If you are looking to expand your client base, then you must be assessing the effectiveness of different marketing strategies. But how well do you understand modern-day marketing? Can you distinguish between inbound marketing and outbound marketing? If you can’t, then we invite you to continue reading this post as it explains everything you need to know in this post.
What Is Outbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing is the process in which marketers and influencers campaign for products or services to presumably potential customers, regardless of whether the “customers” are interested in the campaigns or not. In this case, a marketer pushes a brand outwardly by creating adverts that he/she hopes has the potential to generate new business leads and attract customers.
Examples of outbound marketing include TV/radio commercials, digital adverts on websites, paid social media ads, cold calls, and the print media- flyers, newspapers, and magazines. In all these platforms, the marketer buys the attention of prospective clients and doesn’t necessarily get it.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
In this marketing technique, a marketer draws the attention of prospective customers who are actually in need of a given product or service. Unlike in outbound marketing where a brand pushes itself onto an audience, inbound marketing has customers searching for and finding a brand that they feel will best serve their interests.
Examples of inbound marketing include SEO, blogging, opt-in email marketing, social media, and content marketing. Here, attention isn’t bought; the marketer earns the attention of prospective customers by using creative, informative, and high-quality online content.
Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing: Other Key Differences.
From the definitions above, it would be clear to many that inbound marketing is more contemporary and effective than outbound marketing. But if you are a business owner or manager- or a newbie marketer for that matter, you need to understand this topic a little bit better. So, what are the key differences between inbound and outbound marketing?
Campaign platforms.
In inbound marketing, you use the campaign platforms that you own and can control. These include your Facebook or Instagram page, your business website or a personal blog, and your YouTube channel.
In outbound marketing, on the other hand, you don’t necessarily own or control the media platforms you campaign on. You have to pay a second party- newspapers, magazines, billboard companies, etc.- to carry your content yet you have no control over how it is published.
If you rely on spam emails and cold calls, technology has made it possible for people to block unwanted calls and messages.
Ability to turn customers to promoters.
After charming new and existing customers with your creative inbound techniques and then delivering quality products and services, the chances of turning those customers into volunteer brand promoters are very high. Think of a well-edited and informative YouTube video, for example; satisfied customers will readily recommend it to their friends. In addition, Facebook and Twitter posts are easily sharable on social media.
The same cannot be said about outbound marketing: After all, not many people like ads by the way. Pushing unwanted sales onto people may get you a few conversions here and there but that would probably be the end of those customers’ engagement with your brand. Even worse, outbound marketing gives clients very limited feedback options.
Value for money.
Inbound marketing means that you only reach out to audiences who really need your services. These are people who will convert to loyal customers at the drop of a hat.
Outbound marketing means spending money on campaigns that may or may not generate any new business leads. You might spend too much and get extremely low yields.
According to recent reports by CRM Daily, inbound marketing generates more than 3000 percent of the leads that outbound marketing techniques make.
ROI tracking.
If you use several outbound techniques and then make some new leads, you won’t be able to tell which techniques worked and which ones failed. You cannot really track how good or bad your returns on investments are.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is easy to track how well a strategy is doing and how competitive it is amongst other techniques. You, therefore, can opt to only invest in the techniques that bring you significant returns.
And, unsurprisingly, businesses who use inbound marketing report over 25 percent growth in their marketing ROI.
Leveraging the Benefits of Inbound Marketing through SEO Marketing
Modern customers search for services and products online, mostly on Google. They find their preferred content by searching for relevant keywords on Google or any other search engine. If customers are to find your products or services, therefore, your online content needs to optimize the most relevant keywords in your niche. That is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
SEO marketing makes it easy for prospective clients to find you after searching for keywords that are relevant to your niche/content. Setting up Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns on Google AdWords is one of the SEO techniques that will make your content highly visible on Google. You can always turn to WordStream’s Keyword Grouping Tool for help in setting up Google Adword campaigns for different keywords.
Another key technique is publishing comprehensive and quality content on your website at all times. The content needs to be long enough to answer all the questions that your potential online visitors could have, but not too long to bore or exhaust the reader. It should be consistently compelling in order to keep the reader hooked. Remember that if the reader can’t find quality on your website, he or she will find it from your competitors.
The Bottom line
The more the content you publish, the more the keywords your website will have, and the higher it will rank on Google.
