Are you wondering what works best out of Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound?
Maybe you have never heard of either of them. I will admit I am quite new to this terminology myself but anyhow –
If you haven’t then I will explain. So Inbound marketing is a strategy used by businesses to build brand awareness. It is used to attract new customers to find your business more easily without too much direct influence.
Using this strategy focuses primarily on the enhancement of business visibility. It is about making your customers come to you instead of reaching out to them – if this makes any sense.
Outbound marketing by comparison focuses on a more direct approach ie. sending adverts to customers. Whilst something like an investment in something like an SEO service for your website would be to focus on inbound marketing.
So say somebody visits your website and clicks on an advert for one of your services that is inbound marketing.
Outbound marketing is good as well but which is better?
Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound – What You Should Know?
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So there are a number of ways someone can utilize inbound marketing. Strategies to help achieve this goal can include social media marketing, hosting events, and even SEO.
In one way Inbound Marketing works as it can be used to boost trust as it reaches out to customers even before they know they need your product.
Undoubtedly, Inbound marketing is a great tool to generate leads and grow your customer base.
In theory, its whole concept revolves around one of the single most important things we should all know how to do as human beings. Which is…
Building Relationships!
So this can not be overstated enough – using inbound marketing helps in building relationships with prospects. By its very nature, It avoids hard-selling a product. This effectively promotes more customer engagement.
As what is increasingly more apparent is that if your customers are presented with content that is entertaining, educational and informative they are much more willing to engage with your business.
In terms of outbound marketing, this could be getting a salesperson to push a customer into buying a product.
Inbound marketing doesn’t involve this. Plus it has a much higher return on investment (ROI) because comparatively potential customers instead are given an open invitation with which they can make their own choices.
So much so that not only are these customers easier to attract but in effect, they are far more open to becoming much higher quality leads. To the point, they are more likely to spend their money with fewer questions.
Which is actually quite strange taking this into account. How Inbound Marketing methods are significantly more affordable. When we consider that it might be something as simple as setting up a banner or a widget for example that isn’t exactly in people’s faces – or even ranking on google for a keyword… In the long run, it is definitely a more valuable asset.
Something I will further try to explain better in this next section…
Benefits Of Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound
Surely for many of us we can all understand the difficulty of figuring out the best psychological tactics to make people want to buy your product or service(s).
It can be a long process of developing multiple sales copies, hooks, and pages until we get something that works.
However, fortunately, inbound marketing has nothing to do with these kinds of methods.
In case you are wondering about the biggest benefits of inbound marketing? Please keep reading. So…
1. Helps To Improve Brand Awareness
It kind of goes without saying that inbound marketing can offer an excellent opportunity to build brand awareness.
If you have a business that has a strong social media presence which can easily be found by customers, then this can prove to be a very cost-effective way to make your business more well known.
Furthermore, when we take into account that more than 90% of online shoppers start their search online then it becomes more apparent how much really is on the table.
Why it is a must that your business website has good SEO, so it will be easier to find.
2. Giving Your Audience Brand Preference
One great thing that Inbound marketing can be used for is to promote brand preference.
What this terminology means is that customers are more likely to choose your business over the competition.
For those wondering how they can make their brand more preferable to someone else’s the best strategy of course is to create compelling, entertaining, useful and interesting content for your customers to engage with.
3. Low-Cost Lead Generation
Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound has one significant advantage. As this instead focuses on providing customers with the information they need to make the right choices.
Therefore by using this set of techniques, it can be a clever and much cheaper way to generate quality leads without having to spend a ton of money hoping for the best.
In fact, this also works as a highly efficient way to market your business.
Putting this into perspective, inbound marketing versus outbound has a higher return on investment (ROI) than other forms of marketing.
According to some research, it is said to generate three times more leads than other marketing strategies. (R)
4. A Great Way To Get Feedback
Something else that can be considered very beneficial in terms of inbound marketing is collecting feedback from those that you help out with their problems and challenges.
By communicating with customers on social media, for instance, inbound marketing offers a unique opportunity to really understand what people might be looking for and what you can offer them in return.
Using this opportunity to gather this essential information allows businesses to make the required changes to their products and services. To better suit the customers’ needs.
Plus what’s more, inbound marketing, can as well serve as a multifunctional tool for building up feedback while also gathering customer data to help build further successful marketing campaigns.
In Summary – Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound – The Benefits…
So, building a great social media presence and offering relatable, high-quality content is a great start in the process of getting noticed by potential customers.
By doing this and giving your customers entertaining and engaging material, brand awareness can be built.
Consequently, if done right you should generate quality leads, and as a result, any potential customers are more likely to seek out your business when their time comes to make a purchase for whatever they want or need.
I would say this sums it up pretty well but I am not finished yet – please keep reading for part II…
How To Use Inbound Marketing in 2022
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Now, So let’s continue, shall we…
Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound Part 2 – How To Use Inbound Marketing In 2022
It has to be said that when we look at traditional forms of marketing, inbound marketing versus outbound has a special place for the way it focuses on creating content to attract new customers to your business and its products.
When we consider the alternative means of bringing the product to the customer hoping they will make a purchase it is definitely much better.
