The Difference Between Inbound and Content Marketing Explained

It is important to understand that inbound and content marketing are not interchangeable words.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is one of the elements of inbound marketing. This term is fairly new and was first used in 2001.content marketing was used to describe how marketers marketed to consumers using content that they produced.

Content marketing is typically the creation of content that a customer belonging to a brand’s target group will find helpful or interesting.

This type of marketing helps marketers to slowly build relationships with prospects who will eventually make a purchase.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing comprises of technologies, a set of tools and process that cooperate to generate traffic to your website.

It mainly focuses on providing the right content to the right user and at the right time. Many tactics in inbound marketing involve targeting and encouraging specific actions by the prospects.

It is from this traffic that leads are generated who eventually convert to become customers.

This is the best methodology that has the ability to consistently help you to sell your services and products online. In other words, it is the way to make your website earn you money.

Inbound marketing is mainly focused on making the right type of content readily available to anyone who thinks they want it or need it instead of blindly marketing to get clicks and views.

What are The Differences between Inbound and Content Marketing?

• Inbound marketing focuses on making a website and the content contained in it attractive to the enough to entice the visitor to take an action which could either be filling out a form, follow the business on social media or simply make a purchase.

On the other hand content marketing mainly focuses on development and distribution of content across various channels for example making a how-to video and sharing it on YouTube and ensuring that people watch it and share with any other person that would consider the video to be useful.

• Content marketing is mainly focused on building relationships between the marketer and customers through the use of content while inbound marketing on the other hand is a “bigger picture” activity which uses many methods and activities so as to eventually inspire or motivate a customer to take action.

Most of the content marketing programs in use today focus on content creation and blogging while on the other hand, inbound marketing encompasses a large collection of methods ranging from blogs to social media to video.

Are Inbound and Content Marketing The Same Thing?

Many people wrongly believe that inbound and content marketing is the exact same thing and they even believe if you use both terms you are just simply repeating yourself.

It is true that they are quite similar but they also have very distinct differences between them that are very important to understand.

The similarity between inbound and content marketing is that both methods involve a more holistic view of marketing that mainly focuses on the satisfaction of the needs of the visitor or customer.

Both marketing methods are non-interruptive and they both rely on the slow and steady creation of a relationship between the brand and its customers so as to make a sale.

Though inbound and content marketing have so many similarities they are not the same because the activities involved in each process are different.

It would be correct to say that content marketing is a part of inbound marketing but not the other way round.

Inbound marketing refers to the whole process of that involves various methods which are taken so as to convert a visitor into a customer once they visit your website.

Content marketing, on the other hand, is just a part of that process. This is because it only focuses on very specific methods for the creation of content and its distribution.

This has shown us that although inbound marketing and content marketing have the same end goals, the methods that are involved in each are very different.

This proves that Inbound and content marketing is really not the same thing although one is part of the other.

Between Inbound And Content Marketing Which Is Better?

To be honest both methods should be a part of your online marketing campaign. Neither inbound marketing nor content marketing is better than the other although when they are used together they can give you amazing results.

Inbound marketing is essential as it will make your website and the content contained in it to become popular with your prospects.

The methods that you use in inbound marketing and the content that you avail to your customers will encourage visitors to your website to take action and ultimately convert into customers.

Content marketing, on the other hand, will make your site more compelling to your visitors.

This marketing technique will give the visitors material that is helpful and which will convince them that you are the right partner for them. This will also benefit your ranking in the search engine.

When you use both inbound and content marketing on your website you will reap greater benefits.

Both methods will help in growing your online presence, create lasting relationships with your customers, generate more leads and also ensure that your content is shared widely by your customers.

How Can You Use Inbound and Content Marketing Online?

The main focus of your inbound marketing campaign as a marketer should be to put the right information in the right place on your brand’s website.

This includes making available answers to commonly asked questions, adding videos, images or content that will add value, blogging and any other activity that increase the chance of customers converting.

Your content marketing strategy should be focused on creating very compelling, very helpful and very unique content and distribute it across all the different channels available to you.

Your strategy for your content marketing campaign should include the following: writing guides or blogs, sharing them on all your social media platforms, building links to them etc.

This will add value to your brand and also encourage a strong relationship between your brand and your customers.

If you had not yet considered using both  inbound and content marketing in your online campaigns. I hope this article has convinced you to do so.

They have proven time and time again that they work magic together so please be smart and aim to reap the benefits they could offer.

It is up to you as the marketer to decide between inbound and content marketing, which marketing method meets your business needs but I hope you will consider both.

I hope that you found the information provided in this article to be helpful to you. Thank you for sparing the time to read this article.