Inbound vs Outbound Marketing
Effective marketing necessitates a willingness to adapt. Our world is constantly changing. New technology, new trends, and evolving customer attitudes need to be taken into account.
A successful marketing campaign will need to consider these aspects in real-time and present the information in a strategic manner.
So how do you decide which is the best means of doing so? How can you best connect with your audience?
Inbound marketing has become a very popular and effective means of marketing. But what is it exactly? And how does it differ from outbound marketing?
Let’s look into the specifics of both marketing methods and see how they can help your business.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a means of drawing potential customers into your website by creating useful and interesting content.
There are various methods of doing this including optimizing your website copy to best position your pages in search results rankings. This is what’s referred to as search engine optimization (SEO).
This is best accomplished by creating content such as blogs and ebooks that provide information that is relevant to your particular industry.
The goal is for potentially-interested people to find your website organically.
Your content positions your business as an authority on the subject matter. This increases the likelihood for converting the visitor into a paying customer.
There are other methods such as social media marketing, email marketing, and video development.
The creation of this content is essential, but so is the research that goes into the market beforehand.
Creating buyer personas and targeting specific keywords gives an inbound marketing campaign its best chance at success.
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Benefits
The overarching benefit of inbound marketing is that it attracts visitors to your website that are already interested in your services or products. This presents itself in various ways.
Attracting interested visitors increases your conversion rate. More qualified leads result in increased sales.
The goal of every business’ website is to generate leads and sales. Inbound marketing gives you a headstart on this process.
The creation of relevant content helps build brand awareness. These articles are liable to be shared on social media or linked by other articles as a resource. This spreads your business’ name around the internet.
And the more a potential customer comes across your name, the more likely they are to visit your website.
A well-written and authoritative blog will continue to benefit the website by showing up in internet searches for a long time.
There is no expiration date on quality content. Inbound marketing efforts continue to compound over time.
More content simply means more opportunities to appear in a potential customer’s internet query.
Examples
Most websites will have a blog to announce company news. Adding articles related to the business’ industry is a great way to break into internet searches.
Providing larger content options such as an ebook can also help you build your email list. Simply provide a sign-up form to access a free ebook.
And then utilize this email list to send company information or links to further content offerings.
All of these examples work together to build your authority in your industry while also generating interest from potential customers.
Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing refers to any effort by a business to initiate an interaction with a potential customer. Inbound marketing creates content with methods to help a customer find it on their own.
Outbound goes directly to the customer.
This is a more traditional method of advertising that has been used for years.
Outbound marketing is alive and well on the internet but the origins go back as far as the origins of advertisements.
Benefits
Outbound marketing allows for the business to control the conversation.
You know exactly when your advertisement is going to run. You know what it’s going to say.
This generally provides quick results.
Examples
Traditional forms of outbound marketing include television ads, billboards, and newspaper advertisements.
These methods are still used by many companies because they continue to provide returns. However, many of these mediums are becoming outdated.
Pay-per-click advertising is an outbound marketing method that is based on the internet. The practice is known for scalability, trackability, and providing quick returns.
Comparison
The winds of change have been directing many new businesses toward inbound marketing over the last decade. The reasons for this are as varied as the industries that use it.
The first is that inbound marketing costs far less than traditional forms of advertising. This makes the return on investment (ROI) much higher.
Writing blogs and posting on social media are essentially free.
PPC is an incredibly beneficial means of marketing, but traditional forms of outbound marketing are becoming out-of-date.
It’s very difficult to assess the efficacy of expensive methods such as TV ads.
New marketing strategies are focusing on creating useful content instead of shelling out large sums of money without a guarantee that interested customers will actually see it.
The internet allows for a free flow of information.
Autonomy is prized by users. They don’t like being told what to do.
This is what makes inbound marketing so effective when compared with outbound marketing — outbound directs you to look at the content, while inbound simply creates attractive content that visitors are generally interested in viewing.
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