Improve your Marketing Strategy: In-bound Marketing vs Out-bound Marketing.

Effective marketing methods are absolutely essential in order to attract and engage customers. Businesses nowadays rely heavily on the two well-liked strategies of inbound marketing and outbound marketing to advertise their products and services. Making wise decisions and succeeding in marketing requires an understanding of the distinctions between these two approaches. We shall examine the ideas of inbound marketing and outbound marketing in this post, stressing their distinctive qualities and advantages.

These two are but two kinds of approaches when it comes to engaging clients. Each approach would reveal how the business sees and treats its clients. Of course, the strategy may be chosen due to the bottom line but sometimes there are far-reaching effects when you start to deal with the more human element of your clients which is if you decide to create relationships with them, with the goal of course, of keeping them as customers as well as for them to become endorsers of your brand. 

The thing is how your prospects and customers feel is a big factor in your marketing strategy's success. So depending on the nature of your business, how you approach your prospects and customers really matters, unless, of course, your business is life essential or you are a monopoly, then how you treat your customers and prospects won’t matter as much. 

Inbound Marketing

 What is Inbound Marketing? Inbound Marketing is the approach in marketing where getting people to know about your product would mean that they find out on their own about your business. When they do, your company then nurtures those interests and guides them toward becoming customers. Sending mass emails, doing mass cold calls, and the like wouldn’t be included in this grouping. 

 How then do companies draw in people and create prospects? They do it by enticing interest and creating value for their products and services. This is usually done through content creation be it blogs, videos, white papers, studies, etc. The hallmark of inbound marketing is its ability to attract customers to a brand or company by using high-quality information. Another way is Inbound Marketing takes advantage of search engine algorithms through the use of effective keywords to put in the various contents where search engine web crawlers will find them and rank them by relevance based on the user query on the search engine site. This is why Inbound Marketing teams employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

 Just to add Inbound marketing is, in fact, the new kid on the block. It is rather new. The term did not even exist prior to 2005. Inbound Marketing as a term and so follows, the general concept was actually coined by Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan back in 2005. The approach prior to that would always usually focus on just getting your brand out there by spamming with adverts, cold calls, and the like. This is the kind of marketing that we might be used to seeing in the movies. This kind of marketing is actually what we would consider Outbound Marketing. 

 Outbound Marketing 

 What is Outbound Marketing? It is any form of marketing in which a business starts the dialogue and communicates its prospects and customers. Also, may be referred to as interruption marketing.

 It uses various strategies and not just online, such as cold calling, sending mass emails, but offline strategies as well to reach customers, such as sales expos, seminars, and events. The main goal of outbound marketing is to persuade the buyer that the product is worth more than it is worth. The focus is more on selling rather than the satisfaction of the customer. 

 Come Inbound Marketing and we can see that Outbound marketing will slowly decrease in being effective over time. Today's digitally empowered consumers have quick access to knowledge that supports their decision-making. Additionally, they have a variety of options available to them, which makes it simple and almost without effort to change their minds. 

Instead of a two-way dialogue, communication for outbound marketing only occurs in one direction. It is a company telling their prospects to buy their products and it stops there. Customers don't always have the option to get in touch with business owners to ask questions about the product or its features.

Inbound Vs Outbound Marketing

 Let us now take a brief look at the distinct difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing. Below is an outline of the major differences between the two approaches.

 Inbound Marketing

Who initiates contact? 

-The potential customer

What are the different ways used to reach prospects?

-This involves the utilization of SEO(search engine optimization), employment of social media, and content creation such as blogs, case studies, videos, etc…  

Who chooses and decides the channel of first contact? 

-The potential customer

How long does the marketing strategy and effort last? 

-Indeterminate. The strategy will continue to take effect so long as the content such as the blog, or video is accessible to the potential customers. 

What is the cost profile? 

            -Inbound Marketing is generally low-cost and is intended for the long term. 

Outbound Marketing

Who initiates contact? 

-The business

What are the different ways used to reach prospects?

           -Outbound Marketing involves paid ads, cold calling, direct mail, etc.

Who chooses and decides the channel of first contact? 

-The business

How long does the marketing strategy and effort last?

            -When the emails are sent, as long as the paid ads run, when the cold calls end, etc…

What is the cost profile? 

-Outbound Marketing costs will depend on the ads you run, the services you employ such as your cold callers, etc. Outbound Marketing is generally short-term so long as the budget lasts. 

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

 While the results of inbound marketing may not be as obvious as those of other forms of advertising, they are ultimately much more beneficial to your company. Below we have 4 benefits that Inbound Marketing provides.

 1. Fewer Expenses

Mass marketing is expensive and risky in the digital age, in addition to being quite ineffective. Mass marketing is like shooting in the general direction of the henhouse and hoping you hit a chicken. Your company can save money and generate a higher return on investment over time with a leaner, more targeted advertising budget for inbound marketing. So instead of shooting at the henhouse, you have a trap instead with a fake worm lure.

Your organization can save money and realize higher ROI over time with a leaner, more targeted advertising spend on inbound marketing.

2. Improved Trust

When you allow buyers to conduct their own research and discover you organically, you come across as more reliable than adverts that obviously tell customers to buy their product.

The level of risk consumers connect with your company is decreased by inbound marketing strategies like producing useful content and utilizing social proof. When a customer becomes satisfied with your product or service, with the increased trust that they have due to them having done the first contact, they will likely speak of your organization, to others, especially to those looking for similar solutions. 

According to Exploding Topics, 92% of consumers trust more friends and family than any kind of advertising. So when your prospects and customers feel less marketing they are likely to endorse your product and services.

