Understanding Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing involves building relationships with prospects, customers, and consumers in order to grow your organization. The major digital marketing activities in inbound methodology include SEO, content marketing, social media, video marketing etc.
The goal of inbound marketing is to attract clients and customers that are already interested in your product or service. And one way to attract and retain them is to create valuable content.
Marketers who consistently provide high-quality content to their audience may result in repeated visitors and increased user engagement.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing
- Specifically targeted digital content that provides helpful information to consumers, aimed at helping them solve their problems
- Informative and interactive content can be created, such as social media posts, blogs, reports, webinars, etc.
- Consumers are targeted with specific messaging
- Inbound marketing is measurable since you can identify each piece of your strategy by monitoring a metric over time.
Limitations Inbound Marketers May Face
- Inbound Marketing is a long term strategy. Content on various inbound marketing channels must be continuously updated to meet the changing needs of consumers.
- It takes a lot of time and effort for inbound marketers to develop and test different types of content that will attract their customers to convert.
Understanding The Concept of Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing, on the other hand, is an entirely different approach, one that aims to reach a large audience with the hopes of making a sale.
This type of marketing is also called “push” or “interruption,” because it strives to get your product or service in front of people not necessarily looking for it.
Even today, brands and marketers continue to rely on paid advertising tactics to reach far and wide.
There are many methods of outbound marketing, including TV and radio ads, telemarketing, banners, display ads, billboards, newspapers, magazines, cold calling, pop-ups, and contextual ads.
Benefits of Outbound Marketing
- By leveraging outbound marketing, you can bring awareness to products and services that are unknown to your target market.
- It can produce immediate results because customers who are interested in your offerings are likely to take action on your ads and buy your products.
- People may be more trusting of an advertisement presented in a paper or on TV if they are used to outbound marketing.
Limitations Outbound Marketers Face
- Since you are creating generalized content, it will be hard to make outbound marketing appealing and relevant to everybody.
- Outbound marketing strategies are ignored by some customers; as many people mute the TV during advertising or immediately discard junk mail.
- Problems with tracking ROI (return on investment) in some outbound marketing strategies such as billboard ads.
Difference Between Inbound Marketing And Outbound Marketing
Inbound marketing strategies can help you reach out and engage an audience you can more easily qualify as a prospect and lead, while some outbound techniques take a great deal of time and effort, and may not yield any results. It’s the battle of pulling the customers vs pushing the customers between two marketing methodologies.
| Inbound | Outbound |
| Pulls in targeted audiences | Aims at everyone, no matter their interests |
| Tailored to specific customers’ needs. | Lacks customer-tailored solutions |
| Draws in potential customers | Looks for customers |
| Is part of content consumption | Disrupts content consumption |
| Is digital and dedicated to the youth and the modern generation. Blogs, social media, opt-in emails, search, influencer marketing | Is done more in a traditional way such as display ads, billboards, telemarketer scripts, magazines, TV ads. |
Outbound or Inbound Marketing: Which is Better?
Presently, inbound marketing is much more popular and effective. 71% of companies around the world reported that inbound marketing is their primary marketing channel according to a study by HubSpot in 2017. Inbound marketing provides a better ROI than outbound marketing while being less expensive.
There have traditionally been three main challenges of outbound marketing: it is expensive, it isn’t responsive, and it is not targeted.
In the end, you should locate the marketing strategy that works for your business. And always experiment with new ideas and strategies while doing the things that are working!!
With the current marketing climate, many brands worldwide employ the perfect blend of appealing inbound strategy and retargeting outbound advertising.
Ultimately, you have to figure out what’s right for your company by considering your goals, target audience and branding!!
So what is the best way to promote your product or service, in your opinion? Outbound, Inbound, or a combination?