Let’s be honest; no business can thrive if it is not finding different ways to promote its products and services. Marketing not only increases conversion rates but also boosts brand awareness. You can grow your customer base and sales only if you understand which marketing practice to adopt.
How many times have you come across the word inbound or outbound marketing while watching the latest guide videos about digital marketing trends? Probably, quite often. These terminologies do exist in the marketing industry and hold value. But why?
Taking some time out in learning different marketing practices and concepts can help you take your business to the next level. So without further ado, let’s dive in to grab the idea of inbound and outbound marketing:
Table of Contents
What Is Outbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing refers to the traditional marketing style in which marketers push their promotions and messages to the customers, whether they like it or not. They hope that their audience would respond to their interruptive marketing campaigns. Some outbound marketing examples include radio, billboards, newspapers, TV, banners, direct mail, etc.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Also known as content marketing, inbound marketing refers to the process of creating compelling and engaging content to lure customers to visit your site. Several ways exist to create content such as infographics, videos, blog posts, ebooks, etc. It doesn’t require any sales talk. Instead, you pull the prospects into taking some action, be it an inquiry about a product, informational query, or purchasing decision.
However, the question arises how would you make your content reach maximum people? Many people believe that internal linking is the only way possible to target the intended audience. What they don’t realize is that Outbound links are equally important. These links improve the overall SEO performance and build a sense of trust and goodwill among the audience.
Differences Between Inbound And Outbound Marketing
The following are some of the key differences:
1. Interruptive Vs. Permissive Marketing Approach
Outbound marketing aims to find mediums with a large audience and interrupt them with forced advertisements. The concept behind interruption-based marketing is that even a tiny share of the audience might get interested in the ad. As a result, they would pay attention to your advertisement and may become prospective customers. You can post ads on radio, televisions, newspapers, billboards, etc.
Whereas, in inbound marketing, you would have to take permission from customers before entering the medium. You might think your audience can get limited because of asking for approval; however, that’s not the case. Since the internet users are innumerable, you can reach a larger audience with the right keyword target. You can ask permission from the audience via email subscription, social media marketing, webinars, etc.
2. Grabs Attention Vs. Builds Relationship
With outbound marketing, you can’t precisely develop good relations with your customer base. Your marketing strategy majorly focuses on only attracting customers to your promotional campaigns rather than paying attention to user value. You are just sending your message on a particular medium and hoping your target audience would notice your brand.
On the contrary, inbound marketing allows you to share content either in an informative or story manner with the relevant audience. These customers want to see your campaigns, so you interact with your audience openly with inbound marketing. In this manner, you can show your customers you value them and build good relations with them.
3. Separate Vs. Integrated Approach
In outbound marketing, you adopt a linear approach. You would first evaluate which of the medium can help you target your audience, be it television, radio, billboard, etc. Once decided, you can assign a significant portion of your marketing budget to that medium and leave out those mediums that don’t benefit your brand. After that, you can create a consistent message for your selected medium. This way, you can accomplish your marketing mission.
On the other hand, with inbound marketing, you need a holistic approach. Here, you can employ all digital mediums to promote your products or services. However, it is a more complex marketing strategy than outbound since it requires you to use all digital marketing mediums at once. In this type of marketing, you need to concentrate daily on analytics to convert your visitors into potential leads. Make sure your website has a strong call-to-action button, responsive design, and high-quality content.
4. Inestimable Vs. Measurable
With an outbound campaign, it is rather hard to measure the success of marketing efforts. You can’t get a full and clear picture of how people get to know about your brand. Although your company might get some calls from prospects because of your marketing efforts, it still doesn’t tell the whole truth. The problem arises when you assume success on your own. It turns out that the marketing campaign was unable to outperform.
In contrast to outbound, the inbound marketing efforts are quantifiable. Since everything is digital in inbound, there is no room for assumptions. You can track which strategies are practical and converting prospective customers into your clients. It allows you to carry out a comprehensive analysis of customer behavior. Some of the analysis factors include the time spent on a website, the number of pages they visited, and how many blog posts they read.
5. Temporary Vs. Permanent
In outbound marketing, the job of marketers is generally at stake. As long as the marketing campaigns work and generate sales, the management will be happy. However, if it fails and doesn’t meet the required target, it would be a massive blow to the budget. You cannot repeat the same procedure for promoting products, which leads to a decline in ROI. The outbound campaign isn’t a cost-effective option. You will always have to invest money to develop a new strategy and new distribution method. All in all, the job might get overwhelming with outbound marketing.
While with inbound marketing, you will not always have to come up with new distribution ideas. An email list of your subscribers and the following base on social media platforms can prove to be an asset. There might be content creation costs, for sure; however, you can reap the benefits from this content in the long run. Therefore, you can avoid finicky CEOs and make the management satisfied.
Conclusion
The debate between inbound and outbound marketing doesn’t seem to stop in the nearest future. Many marketers find it challenging to decide which is the right marketing strategy. The truth is, there is no single approach to marketing; you need to choose the one that best works for your company and in the given situation. However, a hybrid of inbound and outbound can make your business go a long way. Never hesitate to try new techniques while practicing the old ones. Bear in mind that audience preference changes with time; therefore, your marketing campaigns should also change.