Marketing is constantly evolving. Since the age of the internet and new technologies, many types of marketing have emerged that complement each other or that can become opposite ways of selling a service or product. Today we are going to talk about two very important terms that have a common goal although the way in which they do it is completely opposite: inbound marketing and outbound marketing.
what is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is the methodology that uses a series of marketing and advertising techniques to accompany the user throughout the purchasing process, i.e. the aim is to ensure that the customer is satisfied and not so much to sell the product at all costs.
All this is achieved by providing customers and potential customers with the appropriate content depending on the stage they are at in their buying process and the profile they have.
what is outbound marketing?
Outbound marketing is a set of marketing actions that aim to attract consumers, just like inbound marketing, but with direct and unidirectional methods. This can include all traditional advertising, but also digital advertising formats such as banners on social networks, pop-ups, ads before a video...
What most defines outbound marketing is that its main objective in all its strategies is always the sale, so all the actions it carries out aim to attract the customer's attention based on a product. All this is done through simple, very direct messages with little elaboration that focus on spontaneity, without nurturing the leads or maintaining an interesting conversation with them.
what are the main differences between inbound and outbound marketing?
- Inbound marketing is a non-intrusive methodology, as it focuses mainly on capturing leads with the aim of providing them with valuable content at each stage of the conversion or sales funnel. On the other hand, outbound marketing is an intrusive methodology, as it is based on launching very direct messages that reach as many people as possible so that they buy the products they are advertising.
- Inbound marketing seeks a good communication and bidirectionality, the intention is to have a correct and clear communication with our customers to know what they really need and want in order to offer it to them. On the other hand, in outbound marketing there is no such good communication and they only want to send a message massively to as many people as possible, no matter the feedback, only the reach.
- Within a good inbound marketing strategy, users will voluntarily come to your website because thanks to the valuable content you have provided them with, they will have detected a need and will know that you as a brand can satisfy it. You may also have appeared in the first results of Google when the user has made a search or read an article of yours and liked your content. On the other hand, in outbound marketing, users reach the ad usually involuntarily, it appears before them whether or not they have the need to consume it.
- In inbound marketing you know your potential customers and you must have a clear understanding of your buyer persona and all that this implies. This is not the same in outbound marketing, as we do not know who we are targeting, i.e. we launch the message to everyone, we do not focus the strategy on a segmented audience.
- In inbound marketing, the message is focused on the customer, on providing the valuable content they need and gradually nurturing them, very different from outbound marketing, where the message is focused on the product, the aim is to have a direct impact with an advertising message that talks about the company or the product.
- Another big difference between these two terms can be seen when we talk about the media in which they are found. On the one hand, inbound marketing will always be well positioned through SEO in search engines, and on the other hand, outbound marketing is found in banners, advertising on social networks andtraditional advertising.
- The traffic obtained by inbound marketing is organic, that is, users find you on search engines so you do not have to pay for their visits as happens in outbound marketing, in which you pay for the visits you receive. But this does not mean that inbound marketing does not cost money, positioning involves certain costs that are implicit in the strategy.
- Regarding the timeframe, with inbound marketing you get positioned in search engines and earn a more long-term web reputation, that is, you do not get immediate results as it can happen in outbound marketing, where you can have a worse reputation but you get leads immediately.
Although we are in favour of inbound marketing, you don't have to choose only one methodology, you can use both and get advantages from both types of marketing
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