Why is inward marketing handled by IT teams, while outward marketing is managed by creatives?
I think the biggest mistake you can make today is relying primarily on advertising and PR to communicate with your existing and former customers. Both in terms of cost and effectiveness, this approach is outdated. Given the evolution of direct communication options through digital channels that enable real-time personalization, buying ads for this purpose is almost laughable.
Are we really choosing the right tools for our goals?
If we take a narrow view of marketing solely through the lens of promotion, we could say there are two types of marketing: outward-focused and inward-focused. The former aims to acquire new customers and strengthen the brand, while the latter focuses on retaining existing customers and driving repeat purchases.
Outward marketing is often equated with advertising, and there's also a growing emphasis on influencers, even in B2B. By its nature, outward marketing remains the domain of creatives and communication experts, and these professionals will continue to thrive despite concerns about AI-driven changes. In contrast, important decisions regarding inward marketing are often handed over to IT. IT handles segmentation and contact export, prepares and sends transactional emails, and activates abandoned cart campaigns as part of the e-commerce functionality.
AI is gradually simplifying advertising
With upcoming technological developments, advertising on digital platforms will become even simpler for advertisers. Google and Meta are both moving in the direction where advertisers can manage their campaigns independently (without agency experts) while also spending significantly less time than before. Ad campaign optimization is increasingly being taken over by AI, which demonstrates its power in effectively predicting interests based on individual context. Google and Meta have the data and the optimized data structures that allow their algorithms to determine what content users like (where, when, on what device) and what they dislike or are not interested in. But rest assured—creatives and thought leaders will stay relevant despite AI.
To use AI for contextually tailored direct communication with your customers, you first need to get your data in order
Effective inward marketing, increasingly integrated into every step of the customer journey, is unfortunately becoming more complex. There is an abundance of direct digital channels, but omnichannel orchestration itself isn't the biggest challenge anymore—as long as you're not stubbornly clinging to outdated communication tools. Unlike outward marketing, which relies on broader targeting, inward marketing must be based on company data about its relationship with each individual customer (past purchases, returns, identified interests based on behavior in digital channels, etc.). Highly personalized, real-time messages are what matters to individual customers today—that's not even up for debate. Real-time personalization requires an understanding of customer context. And context means data.
If we want to apply Google's and Meta's approach in inward marketing, where content is tailored to each individual, it's clear that some technology is required. When simplifying the story, I often mention algorithms or AI. Many people think this part is difficult. But it's not! The real complexity lies in providing "fuel" for the algorithms. Setting up a so-called Customer Engagement Platform is most challenging when it comes to connecting scattered customer data from different organizational silos into a single view. Additionally, defining why and when a particular piece of data is relevant for an algorithm is often a large undertaking that must be tackled—similar to what ad networks have been addressing for years.
To better understand what I'm talking about, I invite you to a brief chat where I can happily demonstrate this hands-on using the SAP Emarsys platform. Context is the key ingredient for successful inward marketing—for your existing customers. A live demo is often the simplest and most effective way to see why context is the key ingredient for successful inward marketing. If you're interested, I'd be delighted to show you hands-on how the SAP Emarsys platform can make this a reality.
P.S. P.S. Inward marketing is not just a bad translation of inbound marketing. While inbound marketing primarily focuses on attracting new customers through valuable content and tailored experiences, inward marketing could also be called Retention or CRM marketing. Outward-focused marketing, on the other hand, could simply be called advertising.