Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing | Which one is better?

Today, marketers use two different strategies to reach the prospects they desire. In addition, two universal marketing strategies can let you limit your scope: inbound vs. outbound marketing. These are the most typical marketing strategies, and they each employ different applications, and offer benefits, and challenges. This article will overview inbound vs. outbound marketing, their difference, and their comparison.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started.

Overview of Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is concentrated on enticing customers to your products and services. Your prospects are looking for products online and up to 63% of customers start their shopping journey online. They start searching for your products, services, or content that can satisfy their needs or solve problems. You have to make sure that your content illustrates how your products or services will fix their issues, answer critical questions in their industry, or fulfill their needs.

There are multiple methods to do this, including blogs, video content, guidebooks, and more. Each of these content pieces can also distinguish your product from the competitor. For instance, embed product comparisons, excellent testimonials, competitive pricing, and great reviews into your podcast, social media posts, or reports. Remember that prospective customers get thoughtful content throughout their buying journey that is ranged in material but consistent in messaging.

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Many benefits of inbound marketing can let you determine if it’s the right strategy for your company:

• Inbound marketing content is educational: it’s specially designed for each stage in the sales funnel.
• Inbound marketing is non-invasive: Your prospects can go through content or attend a webinar whenever they want to. 
• Inbound marketing is quantifiable: you can quickly connect every part of your strategy to a metric that lets you measure it over time.
• Your website and content are constantly updated: so inbound marketing continues pulling in qualified leads over time.

The Challenges of Inbound Marketing

Remember,  inbound marketing is not suitable for every company. So, there are some disadvantages associated with inbound marketing.

• Inbound marketing needs consistent efforts that ensure that content always talks about consumers’ evolving wants and requirements.
• Inbound marketers demand a lot of time and effort when it comes to designing and testing out different content that helps businesses to attract customers and convert them.
• Inbound marketing also requires a holistic strategy, which means that you have to employ tools that will assist you in implementing integrated, cross-channel campaigns.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing conveys the same message to a massive amount of people. This strategy is embedded in the thought that the bigger the group you message to, the bigger the return. Moreover, it is usually related to traditional marketing, like cold calling, direct mail, newspapers, events, billboards, and radio. However, you can further integrate outbound marketing with more modern technology, like pay-per-click advertising and spam emails.

Often, customers are not even familiar with or looking for the product that’s being advertised. Instead, prospects could be watching TV or perusing a website and be interrupted by an ad explaining why they should buy a particular product.

The Benefits of Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing offers a few benefits, have a look at them.:

• Outbound marketing boosts brand awareness: allowing you to reach people who were not aware of your products or services earlier.
• Outbound marketing can offer immediate results: Therefore,  people who are interested in your products and services are likely to take action on your advertisements and make a purchase.
• Consumers are used to outbound marketing: they understand that there will be ads in the paper or on TV and may count those ads more than those presented to them on newer technology. 

The Challenges of Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing can be challenging to implement. So, here are some drawbacks of outbound marketing:

• To make outbound marketing appealing and relevant to everyone isn’t easy, because it is more generalized.
• It’s quite easy for consumers to overlook outbound marketing as many people mute the TV during commercials or instantly throw out or recycle their junk mail.
• It’s difficult to gauge the outbound marketing strategies effectiveness, for instance, billboards.
• Outbound marketing is costly; traveling to trade shows, investing in banner ads, and purchasing billboard spaces add up.

Now, it’s time to look at the differences between the two.

Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

There are several differences between inbound and outbound marketing. First, outbound marketing is all about proactively reaching out to consumers to get them involved in a product. By contrast, inbound marketing focuses on creating and distributing content that attracts people to your website.

Outbound marketing typically employs a more aggressive, wide-sweeping approach, expecting that at least some people will convert. On the other hand, inbound marketing is usually more subtle and concentrates on persuading a particular group of individuals to buy over time. Let look at the  other differences as well:

Inbound Marketing

• Enlightening digital content targeted at precise audiences, written to help solve consumers’ concerns
• Content is interactive such as social media posts, blogs, reports, webinars, etc. 
• Messaging is customized to specific consumers 
• The all-encompassing approach across multiple channels
• Measurable through digital marketing software

Outbound Marketing

• Non-digital content prepared to grasp any consumer’s attention and documented to sell products
• Messaging must stand out among millions of other ads customers see every day.
• Content is exhibited in direct mail, magazine ads, billboards, on TV, etc. and is meant to be passive
• Linear strategy with restricted channels
• Challenging to measure attribution from physical advertising

Comparison Between: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

Definition

Inbound Marketing- Concentrates on crafting high-quality content that organically entices people.

Outbound Marketing- Utilizes traditional non-digital strategies and jargon-filled messages to attract attention.

Examples

Inbound marketing- Keyword targeting, blogs, SEO strategy, social media, etc.

Outbound Marketing- TV commercials, direct mail, billboards, newspaper and magazine ads, etc.

Audience Engagement

Inbound marketing-Permission-based and relevant.

Outbound Marketing-Interruption-based and usually disassociated.

Brand Positioning

Inbound marketing- You always remain the center of attraction.

Outbound Marketing- Stand out, or you won’t be noticed at all.

Marketing Strategies

Inbound marketing- Integrated, cross-channel strategies.

Outbound Marketing-Linear strategies with limited marketing avenues.

Messaging

Inbound marketing- Educational, straightforward, useful.

Outbound Marketing-Broad, forced, complex.

Distribution

Inbound marketing- Continuous and iterative.

Outbound Marketing- Inconsistent and varied.

Data & Attribution

Inbound marketing- All digital and quantifiable.

Outbound Marketing-Immeasurable and hard to track.

Conclusion

To conclude, both inbound and outbound marketing can serve a goal in your marketing strategy. Inbound vs. outbound marketing is less of a struggle to choose the sole method and more about which way you should spend more of your efforts and time. Consider your target audience and analytics and decide which technique will work best for you.