Why Outbound Marketing is a Problem for Data Centers

Does your data center still use outbound marketing to attract new clients? 

Outbound marketing refers to the traditional marketing model that focuses on businesses seeking clients through interruptive tactics.

Outbound marketing relies on disruptive tactics such as cold calling, mass emailing, radio and TV commercials, and print advertising (magazines, newspapers, etc.) -- and it was once a successful way of attracting prospects.

 Before the recent boom in technology, consumers relied on businesses to provide information about their products, educate them on unfamiliar content, and trusted them to provide accurate information about their competitors.

Thanks to Google, searches on mobile devices, and social networking, the buying model has completely flipped, leaving consumers in charge of their own buyer’s journey.

Those who solely practice outbound tactics for data centers risk being left behind due to changes in buyer behavior and flawed methods. 

Intrusive Tactics

“The problem with traditional marketing is it tends to revolve around annoying, harassing, and interrupting people,” explains Joshua Feinberg, VP and Co-Founder of SP Home Run, “It is so much more effective to attract people in the right context, so you’re not begging for 15 minutes of their time.”

People are tired of being interrupted, and buying trends reflect this.

Think of all the services whose campaigns boast their lack of disruption. Services like TiVo, Caller ID, Netflix, Sirius XM, and Spotify Premium all exist to cater to the same want: wanting to be left alone.

With the buying model being flipped upside, consumers are taking back full control, blocking out unwarranted approaches, and getting what they want, when they want it, and on their own terms.

“If you really want to do outbound sales, then you’ll need to go back to 2005,” says Feinberg, “where you can live in a world before the iPhone was invented, when there was no Google, no YouTube, no SlideShare, no webinars, and no LinkedIn.” 

Lack of Segmentation

Another enormous problem with outbound tactics are their lack of segmentation.

Inbound marketers work by attracting prospects to their content by sharing highly targeted content.

Outbound marketers use outdated practices to launch their generalized content out into the world and hope it resonates with some prospect out there.

Segmentation is what marketers use to create appealing content for various audiences. To neglect segmentation is to assume each viewer/reader is interested in the same material and experiencing the same dilemmas.

In many ways, outbound sales/marketing—the annoying, interrupting, and begging for attention tactics—is a completely outdated and irrelevant practice.

Are you reviewing outbound and inbound practices to improve your sales for your colocation data center? Let us know in the Comments section below.

To learn more about using inbound practices to improve your sales for colocation data centers, check out our webinar “Attracting Data Center Clients Step by Step.”