Der nachfolgende Beitrag stammt von Prof. Dr. Christian Belz, Direktor des Instituts für Marketing an der Universität St. Gallen, Schweiz und Mitherausgeber der Marketing Review St. Gallen, und seinem Mitarbeiter Alexander Schagen. Soweit ich weiß, sind sie die ersten Wissenschaftler, die sich mit dem Thema Inbound-Marketing beschäftigen. Ich hoffe, dass sich das Interesse von akademischer Seite weiter erhöht. Vielen Dank für den
Beitrag.
The following article was written by Professor Dr. Christian Belz, Director of the Institute of Marketing at the University of
St. Gallen in Switzerland, and his assistant Alexander Schagen.
As far as I know, they are the first scientists who work on the subject of inbound marketing. I hope, the academic interest will rise in the months to come. Thanks a lot for the article.
The increasing information overload, customer’s skepticism up to denegation towards marketing, and a dramatically change in customer behavior are preeminent challenges for traditional marketing, in other words Outbound Marketing. This kind of unidirectional marketing efforts are not able to meet customer needs: more often than not content, medium, and time do not fit customer demands.
In that situation Inbound Marketing gives organizations the opportunity to foster and to make use of individual customer activities. Companies acknowledge active customers as equal partners in bilateral relationships. As active customers define the content, channel, and time of communication, they want the company to meet their demands immediately and in a professional way. The most important components of Inbound Marketing and their relationships are shown in figure one:
As companies act in different industries, have different target customers, and so on Inbound Marketing has to be configurated situational. The results of several workshops with twelve heterogeneous companies are the following four types of Inbound Marketing:
- Inbound Marketing in „product oriented companies“ is characterized by a low level of interaction (e.g. e-mail) in the pre-, purchase, and post-purchase phase. It enables an efficient smart account management.
- Inbound Marketing in „service oriented companies“ is characterized by a high level of interaction (e.g. phone) during the relationship. Management consultancies and financial service companies use this approach. Publishing companies and commercial enterprises use dialogs with customers to differentiate themselves in competition.
- Inbound Marketing in „feedback oriented companies“ is characterized by a low level of interaction in pre- and purchase phase. Customers do not have the need to contact the company because of standardized products without any need of explanation. In the postpurchase phase the companies offer different channels to the customers. This gives them the possibility to get in a dialog with the providing company.
- Inbound Marketing in „contract oriented companies“ is characterized by a high level of interaction in the pre-purchase phase in order to retain customers. From the time when customers sign a contract companies offer efficient channels with a low level of interaction and channels with a high level of interaction against charge.