3. Quality Leads

The goal of inbound marketing goes beyond simply raising brand awareness. It involves attracting the right traffic and leads. It can attract prospects who are more likely to be interested in your products and services if a more focused and knowledgeable approach is used. The engaged prospects in inbound marketing are such because they are already interested to differing degrees, in what your organization offers.

4. Direct Feedback and Improvement.

Engaging with clients on social media and paying attention to their discussions, inquiries, and feedback can help you better understand how to enhance your goods and services. Inbound Marketing means you develop relationships with your prospects and customers. This is more so if your business is business to business (B2B).

Since inbound marketing opens the opportunity to nurture leads, you can communicate with your leads and customers about your own organization, and ask what works for them and what doesn't work. This is one major advantage of inbound marketing. A study by Khoros shows that 83% of customers feel more loyal to a company or brand that responds to their complaints and solves them. 

Benefits of Outbound Marketing

Outbound Marketing is the classic approach. Your organization finds ways to reach out to as many prospects as you can and not wait for them to be interested in your products and services. More often than not, a convincing argument is made to try and entice people who may not even be interested in your products and services to begin with, to buy your product and services. Outbound Marketing is a bit more blind when dealing with prospects than Inbound Marketing. It is more of a statistics strategy. This requires more expenses, so may not be right for startups or smaller businesses. Below we have listed the benefits of Outbound Marketing.

1. Easier to implement

Outbound Marketing is less on content marketing, which usually takes a lot of time and is generally labor intensive, instead, it focuses primarily on getting your brand out there in the general public. The important thing is for as many people to see your product, as possible. It is easier for you to pay for ads, send mass emails, and the like. You don't have to wait for prospects to become interested, you try instead to create that interest or at the least hope to reach prospects that do find value in what your brand is offering. The drawback is usually with outbound marketing you will reach many prospects that are not at all interested and may find the outreach intrusive.

2. Quick Results

The methods of Outbound Marketing usually would have far quicker results than those of Inbound Marketing. You don't have to nurture leads for days and weeks. The preferred outcome of an Outbound Marketing approach is to sell as much as possible for the shortest amount of time possible. If you pay for ads, you can quickly measure the effects of the ads the moment data comes in. Google ads for example would also provide you with analytics hence having up-to-date info if the ads are having an effect.

3. Traditional Advertising 

When a company uses conventional marketing strategies, it means that it is utilizing any channel that predates digital marketing, including print media like magazines or handouts, billboards, and installations, older visual media like TV advertising, and physical advertising through publications or installations. This type of advertising can interest potential buyers more than those who are merely browsing their feeds, who frequently swiftly ignore ads, because of the physical element of the marketing strategy.

4. Improves Inbound Advertising

People who let us say, watch TV, read a magazine, and who see your ad whose interest has been piqued by the ad, will likely then proceed online to follow up their interest and will likely either land on one of your social media pages or your website. He will be where you have content specifically designed to lure his attention, thus have your inbound strategy start working on the prospect. This act of finding it online after seeing a TV ad or in another medium, usually makes your prospect feel like they made the right choice.

5. Improve Brand awareness

Outbound Marketing will get your brand out there for the public to see and be noticed by them. Though some of the methods used may be seen as intrusive it cannot be denied that it will reach many more people and inform the general public of your brand. If what you offer is for use by the general public and not tailored for niche markets or addresses not only a specific sector of society then Outbound Marketing is for your organization. 

Outbound Marketing also involves what we call ABM or Account Based Marketing. This is another method of marketing where a selective targeting of accounts usually in social media such as LinkedIn is done to decision makers of companies to try to get the company to become your customer. This would apply if your company focuses on a business-to-business (B2B) approach if you are selling to companies rather than individuals.

To conclude, Inbound Marketing and Outbound marketing are different strategic approaches to how an organization would handle and execute its marketing operation. 

Inbound Marketing would rely on the prospects and customers to be interested and show actual interest before you reach out to them. Their interest is stimulated through various content, be it blogs, case studies, white papers, video blogs, etc. Such things they have accessed through your social media, and your website. Your marketing and sales team waits for prospects and clients to show interest before reaching out to them, in an attempt to nurture them as leads and guide them down the sales funnel, ultimately converting them into customers.

Outbound Marketing on the other hand does not wait for the prospects to show interest but the organization or the company proactively reaches out to people and tells them about the products and services that they offer and tries to get them to buy. Outbound Marketing encompasses traditional advertising such as TV ads, magazines, cold calling, and the like.

There are advantages to both. Inbound Marketing is more prospect-friendly, creating strong trust, and is more focused on choosing who to market to. It does not, however, reach out to the mass public but relies on the needs of the customers to bring them to you. Inbound Marketing usually relies on good content to pique interest but also on things like SEO strategies. Outbound Marketing on the other hand is led by the company, and the focus is to reach as many people as possible and not just those who may be initially inclined to buy your product to begin with but also trying to get the interest of the uninterested.

If your company is large enough and could afford to employ both approaches, it is also possible. As we have shown above both Inbound and Outbound marketing can work in tandem, as the medium that they use to engage prospects vastly differ.

So we have discussed the difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing. Now it is one thing to discuss them and to fully go into it in-depth in trying to apply them to your own business and can be a daunting task, luckily, we here at XYNC specialized in Lead Generation and we both employ Inbound as well as Outbound Marketing to generate leads. You can also choose to outsource your marketing entirely. Reach out to your potential customers, contact us, and start your Marketing Campaign now.