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Digital technologies have transformed marketing in unimaginable ways, but in some ways, it still feels like a mystery.

How can you attract users and generate traffic to your website? What is the best way to increase brand awareness? How do you get those users to become brand advocates? And above all, what is the best strategy to attract your target audience?

The truth is that there are various methodologies, strategies, and channels that marketers use to impact users in each of the stages of the marketing funnel.

To know where to start, you must first understand two basic methodologies that exist in marketing to reach customers: inbound marketing and outbound (or “traditional” marketing). Let’s look at the fundamental differences between them.

What Is the Difference Between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing refers to marketing activities that interact with customers in a direct, one-way method. It is a more traditional advertising approach. Outbound techniques cast a wide net with a focus on mass customer acquisition. 

A company uses less intrusive inbound marketing techniques to facilitate the brand’s discoverability to a potential customer in the first stages of the buyer’s journey. The ways these users get to you are diverse: perhaps they performed a searched on Google, and your site appeared in the results due to good search engine optimization (SEO) positioning. 

Strong, high-quality content marketing leads potential customers to your brand through your blog or newsletter. If your social media platforms are active and engaging, they may have found you organically through one of those channels.

Inbound marketing techniques go into a digital marketing strategy that anticipates what your buyer wants and where they will look for the information they need to accompany them in their purchase decision journey by developing relevant and valuable content.

Is Inbound or Outbound Marketing More Effective?

It depends on your business. For example, if your business is digital, it will always be best to work on inbound marketing from day one. In the beginning, you will not see immediate results, but if you do it right, it will positively impact your business in the medium and long term.

On the other hand, if you are a small business with a local market, outbound marketing might give you the exposure you need. Therefore, you can invest in traditional marketing campaigns if there is objective evidence that you can reach your audience effectively. 

This is not to say that these methodologies are mutually exclusive. Instead, both inbound and outbound techniques could be employed to reach your target market and attract customers. 

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Both?

The inbound approach is preferred if you’re in business for the long haul and willing to be patient while investing in content creation. It’s more effective and will ultimately cost less.

An inbound strategy helps you reach a targeted audience of people who are easier to qualify as leads. The inbound marketing approach uses content marketing, SEO, and social media techniques to attract and pull them into their sales funnel. The goal is to put your brand in front of the right people at the right time so the customer comes to you.

This strategy should encompass audience research, competitor analysis, exceptional blog and social media content creation, and technical aspects. The benefits include:

• Increased web traffic and have lower acquisition costs per lead
• Better visibility to the consumer and their buying process
• Unintrusive and generates more customer loyalty, favoring future purchases

Some of the disadvantages of inbound marketing are: 

• The inbound marketing process requires much more time than outbound marketing.
• Content must evolve to needs and trends and cannot be recycled seasonally. 
• It can be challenging to stand out because the Internet and social networks present a lot of competition.
• It relies heavily on a well-defined strategy and creativity to reach the target audience effectively.
• The customer journey can be long, i.e., from the first impact and interaction until conversion. Therefore it is necessary to have a deep understanding of consumer behavior.

On the other hand, outbound marketing focuses on reaching potential consumers with an advertising message about your company or products. Some of its advantages are: 

• Outbound manages to reach your audience when the company decides to start prospecting; therefore, the return on investment (ROI) is faster.
• The traditional sales market is easier and more accessible because it has been around for millennia. In contrast, many inbound techniques are still new and require marketing professionals to have specialized knowledge and skills.
• In outbound marketing, if you contact a thousand leads in one month, you already have a large enough sample to validate if your people, speech, and communication are correct.

The most significant problem with traditional marketing is that it targets a broad range of people, so the message must be very general. In other words, it is impossible to be relevant to a variety of specific needs and challenges with outbound marketing tactics. Other disadvantages include: 

• Outbound marketing campaigns carry high costs. 
• With the increase in blocking techniques, many people label email marketing spam or reject cold calls.
• It is characterized by being an intrusive and unsegmented strategy. 
• Excessive use of outbound marketing tactics can result in users disliking direct mail or push techniques. 
• Due to the sheer number of people to whom the advertisement will be launched, it is almost impossible to check how many people the ad will reach in the end.

What Are Examples of Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a method for connecting with potential customers by providing relevant materials and experiences. Using mediums such as blogs and social media, marketers hope to entertain and inform viewers with content that they seek out on their own.

Inbound marketing connects a target audience with relevant content via natural search engines and social media sharing. For example, a social media post by a celebrity about their favorite product will target a potential buyer in a manner that a banner ad will not.

This more personal marketing approach has the added advantage of reaching those who have started researching products in preparation to purchase. Prospective buyers may run across your product through these channels:  

• Blogging
• Social media campaigns (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)
• Ebooks and white papers
• Search engine optimized (SEO) website text
• Viral videos
• Web-based seminars (webinars)

When prospective buyers click on “contact us” or “schedule a demo,” you have created inbound marketing traffic.

What Are Examples of Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing aims for lead generation and companies that need to win customers. Furthermore, for organizations that want to establish brand awareness loudly and quickly, outbound marketing is the most frequent technique to reach as many people as possible in the quickest amount of time.

Some outbound marketing strategies are no longer “in” (e.g., Yellow Pages ads or telemarketing), so advertising through these media has become cheaper. Therefore, a local business could have a better return on investment through these media than by creating an active social media presence. Examples include:

• TV and radio advertisements
• Cold calling and telemarketing
• Email marketing
• Newspaper advertising
• Press releases
• Direct mail (brochures, postcards, catalogs)
• Direct messaging
• Branded marketing (newsletters, pens, key chains, flash drives)

Inbound Marketing with Interrupt Media

Interrupt media is a digital marketing firm specializing in assisting marketing teams in expanding their channels through more robust marketing automation, content marketing, and demand generation initiatives.

We can help you achieve immediate, short-term results while developing long-term strategies across various digital marketing channels.

Contact us today to set up an appointment to talk more about your strategic marketing goals, as well as your overall SEO strategy. 

Topics: B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Digital Marketing