According to the “State of Inbound Marketing Report” from Hubspot, as reported by Marketing Charts, inbound marketing is continuing to grow in importance at the expense of outbound marketing. This is good news and further validation that paid search, SEO, social media, blogging really resonate with consumer as well as marketers. For a copy of the pdf – http://bit.ly/aewfHr

With so many marketers looking to employ social media and other non-traditional outlets the report should serve notice that attracting interest in products and services will become the dominant method of marketing. And I could not be happier.

I posted last October that my hope was with the passing of pitchman Billy Mays http://bit.ly/anfWYD the shouting might finally stop. In an article by Stuart Elliott in today’s New York Times http://nyti.ms/9CQlR9 companies like Proactiv are also getting the message that fast and loud is no longer the way to promote products. When the giant infomercial and marketing firm Guthy-Renker tests a less ‘noisy’ approach, that’s big marketing news indeed.

Eliminating in your face direct marketing come-ons still will take time. And don’t think for a second that there aren’t consumers out there that don’t respond to FREE, and ACT NOW. There are many of them out there and the older you are the more accustomed (ok inured) to the blast and hope approach. They continue to be effective but if you look closely you can see the tide is changing.

Why do I think it’s better to attract? Mainly because it offers the prospect/consumer to choose to pay attention what interests them and to disregard messages that they individual feels are irrelevant. The result should be a deeper level of customer engagement since it’s THEIR choice to engage. It does present a major challenge and shift in thinking for marketing agencies. That shift has already begun and there is now a mad scramble in the agency world to show understanding, performance and measurement for social media campaigns in particular.

I’m both intrigued and excited at the direction things are heading with regard to attracting more interest as opposed to promoting it. To give you an example we have a client that wanted to send out text SMS messages to ‘opted-in’ teens promoting music in mall stores. While that can work (and we are planning to test) we suggested signage in the malls noting the number to text to in order to receive free music at the store. We are in development of the campaign right now.

Which do you think will work better?