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Things You Need to Know about Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Things You Need to Know about Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Inbound and Outbound Marketing are two terms often heard in the marketing world today. Unlike some, these are not just made-up words. They hold great meaning in the ever-changing and ever-growing
the landscape of marketing. At one point in time, it was all about the traditional form of marketing, which is known as outbound marketing today. That was the only kind of marketing that existed then. However, with time, the popularity of inbound marketing has overgrown outbound marketing.
Now, before going any further, let us know in detail what inbound and outbound marketing is!

Inbound & Outbound Marketing

Outbound Marketing

Like we mentioned before, outbound marketing is the traditional form of marketing that has existed for ages. With outbound marketing, the goal is basically to reach out to the audience on a daily basis. The idea is wherever people turn up, they should see the promotions of a particular brand. Some of the examples of outbound marketing are television and radio commercials, newspaper ads, magazine ads and banner, and display ads. This kind of marketing is basically called ‘outbound marketing’ because the companies are consistent ‘out’ advertising to gain the attention of the audience.

However, in the last decade, outbound marketing has sort of lost its earlier appeal. People are gradually turning towards inbound marketing and often consider outbound marketing to be overrated.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is comparatively much newer than outbound marketing. The term was coined by the founders of HubSpot, Brian Halligan, and Dharmesh Shah, in 2006. While outbound marketing forces people to notice them, inbound marketing wins the trust and love of the people by making relevant and personalized content. It builds lasting relationships rather than temporary approval.Inbound marketing is also known as content marketing as the basic idea here is to do promotions by creating content for blogs, social media, video blogs, websites, and others. The information should be, in a way, related to the services you are providing or the products you are selling. If you do that, you will get followers who are interested in your business. You can then convert the leads into your customers via email marketing or through any other ways you prefer. Also, if you are really good at providing valuable information and also in convincing your followers, you will end up getting loyal customers who will vouch for the originality of your products and services.

Now, let us look at some of the basic differences between the two forms of marketing!

Inbound v/s Outbound Marketing

Inbound v/s Outbound Marketing

1. Outbound marketing is interruptive while inbound marketing tries to be attractive to the potential customers

The basic difference between inbound and outbound marketing is that outbound marketing pushes information to the audiences, without trying to know if they are interested in it or not, while, inbound marketing produces information that they think will be useful to the audience. If the audiences have made an effort to find you and read your content, that clearly means that they are interested in it.

2. Outbound marketing focuses on the product and inbound marketing focuses on the people

Outbound marketing always focuses on the product, in the sense that they directly tell you all the features and offers associated with the product, without trying to know your interest or needs. They are just trying to sell their product as fast and as easily as they can. The messages here have to be very short and straightforward.

Inbound marketing also aims to sell products or services, but the focus here is clearly on the customers. It consists of writing on topics that the customer would be interested in and which would be beneficial for them as well. For instance, if it’s an IT company that is trying to promote itself to get more clients, they can have a blog where they can write on topics related to technology. At times, they aren’t even selling any product or service and it’s just about finding solutions to the customers’ problems.

3. The budget differs

With outbound marketing, the budget differs on the basis of the scope of advertising. TV ads cost more than radio ads. Similarly, if you are putting an ad on ‘Vogue’, it would cost more than any other local magazine. However, in most cases, outbound marketing costs quite a lot, if your intention is to reach out to a large audience.

In inbound marketing, you do not need a huge budget to start with. All you need is to be creative with your content and you can do it from the comfort of your home even. It is all about creating consistent and useful content to gain the trust of your potential customers. Many social media influencers have a large fan following just by making regular and creative content.

4. Gauging results

In outbound marketing, it is very difficult to gauge results as you are not sure where the sales have come from. You can put a lot of money at times, but you might not get any results as such, and sometimes with very little money, you will see unexpectedly good results. The only case where you can measure the results here is AdWords.

In inbound marketing, however, you can easily check the number of views on your website and the conversion of leads as well.

Inbound and Outbound marketing can work together if you want
Inbound marketing is the most preferred form of marketing these days. However, does that mean outbound marketing is of no use? That’s not the case at all. In fact, it is not about inbound v/s outbound marketing as much as it is about the benefits that they both bring together. Inbound marketing, when leveraged with outbound strategies can get you the best results. For instance, if you are creating good content, on a regular basis, you can also promote it using Google AdWords to further your progress as a site. Similarly, having banners and display ads can also be hugely effective, when done in collaboration with inbound marketing.

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