Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

Marketing is used by companies around the world to generate interest and build brand awareness to try to promote sales.

What many people don't realize is that marketing comes in multiple forms and marketing efforts are subdivided into inbound and outbound marketing.

Although the difference might not be obvious to people who work outside of marketing, knowing the difference is essential to marketers and those studying marketing tactics.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that involves using valuable content and search engine optimization (SEO) to attract their target audience. Unlike traditional marketing methods, inbound marketing tactics are built around the concept of your audience coming to you and discovering content your team has made.

This marketing approach is sometimes called content marketing, but a true inbound strategy will include content and beyond. Inbound marketing is a relatively new term, with its origin being traced to Hubspot, a SaaS company that sells marketing tools.

Examples of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing comes in many different forms, but some of the most common are:

• blogs
• social media posts
• videos and webinars
• podcasts

One recurring theme with inbound marketing is that the content is created, posted, and then left to be found by searchers. This is unlike advertising, which involves promotion to reach target audiences.

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing has many benefits for companies, which is why more and more agencies and in-house marketing teams are adopting inbound marketing techniques.

Some of the biggest benefits are:

• inbound marketing is often more cost-effective than traditional marketing
• because the target audience finds the content only when they look for it, they put themselves in the sales funnel which can increase sales
• content is often more ever-green than running advertising, and blogs, videos, and webinars can be found for years to come, compared to ads that might only run for a few weeks or months

Drawbacks of Inbound Marketing

Although an inbound marketing strategy has many advantages, there are multiple drawbacks, especially compared to outbound and traditional marketing.

Primarily, content creation isn't always easy. For an inbound strategy to succeed, the content has to be compelling to the target audience. If videos are made with poor quality, blogs are filled with grammatical errors and keyword stuffing, or podcasts have poor audio engineering, audiences will be turned off and can continue their search elsewhere.

What Is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing campaigns are closer to what people think of when they hear 'marketing' because outbound marketing involves things like email marketing and TV ads to bring product and brand information to potential customers instead of waiting for content to be discovered in a search.

Outbound marketing strategies bring content to specific audiences through purchasing ad space, sending emails, and other outreach methods.

Examples of Outbound Marketing

There are several outbound marketing tactics that you probably are exposed to, in some form, daily.

Some of the most common outbound marketing efforts include:

• cold calling (telemarketing) and cold emailing prospective buyers
• advertising, such as TV commercials, print ads, radio ads, etc.
• social media marketing using advertising instead of solely using posts
• billboards and other outdoor marketing
• direct mail
• booths at trade shows

Benefits of Outbound Marketing

The benefits of outbound marketing are mainly related to metric tracking. Without good metrics, it's hard to prove how effective a marketing campaign is. Outbound marketing can be tracked fairly easily, especially when compared to some inbound efforts.

Drawbacks of Outbound Marketing

For businesses, outbound marketing is easier to track. For consumers, though, outbound marketing is easier to be overwhelmed by and ultimately ignored.

Inbound marketing waits to be found by people who look for it, meaning they are probably in the mood for a sale or at least more information. Outbound marketing interrupts people's daily routines, especially in the form of cold calls and television ads.

As a result, using outbound marketing might not create the same connection with your target audience that inbound does.

Which Type of Marketing Is Right for Your Business?

For most businesses, the best marketing strategy will be a combination of the two. Digital marketing, as well as more traditional methods, benefit from using tactics of both inbound and outbound. The most effective marketing strategies for modern lead generation involve quality content as well as some ads and other outbound methods to draw a large audience to it.

Pursuing Higher Education for Marketing

If you're looking to pursue a career in marketing, you'll want to start by earning a degree from an accredited school. Marketing degrees can be earned on-campus and online at associate's, bachelor's, and master's levels with most students earning a bachelor's.

Many schools provide marketing degree programs, including schools like:

• University of Michigan
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Arizona State University
• Purdue Global
• Penn State World Campus
• Tulane University