Paid Media Insights: Inbound vs. Outbound Strategies

Join Anthony Karls and James Patterson on Revenue Roadmap as they dive into inbound vs outbound paid media, their roles in the five stages of awareness, and their impacts on marketing. Learn how to blend these strategies effectively for mature markets and emerging industries, plus tips on measuring success.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:06 Meet the Experts: Anthony and James

00:39 Fantasy Football Fun

01:17 Staying on Top: Habits and Routines

02:51 Inbound vs Outbound Paid Media

03:04 Inbound Media: Strategies and Examples

05:58 Outbound Media: Strategies and Examples

08:10 Timing and Allocation: Inbound vs Outbound

11:26 Measuring Success: Metrics and Reporting

14:18 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up

#DigitalMarketing #Sales #BusinessGrowth

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Transcript

Anthony Karls: 0:00

All right. Welcome. Welcome everybody. This is revenue roadmap, where we talk about driving businesses. I'm Anthony Carl's president of rocket clicks today. I'm with Mr. James Patterson. Again, you guys are getting 16 and probably

James Patterson: 0:15

Probably.

Anthony Karls: 0:17

he's going to drop some. paid media bombs on you. So we'll see how this see how this goes. We're gonna talk about inbound versus outbound paid media. What's the difference? I think about this, how do they fit the five stages of awareness, all of that kind of stuff. Before we do that, James, I got a question for you.

James Patterson: 0:34

Okay.

Anthony Karls: 0:35

For you. Hey, this is gonna this one's probably gonna hurt. Did you win in fantasy football this weekend?

James Patterson: 0:42

Wow. That's a real setup because, yeah, so for all our listeners here, Tony's in the same league as me, so he, he knows quite well where the standings are at. Yes, I, you know, week one can be tough, right? You know, I came out of the draft feeling good, but I didn't quite put all the right pieces together. I

Anthony Karls: 1:03

of

James Patterson: 1:03

30 points on the bench, so let's be clear.

Anthony Karls: 1:05

talk from James. That's what I got. Better watch out. I think he said you want to double the pot before we started, but that's okay. All right, real question I don't want to be that helpful. What habits or routines do you follow to stay on top of your game? Nice,

James Patterson: 1:23

Yeah, um, big part of my routine change really came around, uh, the, the COVID timeline. So, like, you know, obviously I messed up a lot of people's what they were doing previously decided I wanted to do a better job of, like, staying in shape and kind of keeping my mind right through those at, through those avenues. Um, so, you know, the gyms are closed and stuff like that. I started running more before work. Once all that kind of flipped around, you're able to go back to the gym and everything. Um, I think it was, you know, kind of, you know, colder weather and stuff like that. So it was nice to still be able to get a run in, but obviously, you know, outside not so much an opportunity here living in Wisconsin. Um, over time it evolves into kind of getting into lifting and stuff like that. So now it's really a big part of my routine. Um, I think it's really helped a lot, just like mental clarity. Um, both, you know, lifting and doing some cardio and stuff like that can be really good just to kind of reflect, get reset for the day and, you know, kind of bring all my energy ready to go, um, right away when we're, when we're starting the day at work. So, um, that's been a big routine for me that way. And, and recently I've been trying to do more reflection. Um, so at the end of the day, kind of unwinding and stuff before bed, you know, thinking about successes, thinking about opportunities, things like that. So, um, I would attribute those kind of to. Elements as a, you know, key, key things in my routine that are helping me stay strong.

Anthony Karls: 2:42

awesome, a little, uh, physical, mental health, mental health, uh, Opportunities. Those are good. All right. All right, sir. So inbound and outbound paid media. So let's, first off, what, what are, what is inbound and what is outbound paid media? What's the difference?

James Patterson: 3:04

Yep. So inbound media, think about it this way. It's people coming out and actually seeking out you. So a lot of times when we talk about platforms for inbound, we're talking really specifically around search. So people are actively searching for your product or your company or, or, you know, whatever kind of related to that would be, so they're coming to towards you inwards, um, outwards is the exact opposite. So people that. You know, generally may not be aware of your product or service or company, so coming out and kind of disrupting their flow online through different channels like social programmatic, things like that. So that's really the key differences there.

