What You Need to Know About Inbound and Outbound Marketing

At some point in your research into what marketing is and how it works, you must have come across two terms: inbound and outbound marketing. They use different channels and are implemented for achieving different objectives. It is essential to know the difference between two and how to use them and for what purposes.

Your marketing approach and goals will require a specific type of marketing channel that can be inbound or outbound. We are going to discuss what are they and when to use which.

Inbound marketing includes all sorts of measures and channels we use in order to introduce our brand to new people who haven’t heard of it before. Usually, we do that by putting out informational, educational, or useful in any other way content that speaks to our TA. We are providing value; we are sharing content that would make people interested and make them want to interact with our brand. We are basically attracting people.

We are talking about SEO, digital and other types of ads. Web content that we use to turn new people into our audience members and future customers also falls within this category. Basically, it’s what we use to build brand awareness. But it’s not just internet marketing we are talking about here.

Even though we are reaching out to find new customers, it is still inbound marketing. It’s when we put out content and ads in the digital space or outdoors, and make a person interested so they go to our website or social account. The intention is what important here. Although when we are calling our audience first by phone to find out more about them or propose a new offer, it’s not an example of inbound marketing because we already have gathered some info such as their phone number.

So the example with the phone could be used to describe outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is when we reach out to our audience members when we already have some info about them. Our goal here is to give them more information about our products and ultimately convert them.

Aside from phone calls, phone messages, e-mails, messages on social media can be used here as well.

It’s fair to say that for many businesses their interaction starts with inbound marketing.

Now, let’s talk more in-depth about channels for each type of marketing.

Inbound marketing:

Viral content

Of course, when creating content we want to make it useful, helpful, and educational, but for inbound marketing another factor often plays a very important role as well. It is virality. Although there might not be any universal secret for creating viral content, we want to drive maximum engagement and make people want to reshare it. When an article or video becomes popular, and many people start to engage with it, some of them will want to find out more about your brand. Some of them will become your customers.

Social media

Social media is a great space when you want to be discovered by new audiences. Many features and tools together with huge usage make it very easy to grow the audience. By using niche hashtags and posting relevant content, you are able to get the most of your traffic.

Also, socials can be used effectively for targeting because there are groups and communities where people with similar interests unite. They make it super easy to target exactly the audience you need. No wonder that social content marketing is getting more and more recognition to the point that it’s almost impossible for many industries to survive without it.

Content that ranks high in search

If you approach your content correctly, you might see huge traffic coming to your website. Being able to distinguish relevant keywords and add them properly can bring you a lot of conversions. Maybe, there would be as many people willing to make the purchase in this traffic compared to socials, but it’s still a very relevant and effective way to kill the competition.

OOH

OOH is when the brand is promoted outside of someone’s house. Banners and public displays all are part of OOH. It is one of the older channels of marketing among other ones, but it’s still actively used and drives sales.

Outbound marketing:

Digital ads

Traditional channels such as OOH cannot really provide precise targeting. It’s especially obvious when we compare them to the digital advertisement. There are so many opportunities and tweaks that allow you to be very precise about who you want to target. You are able to choose demographics, hobbies, age groups, etc.

E-mail marketing

There is one thing you have to think about when using e-mails as your marketing channel, it’s where your relationships with a customer are. It’s so important to say the right things at the right moment. Maybe it’s better to educate a person about your brand. Maybe it’s the time when it’s better to send an e-book. Or it could be a perfect moment to send out your potential customer a link to a website promo that they might be interested in, if you are providing web development services.

You can both send e-mail to a single person or you can do mass-sending. Whatever works for you and whatever you see as having the most potential right now. It usually doesn’t cost you almost anything, and with a good level of personalization and relevant messages, you can achieve some great results with it.