The outbound vs inbound marketing debate has been around for a while, and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. The common consensus is that with the current evolution of the marketing industry, the inbound approach is more effective compared to the outbound strategy. However, the reality is that both approaches do work, albeit it all depends on your marketing goals. So, in this article, I explain;
What is Inbound Marketing?
What is outbound marketing?
What are the Key Differences between Outbound and Inbound marketing?
Outbound vs Inbound marketing strategies
How to know what strategy between inbound and outbound marketing is suitable for your company?
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy that relies on various tactics to attract a specific target audience to your business, entice them to become leads, and finally into paying customers. Inbound marketing strategies gained prominence in the last decade in line with the growth of digital marketing.
Since inbound marketing involves engaging your audience with meaningful, helpful information, It is often considered a subtle, not-so-salesy way of attracting prospects. Nonetheless, it still needs a solid strategy for you to achieve the desired results.
What is Outbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing is a strategy that involves sending out a promotional message to a large audience of people with the aim of sparking interest in your product or service. The logic behind this strategy is that the bigger the group you market to, the higher the expected return.
Outbound marketing is sometimes referred to as ‘push’ marketing since marketers often target a large audience, including people who may not be looking for the product or service being promoted. For instance, you could be reading your favorite sports blog, and you get an ad about a new sneaker brand you need to check out.
Outbound vs Inbound Marketing: What are the Key Differences?
Outbound Marketing | Inbound Marketing |
Non-digital content designed to capture any consumer’s attention and written to sell products | Informative digital content targeted at specific audiences, written to help solve consumers’ problems |
Content is displayed in direct mail, magazine ads, billboards, on TV, etc. and is meant to be passive | Content comes in interactive forms, such as social media posts, blogs, reports, webinars, etc. |
Linear strategy with limited channels | All-encompassing strategy across multiple channels |
Messaging must stand out among millions of other ads consumers see each day | Messaging is tailored to specific consumers |
Difficult to measure attribution from physical advertising | Measurable through digital marketing software |
Outbound vs Inbound Marketing Strategies
1. Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is designed to attract visitors to your website, engage and
nurture those leads into customers, and delight customers and prospects alike
throughout your relationship. The 4 stages of the inbound marketing methodology are:
Attract
Convert
Close
Delight
At every stage, you can use different strategies to achieve conversions. It is important that your marketing actions are timely and targeted, and this is what the methodology aims to help you do.
For many years, the inbound marketing strategy relied on the funnel methodology. Essentially, the funnel methodology involves moving prospects through marketing and sales stages without taking into account their experiences as customers.
In recent years, the flywheel method has emerged as a highly useful tactic for businesses when it comes to formulating their inbound marketing strategy. The shift towards this technique is based on the fact that it ensures that you put customers in the center of your company’s marketing, sales and service processes. Primarily, the flywheel method underscores the importance of the sales-to-service handoff just as much as it focuses on the marketing-to-sales handoff.
Now let’s look at the Top 3 inbound marketing strategies you can adopt to grow your business.
a). SEO: Search Engine optimization Is one of the most important inbound marketing strategies for companies looking to generate qualified leads. Quality SEO starts with keyword research and a well-defined keyword strategy that homes in on words and phrases your target personas are likely to be searching. However, it is important to remember there are other factors that influence your website SEO such as user experience, the use of alt-texts, just to name a few.
Read my blog on how to optimize your website and content for SEO here: https://www.raymondosero.com/post/content-optimization-strategy
b). Produce High-quality and Useful Content: Content plays a critical role in modern-day marketing. However, a lot of businesses companies make the marketing mistake of producing content just to make it. The reality is that users don’t want half-baked content that doesn’t deliver the information they need.
Instead, they want in-depth and informative content that educates them and helps address their questions or solve their problems. The common types of content include blogs (short and long-form), eBooks, tip sheets, whitepapers, how-to guides, product videos, customer testimonials, and interactive calculators.
Read my blog on some of the content marketing mistakes you need to avoid here: https://www.raymondosero.com/post/6-avoidable-b2b-content-marketing-strategy-mistakes
c). Build Social Media Presence: A big part of your communication with the users takes place on social media. Social media channels have the power to bring you more leads and intensify audience engagement. A strong social media presence should also be steady. Avoid big gaps in time in between two posts. But, avoid overwhelming the audience with non-stop posting as well.
2. Outbound Marketing
And while Inbound marketing is still highly effective for many companies, in some cases, it may not be enough. So, which outbound marketing strategies are worth considering for your business that are worth your time and money?
a). Traditional Advertising
Also known as above-the-line (ATL) advertising, traditional advertising includes media such as;
Television
Radio
Podcasts
Print (newspapers, magazines, etc.)
Billboards
Traditional advertising methods help you convey the message to the masses, although they lack refined targeting capabilities. Traditional advertising approaches are effective for top-of-the-funnel activities such as brand awareness campaigns.
Although a lot of skepticism surrounds the effectiveness of traditional advertising, they are still effective considering the number of users that watch TV shows, listen to the radio, tune in to a podcast, or read a newspaper every day.
b). Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads
Search and social media ads can be an effective way to drive traffic to your site while you wait for your content marketing and SEO efforts to pay off. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising involves creating an ad with an image that is linked to a particular landing page or another page on your website.
They are fairly easy to set up and run. Once your ads are up and running, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad (hence the name). If your ad isn’t successful, you won’t end up having to pay much for the flop. However, always remember that although ads can help boost your reach and revenue in the short term, they can also be costly. Examples of PPC campaigns you can run include:
Search engine marketing (SEM)
Display ads
Social media ads
Over-the-top (OTT) ads
Email ads
Native advertising
Video ads
c). Email Marketing
Although there are many views on the effectiveness of direct mail, when combined with the other efforts listed here, direct mail can be a highly effective way to reach and engage your target audience. By focusing on sending creative and targeted communications, you can grab the attention of someone who has previously not responded to other lead generation efforts. Furthermore, you can leverage a marketing automation solution such as Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign to create a branded, professional-looking email newsletter in a matter of minutes.
Learn more about how to create your email marketing calendar here: https://www.raymondosero.com/post/how-to-plan-monthly-email-calendar
How to Choose Between Outbound vs Inbound Marketing for your Business
Chances are you came directly to this section. With that being said, It is now clear that inbound marketing is the “natural approach” to attract customers when they are ready. In contrast, outbound marketing is the “in your face approach” that in our digital era tends to turn off a lot of customers by being either too product-focused or delivering the message at the wrong time.
I believe that a mix of both inbound and outbound marketing is beneficial. Inbound marketing tactics are a cost-effective way to attract leads to your business which will allow you to learn more about your customers before sending out tailored outbound materials.
Looking for a content marketing strategist to help you grow your business with practical solutions customized to your unique business needs? Drop me a message and let’s get to it.
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