Which marketing technique is good for your business – Inbound or Outbound?

Every business has to process marketing in order to enhance sale and generate revenue. Marketing is defined as a protocol to reach to the customers in order to make them aware of different aspects of newly launched services and products, so that the customers will come to the business and buy their products or avail services. In today’s competitive scenario, marketing is a difficult and challenging job. With a bad marketing, even a great product looses its shine. Hence, it is imperative that business should follow the suitable marketing policy.

Nowadays, two types of marketing are famous and they are outbound (traditional) and inbound (new one). Both inbound or outbound marketings are far different in terms of process. It is not easy for businesses to decide, what type marketing process fits their requirements. Therefore, this blog throws light on every aspect of both marketing processes, so that business professional can easily select the suitable one.

What Is Inbound OR Outbound Marketing Basically?

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is a traditional method of marketing that includes broadcasting through TV, Radio, News Paper Ads, Email blast, brochure, cold calls, PPC ads etc. This kind of marketing generally requires lots of investment, but minimum effort. There is no standard method to evaluate the ROI. It is only meant for sending the message to the masses without any guarantee of conversion because:

• According to study, it has been evaluated that around 45% of the commercial emails are never get read or opened.
• More than 150 millions mobile users are availing “Do Not Call Registry”
• Around 85% of the mobile users do not explore the website that is showing lots of ads.
• The PPC can also improve the click rate but cannot ensure that the online users have made payment.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing is gaining ground all around the world. In contrary to outbound marketing, Inbound marketing requires lots of efforts, but it is measurable and can generate superb ROI. It is completely digital. Here, blogging, content marketing, e-newsletter, SEO, Social media marketing, podcast, video and eBook are deployed to attract customers.

Inbound Marketing Is Measurable While Outbound Marketing Is Not

There is no standard way to measure the ROI generated through Outbound marketing. This means the marketers are not able to measure the success rate of marketing through outbound technique. However, there are some methods to evaluate the success rate, such as asking the customer “where did they hear about company” and secondly the number of calls that are received at call center. But, they do not provide reliable result and lack reliability.

On the other hand, inbound marketing is measurable. Numerous of application and tools are available to help the marketers not only measure ROI, but also effectiveness of strategy, website design, content quality and customer’s behaviour. Through measurement, it is easy for professional to optimize the quality of digital content.

Outbound Marketing Features Interruption Based Strategy

The outbound marketers first search the channel, where they can get millions of customers and then interrupt them with disassociated advertisement. In this case, only small unit of audience takes interest and becomes customer. There are minimal chances of conversion.

On the other hand, the inbound marketing is a permission based. Here, the communication between audience and business is established through the audience preferred medium, i.e. where the marketers have the permission to talk to audience. Secondly, various queries are answered by the marketers and those answers are distributed all around the digital world. Through the permission based strategy, there is more than 70% chances that audience will become customers.

Inbound Marketing Provides Simultaneous Control Over Different Media

In the outbound marketing, the professional does not have complete control over the distribution channel. The marketers have to evaluate that which medium (Radio, TV, Newspaper and others) has large number of audience, on the basis of evaluation, they choose the medium and prepare message to be conveyed through the selected medium. After publishing the message, next time, when they require to convey new message, they again have to examine the effectiveness of the medium and prepare the message.

The inbound marketing allows the marketers to simultaneously use different media, like email market, SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, PPC Ads and different content strategies. In a nutshell, inbound marketer initiate the marketing holistically. There are various things taken for the consideration, such as

• Properly developed website content
• Use of Proper keywords
• Website should be in good design and reflect everything about business clearly

Outbound Marketing Cannot Provide Clear Message

The message that comes out of outbound marketing can be confusing. Owing to this, the chances that the audience reach to the business become less. While the inbound marketing is about creating the quality content that educate the audience. The content are designed to answer the audience’s query and provide the valuable information. They have potential to entice the customers to connect to the business. Thus, inbound approach has the better chance to bring more customers.

Besides all these differences, the inbound marketing features 2 ways communication. It enables the customers to interact with the business. In contrary to this, outbound marketing supports 1 way communication. This limits the lack of customer and business interaction.

Conclusion

Inbound marketing is a way to make the customer come to the business through referral or Search engine The outbound marketing is only associated with spreading the message. As the time changes, the gradual shifting from outbound to inbound marketing will be seen all around the world because the online marketplace is expanding and the inbound approach is not only effective in optimizing the business, but also it is cost-effective.