With a new digital era comes a better way to do marketing.
More and more brands are opting out of outbound tactics, like cold calling and TV ads, and getting into more natural inbound strategies. Think blog posts, infographics, and explainer videos.
So, what makes this modern marketing approach so effective?
To answer that, let’s discuss the difference between inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing and, more importantly, why it matters.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing focuses on attracting customers – or drawing them “in” – to your brand. You primarily do this with valuable and helpful content that answers their most immediate, pressing problem.
Think of how you usually find the answer to your question or problem. More often than not, you use an online search engine. Generally, you’ll find a helpful article that gives you great insights or points you to a solution. Then, you begin trusting the brand who wrote the article. Pretty soon, you trust them enough to buy something from them.
This is inbound marketing in action. It relies on non-intrusive forms of marketing that give value upfront to people. In turn, this helps build more trust and is far more effective at getting qualified leads without annoying the prospect.
What is Outbound Marketing?
In contrast to inbound, outbound marketing is the “traditional” strategies and tactics that we’re all used to (and, unfortunately, most consumers dislike). These are disruptive methods like cold emailing, telemarketing, or door-to-door sales. They rely on interrupting the audience to catch their attention, which is why it’s a “push” based method.
Outbound marketing focuses more on selling a product or service than coming from a place of help. Since they’re often unwanted, marketers typically need to spend money to relay the marketing message to their prospects. Hence, it’s often costlier to do outbound marketing vs. inbound marketing.
Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing: A Detailed Comparison
Now that we’ve discussed the definition of inbound and outbound marketing, let’s take a closer look at their differences.
Messaging
The messaging style of outbound marketing vs. inbound typically tends to be in your face and full of gimmicks because the campaign needs to stand out to be noticed. It can also rely on sensational claims or sugar-coating, sometimes at the expense of the truth.
Unfortunately, this tactic tends to ruin prospect relationships because there’s a chance the ad will leave a bad taste in their mouth.
In contrast, inbound marketing messaging focuses on value and education because that’s the best way to attract leads. It’s genuine and authentic, aiming to solve problems without asking anything in return.
Engagement Approach
The most apparent difference between inbound vs. outbound marketing is their approach to engagement.
Outbound is essentially interruption-based. Think of commercials disrupting your favorite show or a salesperson knocking on your door in the middle of the day.
Of course, not everyone will appreciate the interruption, so outbound is largely a numbers game. The strategy is to blast a big enough group of prospects hoping that a few will take notice.
Inbound is permission-based marketing. That means people who consume content do it because they want to. They seek a brand out of their own volition and not because they’re forced. As a result, people have a higher chance of converting with inbound vs. outbound marketing.
Strategy
Outbound marketing uses a traditional linear strategy. That means each campaign and marketing initiative is standalone. Marketers typically pick a channel, run a campaign, and see how it goes. They then choose the best-performing medium, then run an even bigger campaign. Rinse and repeat.
Inbound marketing uses a more holistic strategy. Each aspect of your marketing – website, blog, social media channels, content strategy – is one component that contributes to the whole. To succeed, everything needs to work together.
While it’s more complex to do proper inbound marketing vs. outbound, the results are much more powerful. Your marketing machine constantly sends a stream of highly qualified leads ready to interact with your brand.
Attribution
The last difference between inbound vs. outbound sales is undoubtedly one of the most critical – attribution. Unfortunately, the success of outbound has been traditionally hard to measure. After all, how do you accurately gauge how many people converted because of a radio ad, exactly?
With inbound marketing, analytics is automatically built-in to the system. As a result, you can always measure how many people read your content, how many clicked your CTA, and how many people made a purchase.
The Future is Inbound Marketing
The conclusion couldn’t be any clearer – inbound is an overall better way to market in the digital age. It’s far better at building trust, cementing a company’s authority, and creating relationships naturally. Moreover, it comes from a value-first approach that the right customers will always appreciate.
Inbound is also a great filtering system. You know that the people who respond to your content are already interested in your brand. The result is more qualified leads that have higher chances of converting, leading to more efficient marketing spend.
And the best part is that a good inbound marketing strategy is a virtuous cycle. It allows companies to nurture leads from start to finish, which gives them more insight into them. This, in turn, helps them create better campaigns that become more effective at attracting even more qualified people to your business.
Custom Links are a Key Inbound Tactic
Great content with compelling CTAs is at the heart of any inbound marketing strategy. And it can be made more effective with the right branded link that’s easy to read, compelling to click, and can be effectively tracked.
Try Dev4G today and discover the power of shortened branded links for your inbound campaigns.
