Marketing is essential for the success of any business, but with the advent of modern technology, many marketers struggle with marketing in the digital age. As the way we interact with the world has evolved, businesses need to keep up in order to connect with customers.
Outbound marketing used to be all the rage, but times have certainly changed. If you’re finding your old methods are no longer effective, you might want to learn about the differences between outbound and inbound marketing — and why IN really is “in.”
What is outbound marketing?
Outbound marketing is characterized by techniques that involve reaching out to potential customers. Often, this takes the form of targeted outreach tactics, such as television or radio ads, billboards, or print ads. Direct mail, trade shows, and cold calling are also considered to be forms of outbound marketing. Interestingly, email marketing can often be classified as either outbound or inbound marketing, depending on how this tool is used. If email blasts are sent out with no personalization and no established relationship between sender and recipient, this tactic would fall under the outbound marketing umbrella.
These traditional methods of promotion and advertisement have been used for centuries to entice consumers to try out a product or service. What’s more, they can still have a place in modern marketing strategies. However, it’s important to note that when consumers are given the option to skip or ignore this type of marketing, they absolutely will.
Data shows that 44 percent of direct mailings are never even opened, while 86 percent of people fast forward through TV commercials when they’re able to. Browser extensions exist for the sole purpose of blocking intrusive advertisements, while phone companies offer the ability to screen your calls for potential telemarketers and robocalls. In other words: relying solely on outbound marketing techniques probably won’t yield the results you’re after in the digital age. That’s one of the many reasons why marketers have embraced viables alternatives.
What is inbound marketing?
Those alternatives are typically classified as inbound marketing techniques. Instead of focusing on ways to convince a customer that your brand or product is worthy, inbound marketing aims to earn a customer’s attention or loyalty by providing some sort of value. Common examples of inbound marketing techniques include social media and blog posts, podcasts, white papers, infographics, search engine optimization, ebooks, vlogs or viral videos, and webinars. Utilizing email marketing leads can also be considered to be inbound marketing, assuming that those leads have already expressed interest and that your correspondence with them is tailored to individual recipients.
Although inbound marketing techniques are relatively new, they’ve proven to be immensely popular. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Global Report for 2018, approximately 74 percent of organizations worldwide said that they primarily use inbound marketing. Instead of relying on the “hard sell” approach, these businesses understand that providing something useful, interesting, or entertaining to consumers will be much more well received.
Why does inbound marketing win out?
Consumers are tired of feeling like they exist merely to make money for companies. Blind brand loyalty really doesn’t exist anymore. Regardless of how long you’ve been in business or how reputable your brand is, a customer won’t make a second purchase if the experience was poor. And these days, the experience doesn’t have to be truly bad to convince consumers to shop elsewhere. Even if the transaction was unmemorable or merely average, that customer might very well choose to shop elsewhere. Because the internet provides so many choices and so much information, it’s up to individual businesses to provide incentive so that customers will stick around.
Inbound marketing serves as that incentive. The goal of a traditional ad or cold call is to simply sell a customer on a product, a service, or a concept. That doesn’t inherently provide value to the customer. The product or service might improve that person’s life (or it might not), but customers need more than an empty promise to part with their hard-earned money. Inbound marketing techniques offer additional value to consumers. The hope is that by providing helpful information, the customer will see the brand as being reputable and worthy of his or her business. More often than not, these techniques really do work. By providing a chance for customers to learn something new or be entertained in some way, businesses can show how willing they are to earn a customer’s trust.
There’s another reason marketers tend to love inbound marketing: it’s cost-effective with a high return on investment. Outbound campaigns actually require a lot more work than inbound techniques do — and they also cost a lot more to execute. TV ads, radio spots, print advertisements, and direct mail can set your company back quite a bit. In many cases, it’s difficult to estimate how much those costs might be, which makes budgeting a nightmare. In the end, statistics show that outbound marketing costs 61 percent more per lead than inbound marketing does.
Not only does inbound marketing require fewer resources, but it’s generally more sustainable and more inclined to provide closing potential. Because these techniques provide valuable content for consumers, they’re going to be much more open to what you have to say when it’s not shrouded in a sneaky sales pitch. In addition, inbound marketing is a lot easier to measure, which gives your business more insight into what’s working and what’s not. In the end, that can keep you from wasting money and delve deeper into aspects of your strategy.
If you’re seeking a way to streamline your marketing techniques and see greater success from your strategy, you’ll want to consider being more enthusiastic about inbound practices. In today’s world, customers don’t want to be inundated with annoying ads. They want to find businesses that provide them with more than just their products or services. By taking the time to personalize in-depth content, this gentler and more informative approach will yield a higher ROI and more viable leads. And ultimately, that’s likely what your business needs to get to the next level.