Marketing is a growing industry. Over the years, many marketers and business owners have seen how the art of marketing has evolved.
Some of these developments include the many marketing channels available these days, which helps businesses of all sizes achieve their objectives and improve their bottom line.
As the marketing industry continues to grow, these channels have been classified into inbound marketing and outbound marketing as the two major marketing categories.
Often, marketing practitioners pit these two categories against each other when it comes to its effectivity, which often sparks a debate on the marketing industry.
Most companies have fully adopted inbound marketing to their promotional activities, but numerous enterprises have also leveraged on outbound marketing to grow their brand.
While some have chosen to combine these two channels to get the best possible result, many are still debating whether to lean on an inbound or outbound marketing campaign.
But what is inbound marketing and outbound marketing? How much do they differ from each other, and how effective are they?
What is inbound marketing?
To attract buyers is the primary goal of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is an approach where you try to bring in buyers to get to know your brand and your products or services.
It is a promotion that banks on a content-focused plan that you materialize through blogs, social media posts, SEO, video materials, live streaming, infographics, whitepapers, and a lot more.
The use of valuable contents brings them toward your website, pull them over to your brand, and converts them into a paying customer afterward.
A sample of this is when you post content in your social media channel that leads to brand awareness.
As people get an idea of about your product or service, you want to make them visit your site for more information and eventually purchase or show interest in what you offer.
What is outbound marketing?
In contrast with inbound marketing, doing an outbound marketing campaign means you bring out and sell your business to your desired audience.
An outbound marketing aims to reach as many possible leads, whether they show interest to your brand or not.
Outbound marketing works on a more massive number but less-targeted people.
Defined as some as an outreach, you try to quality leads and customers by communicating to them, educating them about your brand before trying to convert them into a paying client.
Strategies for outbound marketing channels include email marketing, push notifications, pay-per-click ads, and most of the traditional marketing campaigns like print ads, TV ad placement, billboards, leafletting, SMS marketing, network marketing, and direct mail.
Marketers who practice outbound marketing reach a large number of people and try to see if their product or services can capture their audience’s attention or spark their interest.
A sales representative who does a call brigade to all of the contacts saved in his phone without knowing if they are interested or not and if he can turn them into lead prospects is a sample of an outbound marketing method.
Choosing between inbound marketing and outbound marketing for your business
Saying one is better than the other without fully understanding the essential factors is somehow biased.
Though many experts now believe that outbound marketing is getting less traction and are now leaning towards inbound marketing more, it is always essential to know the strength of each marketing method before totally leaning to any of it.
It is also best to consider your business’s niche, your audience, and your overall marketing objectives.
Benefits of using inbound marketing
The main takeaway is doing inbound marketing is it allows you to build a relationship between your prospects.
As you provide non-promotional and often educational content to your audience, they develop a special bond with your brand.
The valuable materials also draw your customer at the right time, making conversation a bit easier since they are already interested in you.
This opportunity is probably one of the most significant benefits you can get in doing inbound marketing methods.
This type of marketing method can also bring a long-term ROI as it helps build your online presence and help you rank better in search engines.
Though this result may take a long time to effect, some will have to wait for months while some may even take years, once it has gained momentum, you will have reaped incredible results for a more extended period.
Benefits for outbound marketing
One of the significant benefits you can get when using an outbound marketing method is tapping a vast number of audience.
Doing inbound marketing can also your audience get familiar with your brand. Your brand retention may also improve as you do outbound marketing.
If you plan correctly and launch your outbound marketing properly, your outbound marketing campaign can reach millions.
This result will depend on the budget you are willing to shell out and invest in your strategy.
Unlike inbound, results may come in fast your outbound marketing activities. However, once you stop making any effort or stop funding your campaign, the benefits also halt.
Knowing which of the two is effective for your business
Many businesses are leaning towards these strategies, either inbound or outbound marketing and are seeing favorable results.
Some have even flourished while doing both. Depending on your business, you can also find the right marketing method for you.
In doing so, you have to know who your target market is, define your goals, and have adequate knowledge of your brand.
Knowing the audience, you want to tap is essential. You have to know your audience’s demographics, your niche market’s interest, and shopping behavior.
You need to clearly define your marketing goals and what you are trying to achieve in your campaigns.
Whether it is about building brand awareness, driving traffic to your site, growing your engagement, or gathering new leads, you have to know what you want to achieve in doing your strategies.
If you are going to establish a long term goal and see the result in a few months, inbound marketing can provide this for you.
Still, if you want to bank on quick results and have customers at your door at the end of the day, you can check the strategies you can incorporate with outbound marketing.
Study also how these campaigns can affect your brand. If you are selling fast fashion, you cannot just expect cold-calling to work for you.
Depending on your brand, you need to access the right tactic to make sure you reach your audience on the right platform and at the right time.
The verdict: Inbound marketing Vs. Outbound marketing
While it is safe to say that both digital marketing methods work perfectly and bring amazing results, inbound marketing can gain a little advantage over outbound marketing.
When it comes to affordability and accessibility, inbound marketing brings the cards right into the table.
However, this does not mean that outbound marketing should already be ditched. It is still as useful as your inbound marketing strategies.
While these methods are always pitted against each other, you have to realize that both are two different marketing approaches you can leverage.
Depending on your business and your marketing goals, you marry off any tactic from inbound marketing to a strategy from the outbound method to bring a more effective result.
Maricar worked as a marketing professional for almost a decade. She became part of the biggest real estate company/mall operator in the Philippines and handled concerts, events, and community service-related activities. Leaving her corporate job for good to pursue her dreams, she has now ventured in the path of content writing and currently writes for Softvire Australia – the leading software e-Commerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand. A Harry Potter fan, she loves to watch animated series and movies during her spare time.
