With growing competition among the business competitors, you’ve heard people throwing terms like ‘inbound marketing’ and ‘outbound marketing.’ What exactly do they mean, and how far are they distinguishable?
They can be considered the universal marketing strategies (or concepts) that limit your scope accordingly. With their special applications, benefits, and challenges, this article today will discuss the difference between inbound and outbound marketing.
What is Outbound Marketing?
Also known as push marketing, it is more like pushing audiences to choose whether they want it or not. You are prey to outbound marketing in today’s practical world. How? TV, radio channels, telemarketing, banners and hoardings, newspapers and magazine ads, cold calls, pop-ups, etc., are all examples of outbound marketing.
How does it work?
Outbound marketing tends to send a message to a massive amount of people hoping to make a sale. In Sales and Marketing, the motto is to reach a larger number of people to make more sales in their business. Modern technology boosting outbound marketing is ‘pay-per-clicks and ‘spam emails.’
Let’s say you are driving a car and happen to see a beautiful eye-catching billboard for a jewelry store in your area. You might think you have just watched it and probably have forgotten about it the moment you cross the billboard. But initially, it stays at the back of your mind, and when you happen to face a situation related to buying pieces of jewelry, your unconscious mind reflexes back the view of the billboard, reminding you of the store.
And then, the next day, you happen to visit the store and go ahead with the purchase.
Benefits of Outbound Marketing
- It helps promote brand awareness massively through repetitive methods making sure it makes its space in your mind.
- It can yield immediate results for those people who are in search of specific services or products. The actions are likely to take place due to an ad commercial or newspaper, etc.
What is Inbound Marketing?
While outbound marketing focuses on pushing audiences, inbound marketing strategizes on pulling customers. It allows you to attract your products with the best prospects and targets those actively looking for your solutions. Hence, it is called pull marketing in most scenarios. Sometimes known as content marketing, this new concept involves creating attractive blog posts, social media, infographics, email newsletters, and other content that people love reading.
About 63% of consumers are believed of shopping online. They search for solutions online; hence, the content explains the need for their problems and how they help resolve them.
How does it work?
For instance, let’s say you are looking for an online medical service. You would type “best medical service available online” Or “online medical appointments near me” in order to find one through search engines. The first organic result will be a blog post or an ad outlining the best online medical services available near your locality. If it’s a blog post, you might find a link to the service at the end of the page, and if it’s an ad campaign, you don’t have to worry since it will directly lead you to your doc.
Both the methods will indirectly receive your information like the name, email address, and contact information to track you for future use. You may remember putting down your email ID, name, and phone number when filling out a form or applying for an appointment.
These are some marketing strategies that are beneficial for the sales team to boost their productivity by targeting the right audience without pushing audiences.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing
- Pull marketing is non-invasive, i.e., your prospects can take their time reading a blog post or attending a webinar and making their decision.
- The content in inbound marketing is educational.
- Since your website and content are continuously optimized for SEO, inbound marketing helps you attract qualified rich leads and not unnecessary customers wasting your time.
Difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing
Talking about the differences between inbound and outbound marketing, let’s keep it simple for you to understand things better.
Inbound Marketing
- It pulls interested customers only.
- The content it uses focuses specifically on customer needs.
- They are interactive and fluid in every prospect.
- They use several rich gateways such as blog posts, social media platforms, opt-in emails, search engine optimized results, influencer marketing, etc.
Outbound Marketing
- Outbound marketing pushes visitors regardless of their interest in purchase.
- The content it uses focuses mainly on the product’s needs.
- They are not interactive; instead, inert and one-way.
- They don’t draw customers but seek out them.
- They use gateways like display ads, billboards, telemarketers, scripts, magazines, TV ads, etc.
Conclusion
No matter your marketing strategy, you need to always keep pace with the constantly changing marketing landscape. At times, even both strategies are required to acquire results in some large-scale businesses.
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