After all the real trick to making sales is about attracting customers themselves to the product.
Exactly why the goal of inbound marketing is to offer quality and to ensure your customers keep coming back for more.
So this will be pretty much what we will look into with part 2, at how exactly you can apply this to your business.
So let’s continue, shall we?
How does Inbound Marketing Work?
To fully understand this process Inbound marketing works to match the way customers buy their products online. This involves various actions to help complete a sale.
These include, but are not limited to:
- Conducting analysis – Here online shoppers will start by searching for information and products online. From here they will make the final decision on whether to continue with the purchase.
- SEO [Search Engine Optimization] – The main goal here is to create content that is of high quality, with the aim that it appears higher in search engines. Being found in this way is a typical example of using inbound marketing.
- User experience (UX) – Another key thing to get customers to come to you instead of chasing them is to ensure that your website is easy to navigate and it directs your site visitors to precisely what they’re searching for. Remember, customers have a short attention span. They can quickly switch over to a competitor if they don’t find what they’re looking for.
- Quality of Content – Above everything else including SEO and UX you must have a foundation of quality content. Quite simply, online shoppers will want to know straight up what is in it for them and what they are getting out of it.
- Nurturing Your Leads – Now this is the real key to making a lot of money compared to the odd commission here and there. Of course, collecting leads is important but if you don’t take the necessary care of these people after then your chances of making a sale are really diminished so definitely be sure to keep this in mind.
- A Brand People Can Trust – This is of course something that is vital to inbound marketing and if it works or not. Sure developing content that helps users solve problems is one part of this. Focusing on the needs of the users rather than the needs of the business is key but in hindsight building trust is what really matters.
So these are definitely the principles to understand but also on top of this of course is…
How To Use Inbound Marketing?
For anyone that is just a tad bit curious – perhaps the video above has given you a few ideas but anyway to properly understand how to use inbound marketing versus outbound marketing here are 4 key points that might help…
1. Make An Offer They Can’t Refuse
Now, so this is probably the first step to really making inbound marketing work. What it entails just in case you’re wondering is locating and attracting your target audience.
You might do this by first asking yourself certain questions before completing the necessary actions.
These might include…
- How do I help customers find my website?
- Should I use hashtags, or do I use keywords?
- What can I do to really grab people’s attention?
In hindsight, by gaining this perspective that questions like this can give you and by taking action you can make your website more visible once it ranks higher on search engines such as Google.
2. Convert Your Audience Into Customers
Really when you think about it – all any type of marketing is – is a process of converting leads into customers.
There is a number of ways that you can do this. These include…
- Asking visitors to sign up (subscribe) for your newsletter
- Sharing a compelling call to action within your content
…By doing so, what this does is ensure that any site visitors that get to see your content don’t just access your website and leave. Rather when they do you are provided with something in return, such as your visitor’s contact information.
3. Seal The Deal
Sometimes you may not always be able to convince customers to make a purchase after they fill in a sign-up form or subscribe to your newsletter. However, one idea to consider using automation.
For example, one thing you can set up is automated emails which can be sent at appropriate times to remind customers to finish the checkout process. It is by no means a guarantee that they will actually take the action that you want them to but the stats do not lie. According to some research, as much as 45 to 50% of abandoned cart emails will be opened. (R)
It’s kind of more outbound marketing really as you are pushing for the sale in cases like these but considering that this is a situation that can be brought about by Inbound marketing techniques it’s for sure worth a mention.
4. Show Your Appreciation
This goes without saying in so many situations but also this is itself an important inbound marketing strategy to take on board.
When you show customers appreciation for them buying your products this is relationship building. People appreciate good manners and courtesy is right up there. This alone is good practice for making your customers want to come back.
Although you can even take this a step further and say something like “thank you for your purchase and by the way next if you want anything else from my store here is a discount code”.
It is something that can work surprisingly well. Saying thanks actually offers a ton of opportunities.
Like asking your customers to rate their experience. If you are very clever this can be a great technique to help further segment your audience for future campaigns. (R)
Just remember it doesn’t hurt to say Thank You and most people will appreciate you more for saying so.
Final word
Inbound Marketing Versus Outbound really they are both great in their own way. For faster results and if you really know what you are doing outbound marketing is all good. For a quick return on investment, you really can’t go wrong but seeing as inbound marketing helps businesses generate more quality organic leads it really is what you eventually want to do.
Its greatest asset is It is not about presenting a business’s products to potential customers.
Rather it is about providing quality content that attracts and helps to retain customers.
Once you implement this strategy you can then use it to grow your customer base and improve your business’s bottom line.
It’s really this simple if you are wondering what the key is to passive income look no further…
This is how you do it – but what do you think?
Leave your thoughts, feedback and questions in the comments section below…
Many thanks for reading
#To Your Future Success a Toast xx
Best Wishes
Alex B. Chivers
iBusinessToday.com
Contact us at chivs86@ibusinesstoday.com
Also, just a quick final thing to share – this content (at least some of it) was originally provided as part of a content PLR subscription from a service called ViralityContent.com – If you need an extra boost of content for your website I highly recommend them – check out their different content plans here<<<
