Inside-Out to Outside-In: Taking Your Marketing Strategy to the Next Level

The ubiquity of digital media outlets has made reaching customers more accessible for businesses. With the press of a button, companies can post a blog, make a social media announcement, cue up the nurture campaigns and run a series of paid ads to their budget’s content. However many attention-grabbing headlines, news articles and social media inundating  your customer’s newsfeed, businesses ought to realize that thanks to technology, human attention spans are at its lowest ever. A recent study by Microsoft found that the average attention span is down from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds today. 

Even while customers have grown numb to gimmicky and intrusive marketing ads, companies still continue to prey on their customer’s limited attention span — and they’ll do whatever means necessary to lock eyes with their customers. With companies determined to face off with one another and even engage in a digital screaming match, businesses can often lose sight of their goals and fail to stay on point with their marketing strategy by putting customers at the center. Leaving customers frustrated, confused and second-guessing your company’s intent, you risk putting your brand’s reputation on the line. 

With trust and credibility at stake, it becomes even more essential for businesses to take the time to reset and reconfigure their internal DNA to understand the customer’s point of view and perspective. To do this, companies need to move away from a reactionary mindset and relying solely on their trusted business partners to get into their customer’s head. Instead, they need to go straight to the source to understand what customers care about and what they really want — and this means shifting from an Inside-Out approach to an Outside-In approach.

Outside-In vs Inside-Out Approach

Image Source: InsideOut Development

What does it mean to shift from an Inside-Out approach to an Outside-In approach? 

The Inside-Out approach is guided by the belief that the inner strengths and capabilities of the organization will make the organization prevail. The primary sources of ideas stem from Product, Development, Sales, Customer Success, Technical Support, Business Analysts and other in-house subject matter experts who play a role in steering your company’s products and services. While internal employees have a vested interest in the company and offer ideas that are well-intentioned, they may influence decisions without fully understanding the customer. 

On the other end of the spectrum is the Outside-In approach which is instead guided by the belief that customer value creation, customer orientation and customer experiences are the keys to success. This user group may have invested a lot of time and money into your product or service, and they may have extensive knowledge or opinions that can help push the product further. Active users can offer a unique perspective into the functionality, user experience and how users think, feel and act when interacting with your product. They can even reveal defects about your product that you can take straight to the Engineering team. Soliciting their feedback is a powerful way to make subtle improvements to the product’s features, learn about different use cases or make major enhancements to the next iteration or release. 

As a rule of thumb, when it comes to making decisions about your product, it’s necessary to consider both an Inside-Out and Outside-In approach. Each will give you a different perspective of the problem and help you come to terms with the question: what problem does your product solve? 

As a rule of thumb, when it comes to making decisions about your product, it’s necessary to consider both an Inside-Out and Outside-In approach. Click To Tweet

It’s when companies knowingly react to the marketplace competition, race against the clock to meet their quarterly goals and become hasty in their decision-making process do they overlook the root analysis of the problem: understanding the customer. The inability to successfully articulate the problem of the customer to the customer is a pitfall that remains the center of the problem. And knowing that a few internal biases can unequivocally tip the scale and do more harm than good when it comes to interpreting a customer’s challenge is a playing field that you want to even out. 

With insight into the problem and a thorough understanding of some of the symptoms that cause it, it’s time to recenter, shift our mindset and make adjustments to our marketing strategy by taking more of an Outside-In approach. 

How can businesses adopt more of an Outside-In approach and incorporate it into their marketing strategy? 

With social media at every corner of the website, businesses have access to what customers are saying about different products and the challenges they face both at a personal and professional level.
Listen to your customers: With social media at every corner of the website, businesses have access to what customers are saying about different products and the challenges they face both at a personal and professional level. Go to your fan page, hover over your competitor’s and click on those trending hashtags to listen to their dialogue. If you can offer an immediate solution to their question or solve their problem, chime in. Chances are you will have helped them through their challenge, raised awareness to your brand and established your credibility to them and others joining in on the dialogue. 

Follow trending hashtags: If this isn’t already in your marketing strategy, it should be. An easy way to aggregate data, trends and related articles is to follow trending hashtags across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Stay on top of what customers are saying, see what your competitors are writing about, connect with influencers in your field — and most importantly, find out what your customers are saying and how they are reacting to newsworthy topics and events.  

An easy way to aggregate data, trends and related articles is to follow trending hashtags across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Click To Tweet

When it comes to finding out more about your customers, you have to go where they go. 
Start a discussion, join a forum, find a group: When it comes to finding out more about your customers, you have to go where they go. If they share a problem that many others can relate to, it’s likely there’s a group from that. LinkedIn Groups is a good place to start to find like-minded people who are looking to discuss similar interests, follow marketplace trends and get practical knowledge or advice. Here you can listen to what people are talking about, raise questions and respond to their queries. It’s a great way to establish your brand and assert yourself as a thought leader or subject matter expert. 

Go to live events, conferences and meetups: If you’re able to get away from your computer and go out into the field, chances are you’ll be able to meet your customers face to face. While large conferences such as Dreamforce, Oracle OpenWorld and IBM Think may not be at arms reach for many small to medium-sized businesses, you can still go to the networking events and happy hours — that’s where all the “real” talk happens anyways. Other ways to meet like-minded professionals is through Meetups, brown-bag lunches and local affiliations such as the American Marketing Association, Public Relations Society of America, San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group and more. 

When incorporating outside-in tactics into your marketing strategy, don’t lose sight of social listening tools (Buffer, Sprout, BuzzSumo) and resources that can help you better understand your customer, make sense of all that data and save you time. Keeping track of customer conversations, mentions of your brand and competitors, and discussions related to your targeted keywords is all part of the digital journey to build authority and establish your brand reputation. 

When incorporating outside-in tactics into your marketing strategy, don’t lose sight of social listening tools and resources that can help you better understand your customer, make sense of all that data and save you time. Click To Tweet

What are some ways businesses can better understand their customers? 

Use dialogue as input: So what do you do with all that data and information collected by your digital marketing outreach, social media efforts, and online and offline marketing initiatives? Harvesting data from your customers and prospects will help inform your marketing strategy and improve the quality of your product and service delivery. 

Harvesting data from your customers and prospects will help inform your marketing strategy and improve the quality of your product and service delivery. Click To Tweet

While listening is essential at every stage of the journey, know when to jump in. 
Join important brand conversations: While listening is essential at every stage of the journey, know when to jump in. It’s likely when the pendulum swings heavily in one direction to the next, your ears will perk up and that’s when you can react to your customers feedback. Smart marketers will take a more proactive approach analyzing macro- and micro-trends and serve as thought leaders in the marketplace. 

With the prevalence of digital tools and technology, businesses are now able to better reach their customers, and gather data and insights to make more informed decisions about their marketing strategy. While there are a number of tactics to shape your overall plan, it is essential to incorporate both an inside-out and outside-in approach to distinguish your brand in today’s overly saturated marketplace. In doing so, you will receive valuable input from your customers which will ultimately enable you to create a more tailor-made solution and improve customer satisfaction — all while drumming up more business and driving customer loyalty.