The Differences in Inbound and Outbound Marketing
When it comes to a marketing strategy, it’s important to keep in mind the ways you reach out to customers, whether that be more direct or indirect. With that being said, inbound and outbound marketing refers to this situation specifically.
Before explaining the differences between the two, it’s important to understand both ways, so when you go to create or edit your strategy, you can choose the one that best fits your audience.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing refers to marketing strategies focused on creating content that drives traffic to a brand’s website. Inbound marketing is also called “pull marketing” or content marketing, because it draws customers to your products or services.
If this sounds like something your brand or business wants to achieve, aim content towards solving a problem or resolving an issue that your target audience is searching for. With inbound marketing, customers will find you when they need you. This will help create strong customer relationships.
Examples of inbound marketing can include:
- Blog posts
- Newsletter or email sign-up
- Video content
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- SEO
- Webinars
- Social Media
Rather than pushing your brand in front of users, inbound marketing works more to tell your brand story, raise brand awareness and engage the audience to care about your products or services.
What is Outbound Marketing?
Whereas inbound marketing is a newer concept, outbound marketing includes more traditional forms of marketing and advertising to attract customers. Rather than customers reaching out to you, outbound marketing is when the company initiates the conversation and reaches out to customers directly.
This type of marketing is very promotional-heavy and directs their message towards a very large audience in hope to gain as many customers as possible.
Examples of outbound marketing can include:
- Cold calls
- Direct mail
- Email blasts
- Offline ads: billboards, TV, radio
- Event sponsorships
- In-person events
Outbound marketing ensures that you reach people directly, but it doesn’t exactly mean that these people want to be contacted or are particularly interested in the businesses message.
Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing
The biggest difference between inbound and outbound marketing, is that inbound is an indirect strategy, focusing on a specific target audience, that is fed through content creation, whereas outbound is a direct strategy that aims to get in front of as many people as possible.
As I mentioned before, another difference is that inbound is a newer, more digital version of marketing compared to more of the traditional practices included in outbound marketing.
Another nuance of inbound is that it can be cross-promoted. With the ease of posting to multiple platforms, tweaking content to adapt to different platforms is extremely easy. Outbound is limited to its channels and it is harder to promote your message beyond the one chosen tactic.
Since many social media platforms and social media tools now have analytics capabilities, inbound marketing is much easier to measure, compared to outbound marketing, where it is more difficult to attribute leads.
Lastly, outbound marketing can become extremely expensive. Because many types of outbound marketing includes physical advertising, this means money to be spent for the space, the materials, the travel, etc.
Which One Should I Use?
Unfortunately there isn’t a one-answer fits all, and it is dependent on your marketing strategy and what your goals as a brand. However, what I can tell you is to not dive all into one and ignore the other.
Now that we are in a digital era, inbound marketing may seem like the way to go, but that doesn’t mean you never need to use outbound marketing. Before deciding, I would look at who your target audience is and your brand’s analytics.
There’s all you need to know about the two biggest marketing principles. If you have any doubts or questions leave us a comment below! Not sure where to start in your marketing strategy? Follow this guide to get more out of marketing.
