Inbound Vs Outbound Marketing

An average person is exposed to 6,000-10,000 advertising messages each day. How do you ensure your message not getting lost in this big number and is getting delivered to the right audience? When asked, most marketers spoke about 2 methods they rely on to reach their audience; inbound marketing and outbound or traditional marketing.

Today, however, we see a lot of companies and marketers adopting inbound marketing over outbound. So, what is the difference between inbound and outbound? That is exactly what this blog is going to walk you through while also helping you plan an effective marketing strategy.

In order to understand the difference between inbound and outbound marketing, let’s first understand what each term is. So in this article, we’ll be talking about

• What is outbound marketing?
• The problem with outbound marketing
• What is Inbound marketing?
• The difference between Inbound and outbound marketing

Let’s get started!

What is outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing is a traditional method of marketing. It’s interruptive and seeks to obstruct potential customers. Outbound marketing is like an aggressive salesman showing up at your door and persuading you to buy a product. It can be compelling but also a little intrusive.

Outbound marketing uses mediums like television, radio ads, newspapers, billboards, seminars, email blasts, trade shows, and more. In outbound marketing, content is written to sell products and services. The message is pushed to everyone, interrupts whatever content is being consumed by prospects with the hope of finding users who may be interested.

The problem with outbound marketing

The biggest problem with outbound marketing is relevancy. It’s impossible to be relevant and address a variety of specific needs and challenges when your messaging is general. Sending a general message out to a large audience is ineffective as a large section of that audience has options and ways to avoid them.

An average person sees 1700 banner ads per month and 55% of all those ads are ignored. So you need to ask yourself, how exactly is outbound marketing going to help businesses reach your audience and address their personal needs?

Guy Kawasaki once said, “If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.”

What is Inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is synonymous with content marketing. Unlike outbound marketing that pushes sales messages out to a larger group of uninterested people, inbound marketing is magnetic and more focused on attracting prospective customers.

Inbound marketing nudges your prospects down the sales funnel with unique and engaging content. Inbound marketing is more focused on connecting with the right audience while using the right content.

In Inbound marketing, the messaging is focused on attracting and engaging the audience with valuable content without a direct sales pitch.

Inbound marketing uses techniques such as blogs, infographics, social media posts, email newsletters, and more to engage with the audience. And SEO (Search engine optimization), paid search, and more will help potential customers find this content.

Now that you have a clear picture of what Inbound and outbound marketing is, let’s compare the two marketing techniques.

Outbound strategies take a lot of time and effort and may yield no leads. Inbound strategies, however, allow you to effectively engage with an audience that you can qualify as a prospect or lead. 

The conclusion to this comparison is that Inbound marketing is a far more favorable form of marketing as it builds trust and is a long term strategy. Marketers have found that inbound marketing is 62% less expensive than outbound marketing, requires lesser marketing efforts, and is more beneficial in lead generation. 

Now, outbound marketing cannot be completely ignored or written off as a bad marketing strategy. In today’s marketing landscape, it’s easy to find a marketing mix that’ll work for your potential customers. Such as combining a brilliant inbound strategy with an effective retargeting outbound campaign. If you need help with creating an effective marketing mix, let the team of experts at Mobistreak help you.

Read our blog about the Inbound Methodology and learn how you can incorporate this stratergy into your marketing plan and budget.