Marketing Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing: The Difference, Pros & Cons

Of course, the throbbing question is marketing inbound vs. outbound — What are their differences? Basically, inbound marketing is great for businesses targeting smaller groups of customers.‌ But firms who wish to share a message on a broad scale use outbound marketing. 

However, there’s more! Continue reading to discover the differences between inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing. 

Inbound Marketing: What Is It & How Does It Work?

Inbound marketing is a method based on producing helpful content that meets the demands of your target markets. The goal of inbound marketing is to draw customers to your brand and foster lasting relationships. Your prospects are on the internet looking for how to meet their demands. So, they search for goods and services, or content, to meet needs and address issues. 

As a result, your content should describe how your product will ease their pain points. It should address essential queries in their specialized field. Inbound marketing helps brands to: 

• Drive traffic to their websites.
• Persuade visitors until they turn into customers. 
• Streamline the marketing procedure to speed up conversions.

The inbound customer journey comprises four strategies: attract, convert, close, and delight. Let’s skim each step.

1. Attract

How can you expect people to buy if they have never heard of your brand? The solution is to get people to visit your website. Here is how to do it: 

• Create buyer personas
• Create engaging videos
• Make outstanding blogs and infographics
• Improve your SEO
• Engage in social media

2. Convert

You must encourage prospects to make purchases once you’ve drawn them in. This is sometimes referred to as “converting” leads. Gated content is frequently used as the initial stage of lead nurturing. Your inbound marketing plan provides intriguing social media postings, blogs, and search results for free. 

You may now demand something in exchange since you’ve grabbed their focus.

• Landing pages
• CTAs
• Analytics and reporting

3. Close

After ‌turning your prospects into customers, you need to stay in contact with them and build a relationship. Here are a few techniques to achieve that:

• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Drip email campaign

4. Delight

So, you’ve concluded the inbound marketing because you made a sale. Right?

Wrong!

A prospect who buys from you is potentially a returning client. However, a competent marketer won’t cease using all the inbound techniques once they have secured a customer. So, if you send follow-up emails, provide valuable support, or offer discounts, they’ll become your brand’s advocate. 

Although there are many benefits of inbound marketing, it is not always suitable. Here are some pros and cons of inbound marketing to help determine if it’s right for your business.

Pros of Inbound Marketing

Once you get started with inbound marketing, you will reap many benefits. Here are just a few;

1. It generates organic leads for your business.
2. Inbound marketing is affordable.
3. It is measurable.
4. Inbound marketing aligns with customer behaviour.

Cons of Inbound Marketing

We’ve been singing the praises of inbound. It’s fantastic, and we love it. However, there are some downsides you should know. 

1. Producing ROI takes a great deal of time and effort.
2. Inbound marketing calls for continuous maintenance.
3. There’s a need for a robust skill set that is broad and diversified, including knowledge of social media, web development, and content writing.
4. It requires a comprehensive strategy.

Outbound Marketing: What Is It & How Does It Work?

Outbound marketing is traditional advertising in which a business directly contacts leads or potential consumers, and it’s the direct opposite of inbound marketing. In outbound marketing, businesses spread a broad net, hoping to attract clients. They continuously push their messages on them without understanding if the client desire to do so. 

“Spray and pray” is commonly used to describe this marketing approach, and it involves interrupting a person’s ordinary course of action to grab his attention and spread a message. Even though it is more difficult to measure and less profitable than inbound marketing, businesses devote up to 90% of their marketing spending.

Below are eight outbound marketing strategies:

1. Cold email
2. Direct mail
3. Trade fair displays
4. Search ads
5. Billboards
6. Cold calls
7. TV, print, and radio ads
8. Social media ads

Like inbound marketing, outbound has its benefits and drawbacks. 

Pros of Outbound Marketing

1. Outbound marketing promotes brand awareness.
2. There’s a quick return on investment.
3. It sometimes leads to a higher conversion rate.

Cons of Outbound Marketing

1. Outbound marketing is not personalized
2. It’s expensive
3. Outbound marketing results in low yield
4. Increases spam list
5. Customers can easily ignore outbound marketing
6. Difficulty in tracking ROI

We’ve previously explained these marketing strategies. So, let’s look at what distinguishes marketing inbound vs. outbound. 

What’s The Difference Between Marketing Inbound vs. Outbound?

The following are notable differences between inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing. 

1. Aim

The first difference between marketing inbound vs. outbound marketing is its strategy. Inbound marketing aims to attract audiences, increase visibility and interaction, and maintain the audience until they buy. And this is done using relevant content. However, outbound marketing entails gaining email lists and increasing brand awareness and visibility for people to buy your product.

2. Focus

Inbound marketing focuses on generating suitable content to attract customers. On the other hand, outbound marketing focuses on developing advertising that will catch attention as people go about their day, hoping they will be interested in such ads. 

3. Strategy

Another significant distinction between marketing inbound vs. outbound marketing is its strategy. Although outbound combines offline and online methods, inbound focuses solely on the internet. 

4. End Result

Yes! Another difference between marketing inbound vs. outbound marketing is the result. Businesses aim to attract and retain clients, but their strategies often affect their general aim. Thus, inbound marketing develops content that attracts customers, whereas outbound marketing disturbs prospective consumers with their content.

5. Credibility

Inbound marketing helps you generate credibility with your audience. On the flip side, since outbound marketing disrupts people with messages, it’ll place them on your radar screen. 

6. Audience

Inbound marketing focuses on providing content that will suit the target audience. In contrast, outbound marketing does not have a precise target audience. It creates ads that so many people will see – don’t care if they’re interested in the offer or not.  

7. Effectiveness

Since it focuses on building connections with clients rather than disturbing their day, inbound marketing is more viable in the long run than outbound marketing. Outbound marketing can be beneficial in the near term, but inbound marketing is more effective over time. 

That’s all there is to it! These are the differences between marketing inbound and outbound marketing. Let’s get started on executing both ‌correctly!

Combining Marketing Inbound vs. Outbound: A Win-Win

Should there be a choice between marketing inbound vs. outbound marketing? Certainly not!

To increase your funnel, use a combination of inbound and outbound sales. For example, recently, it’s relying extensively on content marketing is now a norm, a sort of inbound marketing, to gain leads online.

That’s all right. So, after getting those inbound leads, how do you follow up? That’s where outbound marketing comes in. For instance, you can call leads who have downloaded your content but are yet to your follow-up emails. 

And, hey, if you don’t have enough inbound leads, to begin with, outbound sales, when done correctly, may help prop up your funnel. It’s a win-win situation that’ll help combine incoming sales analytics with proactive outbound sales outreach.

Do you want to boost your revenue? Launch an affiliate program, an inbound marketing strategy that has become a norm for e-commerce businesses to promote their products and services.

If you’d like to know more about integrating outbound with inbound strategy, contact us today and discover how Metricks will help you generate leads and revenue. 

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