Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing: What’s the Difference?

You might have heard of inbound and outbound marketing, more so if you work in the industry. But have you ever stopped to wonder what they are and how they differ? Which one would work best for your business, or for the company you’re working for? To answer that, we first need to know what inbound and outbound marketing is and what the main differences are between the two. With that in mind, let’s get into it.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing involves prospective customers finding your website or blog organically. They should then make contact with you based on that. Inbound marketing is when the customer finds your business organically and not through the use of unexpected cold calls or spammy emails. 

Inbound marketing is used to pull customers in through the use of content marketing and optimisation. It provides website visitors with useful, relevant and engaging content. It also aims to educate your audience about what you do or the process you follow to get the job done. 

Essentially, it aims to build trust between yourself and your customers, as well as a rapport. As such, inbound marketing works to build a long-term, loyal customer base and not lots of one-time purchasers. In order to understand inbound marketing more, together with what it aims to achieve, let’s take a look at the three stages of inbound marketing:

What are the three stages of inbound marketing?

1. Attract – rather than pushing your services and products to your customers, inbound marketing will focus on trying to draw people to a company brand and ideology. This is most often done through optimised content and exposure on social media. Once customers are attracted and drawn in, you can move on to the next stages
2. Engage – this is the stage where helpful and relevant content is provided. This usually aims to educate customers, as well as being the stage where trust is built between the business and the consumer. Therefore, you’re more likely to gain long-term customers rather than one-off purchasers
3. Delight – the final step in inbound marketing, it aims to transform customers into advocates. It does this by providing a unique experience that goes above and beyond, to the point where customer satisfaction can go no further. Essentially, it’s the acquisition of happy customers, which is every business’ ultimate goal

What is outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing isn’t nearly as in-depth or devised as inbound marketing. It cannot be broken down into different stages, because outbound marketing is more of a direct marketing tactic. Outbound marketing is simple. It involves pushy advertising campaigns and pushy marketing techniques. 

Outbound marketing can include nuisance adverts, cold calls, relentless emails and even trade shows, with salespeople on every corner ready to collar anyone and everyone that walks by. Typically, businesses looking to build a good reputation, and maintain their image, will avoid using outbound marketing techniques, instead opting for inbound marketing as a way to build a rapport and generate trust between themselves and their customers. 

Outbound marketing, however, does have some advantages. It’s a great way of reaching thousands of people at once, more so if you’re a large business with a vast and preexisting customer base already. It’s definitely a time saver in terms of the effective marketing techniques available. It can also provide a very quick turnaround and fast conversion rates. 

However, with outbound marketing, the rate at which those conversions happen can ebb and flow, so it can be difficult to spot trends and do some data analysis. Having said that, outbound marketing isn’t popular with consumers. 

It interrupts people, generally, while they’re doing something they enjoy, like watching YouTube videos, streaming films or television programmes, playing games online and even reading magazines or newspapers. It can be disruptive and annoying, which is why most companies, especially smaller ones, will steer clear from outbound marketing, to an extent.

What’s the difference between inbound & outbound marketing?

The fundamental difference between inbound and outbound marketing is the way in which your audience is reached from the outset. While inbound marketing prioritises your customers, their experience and their trust, outbound marketing relies on quick and cut-throat tactics to reach out to their customers, such as cold calling, relentless adverts or even trade shows. Ultimately, inbound marketing is more personal, whereas outbound marketing is very much fixated on getting the job done, no matter what it takes. But which one should you be using when marketing your business and drawing customers in? Let’s take a closer look.

Inbound vs. outbound marketing: which method is right for your business? 

The answer to this is that you should be using a combination of the two. Marketing needs to be pushy in order to gain exposure, but there are certain ways of directly marketing your company without using nuisance tactics, like cold calling. This is where social media comes into play. Social media can be used to push what you want on your customers, mainly because they’re already been attracted and have become engaged in the content you’re putting out there. 

Outbound marketing should be implemented well after the inbound tactics have been put in place and successfully executed. This is so that trust and loyalty can be gained initially, but advertising can still be gently pushed once you’ve got them in the net, so to speak. So to answer to the question, both inbound and outbound marketing should be used, but in balance with one another.

Kumo is a dedicated digital marketing agency with over two decades of experience in the industry to draw upon. We have a specialist team of marketers on hand to deliver sterling services, including SEO, PPC, content writing, website design and more. If you’re looking to propel your business into the spotlight, setting you apart from your competitors, then get in touch with a member of our friendly, knowledgeable team today – we’re always pleased to hear from you.