Anthony Karls: 3:36

Nice. So when, where, where does, where does inbound typically fall in the five stages of awareness? Generally it's not always the rule. Um, and out. And what about outbound?

James Patterson: 3:47

Yeah. So, I mean, if you have a really mature, um, you know, search strategy, you might be touching on, you know, basically all of the different areas, but primarily most people are using search on the lowest funnel. So it's going to be most aware. Product aware, potentially solution aware, but generally it's going to be the lowest there. So oftentimes most aware, so people that are, you know, by intent, they want to make a purchase for your product or your company right then and there kind of a thing.

Anthony Karls: 4:11

Yeah. So what are, what are some examples of that? Like what are some campaigns we run and what are some examples of those?

James Patterson: 4:16

Yep. So here on the B2C local team, we follow our first principles, which is basically a kind of a guideline that all of us on the, um, different accounts look at paid strategy. So one of the things we do is segment out by intent. Um, so one of the things that we like to do is do a core campaigns, which are kind of the most general kind of version. So like, what are the most like kind of general terms related to your business or service? So if it's a lawyer, you know, think divorce lawyer, right? So simply just that term, and then we'll kind of go lower into the funnel through different variations there. So we'll usually have a by core variation. So then, you know, divorce lawyer near me. And then we'll have geo variations of that. So kind of adding another layer onto that. So divorce lawyer, maybe Green Bay, Wisconsin, and then ultimately most of where, right, you know, um, you know, divorce lawyer near me. Green Bay, Wisconsin. So putting that by core and geo all in one place. So that's kind of the way that we look at search strategy to really dive into people that, you know, either kind of fall within solution product or most aware buckets.

Anthony Karls: 5:14

Yeah. And if it were to go up on search, how would that start looking?

James Patterson: 5:18

Yep. So then that's going more in the informational side of things. So like, um, again, the core bucket is kind of your hybrid of that, right? Like you're going to not really going to have people that are super aware, but they are looking for obviously your service, uh, specifically. It's like unaware, maybe somebody that's looking for a specific problem. So like we, you know, I think we, in our last podcast, we talked about stretching. So like maybe a play is kind of like a problem aware type element on search would be like, you know, ways to improve my back pain, right? Getting a, a stretch ad for that could be a really good opportunity to ultimately bring somebody down. Um, In combination with your other campaigns to get them, you know, aware of your service business and then ultimately convert with you.

Anthony Karls: 5:58

Yeah. So, uh, alternatively outbound. So where, where do they, where do they typically lie? And like, what are some examples of that?

James Patterson: 6:06

Yeah, so a lot of times outbound I would say like the kind of introductory Um, you know channel for for most folks is going to be generally social So it's going to be you know, your combination of meta tick tock, you know Possibly snapchat depending on your audience things like that x uh linkedin Obviously if you depending on again, you're kind of your industry Um Um, usually social channels is a good starting place. I'd say with, you know, probably 80 percent of clients we work with, if they're on social, um, they're, they're generally on meta or Tik TOK.

Anthony Karls: 6:36

Nice.

James Patterson: 6:37

yep. And I was just going to add some, some other examples then outside of social for outbound again, would be a programmatic. So that's going to be display CTV, OTT. Um, so again, think of really disruptive things. So CTV, OTT, somebody who's watching, you know, on demand food network or something, you know, right. They're catching up on a show they like and watching old seasons. I was kind of just disrupting that, um, experience by getting one of our ads on there and placed, or we can bring it back to your fantasy football example. Tony, if you're on ESPN doing some frantic waiver wire research, you're clicking the ad to hear what the experts have to say for the best, uh, waiver wire, uh, pickups, that little ad that shows before the actual video. It's a pre roll ad. You can get placements there too. Again, disrupting, you know, this is kind of online experience to get in front of them.

