Let's Dive Into the Difference Between Outbound Marketing and Inbound Marketing

What is Outbound Marketing?

"Digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day. At some point, we start a screening process for what we engage with and start ignoring brands and advertising messages, unless it's something that we have a personal interest in." - Forbes

This number is big enough for prospective customers. This method would make one consider 'How do I reach people who show interest in my product?' 'What should I tell them to convince?' Making a lifelong connection and lead generation takes ample time and effort.

Marketers look for potential customers by making direct calls, conduct shows, and seminars. This method refers to Outbound Marketing. An innovative form of content marketing to evoke interest is Inbound marketing. Then what's the difference between these two marketing methods?

Outbound marketing is the traditional form of marketing to push messages. This method aims to broadcast a marketing message to a large number of people with an intent to sell.

Marketers push messages far and wide expect to convert as sales. Print/TV/Radio, Direct calling, mass emails are all Outbound marketing methods. This method is a one-way dialogue that stresses the product and your reason to purchase. This marketing method is expensive and ROI is lower than Inbound marketing. Outbound marketing methods consist of trade shows, mass email, telemarketing, traditional advertisements, etc.

Still, outbound marketing techniques are getting outdated and ineffective for a few reasons. On average we are likely to view around 2000 outbound marketing clippings. Technically there are many ways to block many through caller ID, Spam filter, Tivo, etc. The cost to learn something new is lower than seminars or trade shows is also a reason for the decline.

Understanding Some of The Reasons Outbound Marketing May Not Work

The Problems with Outbound Marketing

General messages with traditional marketing messages circulate to a large number of people. In short regular marketing messages lack depth and personalized needs to engage customers.

Some of the reason why Outbound marketing techniques fail to captivate interest are:

  • 60% of TV viewers watch shows in downloaded format with no advertisements. Increasing online streaming nullifies TV medium to telecast advertisements.
  • Satellite radio and digital music are widely sorted among people to avoid radio. Digital music applications have more users compared to radio to recognize the decline.
  • Direct mails rarely read and few are marked as spam to avoid receiving further emails. So, direct mails also lack an earlier impact.
  • On average a person views only half of the 1700 odd banner ads and ignores the rest.
  • Around 120 are emailed to the public using the ad block feature is$ 2.12 billion in 2027.
  • Broadcasting messages are no longer an efficient mode of communication. User has alternatives to block and avoid them as Outbound Marketing is not efficient.

There are many differences between inbound and outbound marketing.

Outbound Brand Positioning

In Outbound marketing, you are not central, but rather a footnote. Your marketing technique is to grab attention in any intrusive manner. It is not a value-based relationship.

Inbound Brand Positioning

Inbound marketing makes you the main speaker and story. This approach is about creating and designing great content for your target audience. The content narrates a story. It speaks directly to the audience. It kindles an interest in them. Contents converse quite the way the audience likes to listen and engage them. Inbound marketing attracts, engage, and delights audiences with great content.

When implemented Inbound Marketing can open new channels of distribution to release content. You can post new content with precision to targeted influencers and followers.

We will look at some inbound vs outbound marketing examples too here.

Outbound Audience Engagement

Outbound marketing is an intrusive form of marketing. The method involves broadcasting periodically a general message to a large crowd. People are interrupted with a disjoint advertisement with an intent to convert as leads. The smaller percentage of conversion is not worth the effort and cost.

Outbound Marketing Examples: Newspaper, Radio, TV, direct mail, Signage, etc

Inbound Audience Engagement

Inbound marketing offers a personalized experience to the user to get to know about products. This website and content are designed to naturally attract customers during the search. Inbound marketing is permission-based marketing to create awareness and later conversion. Two main instances of inbound marketing are:

  • Initially communicate through mediums in which permission granted by the user
  • Secondly, answer the queries of the visitors and augment those answers for discussions.

Both these instances are permission-based and the user has subscribed for communications. Inbound Marketing Examples: Subscription-based email marketing, social media, blog subscribers, webinar attendees, etc.

Outbound Marketing Strategy

The method involved in outbound marketing is linear. The medium of marketing avenues is Radio, TV, Direct Call, trade shows, etc.

Using linear strategy, you assess the medium which addressed the target audience. You tend to spend more money on the highest number of audiences delivered medium. Then the marketing team creates a general message to this audience and waits for the next action. This method is time-consuming and will not help to bring a higher conversion rate.

Inbound Marketing Strategy

The inbound strategy approach is comprehensive. The method is tedious as it is simultaneous, continuous, and also efficient.

  • It uses all digital channels to publish high-quality content
  • Work continuously to strengthen the website with powerful content
  • Develop and publish new effective content
  • Implement tools to gauge the efficiency of each content and success rate
Why Transform Your Marketing from Outbound to Inbound

Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing

Outbound marketing searches for people to know whether the product interests. E.g. door to door sales, marketer reaching out to someone to know test whether they convert as a lead.

Inbound marketing is a different strategy to create brand awareness and educate customers. This method evokes interest among customers to gravitate towards your products or services. Customer develops interest and visits website to gather more information about the brand.

Outbound strategies are time and effort consuming results in fewer leads or no leads. Inbound strategy engages the audience with its content that converts as a prospective lead. The outbound strategy is equal to shooting in the dark missing the target.

Inbound marketing connects to customers who are interested in your products. This positively increases conversion rates and is preferred.