Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing
In today’s world, brands and businesses are mostly using two strategies of marketing to generate leads and create awareness. Known as inbound and outbound marketing, these two forms of marketing cover a lot of ground and have benefits and drawbacks.
Also known as traditional marketing, outbound marketing is the method that many of us know most and the method that makes up the majority of a business’s marketing budget. Outbound means you are reaching out to your customers, initiating a conversation and getting your message across–hopefully building real relationships with them in the process.
As the traditional form of marketing, outbound includes cold calling and emailing, billboards, tradeshow presentations, direct mail and of course print, radio and television advertising.
However, outbound marketing has become less effective as time goes on, is quite expensive and not guaranteed to provide you with a return on what you spent. In addition, it has become easier to block out outbound marketing thanks to spam filters and such. While this form of marketing remains important and plentiful, it may be time for your business to consider trying something new if it aligns with your goals.
With this comes inbound marketing, where customers discover your valuable content as it relates to them rather than you reaching out directly. This strategy creates long-term relationships with audiences, helps customers discover solutions to their problems and is overall more creative. At the heart of inbound marketing is high-quality content that resonates with whoever reads it.
Examples of inbound marketing include social media ads, SEO efforts, video series, podcasts, case studies, infographics, conversational marketing tools like chatbots and more.
The downside to inbound marketing is that it is competitive, ROI can be hard to measure and your success will probably not come overnight but will instead grow over time. Patience will pay off when it comes to inbound.
And when it comes to PR’s role in this marketing tug of war, we can do both! While press releases are outbound marketing, PR pros can utilize inbound marketing tactics to help create content and draw customers in through blog posts, ebooks, webinars and other creative methods.
Looking to try something new with your marketing? Drop us a line!
