogs and can’t have one.

Someone goes to the internet and types in, “dogs that don’t irritate human allergies”.  This person finds a blog post you wrote about short haired dogs that don’t irritate allergies.  You just happen to sell these dogs at your store.

Considering that inbound methods also lead to a higher form of database and permission marketing(maybe the best of all)…

What would you rather do?