Anthony Karls: 7:22

Yeah. On the OTT side, those are, uh, those are typically the, like I have a Samsung TV. There, I think, I don't know how many channels there are. I think it's like 5, 000. It feels like it anyway. Uh, right now, right now where we keep bouncing back, back and forth between our is lucky dog, which my girls love. Uh, and, uh, actually Joe Rogan's a really old show. Uh, uh, Fear factor. I've recently found that and there's been fear factor 24 7 on that channel. But yeah, there's ads there's ads in between where there's commercials and it's decent space to buy stuff where there's where there is audience and It's usually really cheap. So, and it's typically an engaged audience.

James Patterson: 8:07

Yep, absolutely.

Anthony Karls: 8:10

So what else between, what else is good to consider here, inbound versus outbound in terms of timing? When do we want to do each? Like, how do we think about it in relation to like a product that's pretty well known or service that's pretty well known versus a service that is less well known or newer? So how would we, how would we process, like, should we be doing inbound or outbound? How should we break this up?

James Patterson: 8:35

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, we here on the B2C local team, we do have a roadmap that we follow. So, most businesses are going to generally start with paid search. I would say the one element where this maybe sometimes could be flexed is an industry or service that's kind of newer to the sphere. So, um, I know we've talked a lot about the stretch. Client that we have. Um, I would say that absolutely falls within there is that a lot of people are at this point, unaware that these services exist, what problems I solve. And, you know, ultimately what brands exist in the space and things like that. So that could be your kind of rare, um, instance where it might actually make sense to be a little bit higher in, um, the outbound outbound methods versus more inbound. You're still always going to want to have, you know, the basics for the most part, if you can, like a brand campaign to capture people that are getting educated through your outbound tactics. Um, but you know, in terms of a split, you may, in those instances, be a little bit heavier outbound because it's, you know, it's ultimately a much better vessel in terms of educating and obviously driving awareness to your audiences. So, um, it's a lot more difficult in a search ad to explain a lot of stuff, right? There's 30 characters in the headline, 9 characters in this, you know, thing. Most people are scrolling through there as fast as they absolutely can. Um, so it's, it's a lot more difficult to educate. Obviously, you have the landing page for that. That's why outbound tactics, especially for those newer industries, or if you're kind of disrupting, you know, the, the category you plan, um, it can be more effective to really have your audience understand, you know, what makes you different, which problems you solve and things like that. So that's kind of the example where outbound would be the leader, perhaps in your allocation. Otherwise a more, um, you know, mature kind of established market markets or industries, you know, like a, a, a family lawyer type client, um, generally you're going to have some split of, um, you know, oftentimes the majority of your, um, spend going more towards inbound, just knowing that there's so much search volume already established for your service, you know, every day people in, in, in mass, you know, amount of volume are searching for things like divorce lawyer near me and things like that, you know, it's a little bit different for. A stretch business. Like I said, where people are saying, you know, stretch company near me, right? It's a lot different in terms of search volume that exists. Um, yeah, it's not to say you don't want to obviously have a healthy split. You absolutely, absolutely do. Um, that's where a lot of times we'll flex outbound and inbound in terms of our audiences, right? So outbound. We may look at that for in the stretch example, being more prospecting. So again, informing people about your solution product and business, whereas in a more mature market or, or a business in their marketing strategy, we'll look at some of that outbound stuff is also a vehicle for reengaging audiences that have already engaged with your brand, or maybe you already clicked on a search ad and things like that, as well as obviously. Like the stretch example, also prospecting and kind of letting people know who you're about in your markets.

Anthony Karls: 11:25

Nice. So how do, let's come back to kind of one of the topics that we keep coming back to is measurement. So how do we measure this? How do we think about this? What's the, what's the way that we, we execute that here so that we know if what we're doing is working, actually driving more revenue, more revenue and improving profits. How do we do that?

