Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: What’s Better for Your Business?

Inbound vs outbound marketing are terms that if not all, most business people have heard of. With the current marketing trends, the words are highly used even though most of us do not know what they really mean.

They are just jargons thrown around by marketers but in truth, these words are used to represent cultural concepts on how marketing works across different modes.

What is Outbound Marketing?

This is the originally known marketing procedure involving the pushing of a product or service to the masses.

It is interruptive and pushes itself to the audience whether they want it or not. They are transmitted via different media for example television, newspaper, radio advert, banners, pop up ads online, magazines, and pop-under ads.

Over the years people have found this form of marketing annoying due to its nature of interruptions and over circulation.

This kind of marketing became more rampant on the internet where outbound marketing is ignored mostly if displays are used for advertisement.

Nowadays, there are software that enable users to block adverts which has reduced the click-through rates for display adverts.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a new age form of marketing; marketers try to bring in potential clients through interesting products and services.

This form of marketing is also known as content marketing-it involves creating social media pages, blogs, email newsletters, and other content that people might be interested in reading.

Marketers go an extra mile to where search engines are optimized; they pay for easier discovery and searches to help people find the marketer’s information.

Potential customers interact with content that they find engaging and if they desire they end up reading and sharing with family and friends.

In return, this has a positive impression on a brand to the public and is a huge influence on the later purchasing decision by customers.

This method is indirect and does not require much supervision to accomplish, customers rarely notice the sales pitch and are enticed to the sales by increasing their engagement with the brand.

The Difference: Inbound vs Outbound Marketing

You have probably noticed a few differences from the explanation bit on inbound vs outbound marketing. Here are some of the differences:

• Inbound marketing tends to entice the potential customers into the sales, outbound on the other hand outbound forces individual regardless of their interest.

• Inbound marketing packages are tailored to suit individual potential client’s needs and want, while outbound marketing is packaged for the product needs and does not consider the customer’s need.

• Inbound marketing creates an interactive atmosphere, customers and marketing personnel can have a conversation that may lead to the purchase of the product.

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, is a one-way communication where the marketer informs the audience of the existing product.

• Inbound marketing focuses on easing in naturally with individuals; it targets daily activities to communicate with the audience.

This is the key because the audience won’t feel bothered or disrupted. Examples of such platform they use to access clients are social media, blogs, search and many more.

Outbound marketing focuses on captivating the attention of individuals through billboards, display ads, magazines, and telemarketing.

Most Effective? Inbound vs Outbound Marketing

Weighing on the differences and the current market trends, inbound marketing is by far the most preferred marketing choice. With its high return on investment and it is less expensive.

Even though the above is true, it is hard to measure its effectiveness. Inbound strategies rely on raising awareness of a brand by providing value and not giving the hard sales pitch.

This is the reason why marketers find it hard to vet how well inbound marketing works.

The reason outbound marketing is not favorable among many marketers is that it is costly and this form of marketing does not offer feedback which marketers need for improving the quality of their goods and services.

The current trend of reducing expenditure hinders this form of marketing. The whole outbound marketing aspect is a shot in the dark; this means that the method is not targeted.

When an advert is created, it is delivered to the masses regardless of the individual interests of the audience.

With the rise of display advertising, things like pixel, contextual ads, and lookalike audience allow most social media sites and websites to advertise to users specifically on basis of what they are interested in.

This is an example of an integration of inbound vs outbound marketing which is one of the many untapped areas on solving the issues of ad blockers.

Using these new measures, marketers are able to integrate inbound strategies to produce a better outbound marketing.

In the current marketing environment, companies adopt a combined positive inbound strategies and retargeting outbound display ads.

This is cannot only be done with outbound but also with inbound marketing, the main idea for a marketer is to find a suitable mix that works for your specified customers.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Inbound Methodology

An appropriate inbound strategy entails the creation of content that is applicable to the desired audience, making it easier for them to search for it and easily identify it.

The first step is to create a profile of your buyers; you have to identify the kind of people you want your advert to attract.

Secondly, since inbound marketing is focused on the customer, one has to identify what the customer’s needs are.

Identifying what they need is not enough because individuals have different taste and preferences for products and services.

The marketer has to identify what the customers like specifically, this is the third step.

The marketer has to draft a comprehensive search engine optimization strategy to clarify how the audience will find your content if you will be available on Google searches or use networks for your content to be promoted.

This decides if an individual will use social media to post the adverts to be discovered.

The number of times a marketer will update the most is a major factor, all this will have to be considered before creating the final content to be presented to the world.

Once the content is built, a marketer has to assess what he or she wants to achieve and set goals accordingly.

Having a method of measuring the level of success of the content is important to help in the improvement and generation of new ideas for the future.

Marketing is dynamic and changes over time, present data to create content won’t be the same in a year or even after a few months.

The most important bit is identifying what the audience wants, and your role as a marketer is to deliver that.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Finding the Right Marketing Strategy for You

The right marketing strategy is unique to every business for obvious reasons. We are all different in vast aspects, the perfect marketing strategy would be the one that suits your personality or the business model and serves it well.

It is prudent for one to frequently analyze data to capture the emerging issues and trends.

The audience wants to see new things; you can sell the same product or service but deliver it differently to capture attention.