Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing

Introduction

Marketing is one of the keys aspects of running a business and plays a vital role in spreading the message about its products and services. Outbound marketing was the only prominent method of marketing before the advent of the internet. However, the rapid rate of advancements in internet technology gave birth to the concept of inbound marketing. More are more companies are now beginning to prefer inbounding marketing methods over outbound methods for a variety of different reasons.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy in marketing that makes use of channels such as internet search engines, blogs, e-mails and different types of social media websites. Inbound marketing does not involve too much cost and the best part is that customers themselves serve as sales contacts to some extent. The concept of inbound marketing looks to provide helpful and quality content to a certain group of customers in order to attract them into researching further about the products and services provided by the firm. An important reason why this method is more efficient is that the target customers are generally people who are actually intending to purchase the products and not all consumers who may or may not want to buy them.

What is outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing is a strategy in marketing using which companies use the more direct channels of marketing such as television, radio, print media and billboards among others in order to advertise their products and services. The major drawback of this strategy is that they present information to all consumers, irrespective of whether they wish to buy the product or not. Outbound marketing can prove to be extremely expensive, especially for small businesses. However, in case of larger companies who have the budget to afford this strategy, it can be of great advantage as it will help in attracting a larger audience for their products and services.

Benefits of inbound and outbound marketing

Both inbound and outbound marketing strategies have their own advantages. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of both these methods.

Benefits of outbound marketing:

• Customers are more familiar with it and therefore, they prefer it over inbound methods.
• For those who struggle with new technology, outbound marketing is still the prominent method.

Benefits of inbound marketing:

• It promotes customer engagement and customer feels benefited by the use of these methods.
• This strategy does not enforce itself on customers who are not willing to purchase a particular product.
• It increases the credibility of the brand.

Conclusion

Although inbound marketing strategies are largely taking over from outbound methods, it is always ideal to use a blend of both these strategies in order to ensure a successful marketing campaign.

This article has been compiled by sam g, who is an educational instructor.