James Patterson: 11:44

Yep. So, you know, just like any other ad platform, you will get some of the vanity metrics as we like to call them, right? You do want some of the directional stuff to tell you things are working. So good things to look at that from a creative perspective could be like click through rate, people actually engaging with the ads, things like that. In terms of measuring it as a successful channel though, we want to always bring it back to the business metrics. So we talk a lot about the waterfall reporting. Why this is so critical to evaluate your kind of holistic marketing strategy. Cause a lot of times if you're looking at these as individual silos, let's say like our specifically our OTT campaign, um, that's on Hulu, right? You're probably going to end up turning that off. I'm just going to tell you, if you look at vanity metrics, um, if you have a robust, uh, you know, waterfall reporting system where you can really look at this stuff, what you can do is look at time periods when you have that active, are you seeing improvements in some of the things that you would expect? So that could be. You know, more leads coming in through different channels, right? It's a commercial people are not clicking anything, right? They're watching it We're disrupting their space You know ultimately it's harder to draw direct attribution to those channels But what is likely happening if you have a good targeting and creative strategy there Is that you're having users now learn more about you and they're going to come in either direct or organic Or potentially through other means, you know, through your other ads, uh, platforms to have out there. So it's really critical. A lot of times, you know, working with our lawyer, lawyer clients will, um, you know, kind of look at different time periods when we have an on and off, and that'll be our way to determine like, is this really helping or not? And then use those vanity metrics to make optimizations and improvements where we can.

Anthony Karls: 13:14

Yeah, another thing that we'll typically look at is what's the, what are the engagement metrics of those other channels and how have those improved because if we're doing a good job with messaging and offer, we should be seeing higher levels of engagement as well seeing higher, higher, higher levels of, um, Like our intake, intake rates from a qualification perspective, our close rates should go up, like all of the metrics in the waterfall should actually get healthier. But that's not actually going to be directly attributed to anything you're doing internally. It's more, they're more pre sold because they're more aware of you. They've had more time to consider, get used to your brand. So now you're seeing this happen, come through your waterfall. Um, then you shut it off and you're like, Oh, my team isn't closing as well anymore, or why is my call center not doing so well on setting appointments or whatever, you know, go back up that waterfall and you might find like, Oh, there's a lot of things are suffering here. And we did this thing. That's that, those are kind of the things that we will typically look at.

James Patterson: 14:15

Yep. Absolutely.

Anthony Karls: 14:17

Awesome. Any closing thoughts before we jump off a high level? What I heard you say is good, healthy mix, inbound versus outbound. A lot of it's going to be dictated by, um, how mature your market is and where you are in your maturity of your marketing overall. Uh, anything else to think about before we pull a wrap up here?

James Patterson: 14:39

I think you nailed it. You know, what's best for both for most businesses. It's going to be a mix of everything. Um, you know, depending on how far along you are in your marketing strategy, you know, I think a lot of the mistakes we see, especially in new clients coming over is like a lot of times they'll be like, you know, Oh, you know, we tried paid search once didn't work for us. So now we're just running this Facebook. You know website traffic campaign and that's our our main way of driving leads to our business and a lot of times it's like Yeah, that could be an effective way to to drive leads, but it's likely not the most effective You know, method in your mix. Uh, there's probably, especially if you fall into one of these more mature markets, um, a lot of opportunity in search or potentially in these other outbound, um, tactics to drive more awareness to both your solution and business. So, um, I would say if you're, you know, a small business owner, you know, kind of thinking through your marketing program, I would say. The way to look at it is we'll probably have opportunities across the board. We don't want to be siloed in, in, um, you know, one specific channel, but certainly there is, you know, you know, order and operation to, to make sure you're getting the most out of all of it.

Anthony Karls: 15:48

Awesome. Appreciate it, James. Next time we, next time we get to see James, we are going to be talking on, this is one thing I work with a lot of businesses on, because typically when we get involved with a business, we see one offer and that's not a great place to be. So we're going to talk about that when we come, when we come back next time. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, James. Talk to you later.

James Patterson: 16:08

Looking forward to it.