Inbound and Outbound marketing are two sides of the same coin, although they are two opposite methodologies. If you want your company to be profitable in the long term, combining these two formulas is the smartest decision for your business.
The ultimate goal of both disciplines is to capture the attention of audiences and bring them closer to the brand to convert them into customers . Germany Phone Number List But combining them is knowing how to adapt the general strategy of your company to each phase of the conversion funnel . Something vital for users to maintain their interest in the brand and follow the entire journey to conversion.
And we must not forget that people receive around 10,000 advertising impacts a day. Germany Phone Number List A figure that is chilling but, above all, reveals an undeniable reality: the competition to capture a greater market share is fierce.
Broadly speaking, brands today only have two ways to reach the people they need: Inbound and Outbound marketing. However, in digital marketing everything must add up, so defining a global strategy that encompasses both disciplines will mean the creation of much more efficient campaigns .
Inbound and Outbound: their main differences
Inbound and Outbound: differences
This does not mean that at a certain moment its particularities cannot be exploited separately. In fact, at specific moments you will realize that one or another strategy will be more effective. However, it is recommended that both Inbound and Outbound marketing are part of the arsenal of any company.
Considering their differences, Inbound marketing are all those techniques focused on attracting the public and accompanying them through the entire sales process . Thus, their main ammunition is content, which must always be relevant and useful and be adapted to the needs and interests of the target audience they are targeting.
On the other hand, Outbound marketing encompasses all those traditional advertising and promotion strategies that depend on paid media. Therefore, it is a much more direct and invasive type of strategy and usually results in digital advertisements on websites, social networks and even the most traditional media.
Inbound marketing: an organic attraction
Taking into account that Inbound marketing is based on the generation of personalized content of interest to the public, it is also often defined as attraction marketing. In addition, it is a completely organic strategy, since it always avoids being intrusive with the user.
When working with this discipline of marketing, the idea is to establish a series of actions that offer added value to the public, and that it is the same who seeks contact with the brand without the need to constantly interrupt it. Thus, the main characteristics of Inbound marketing are:
Have the user at the center of the strategy . Its objective is to capture their attention, generate interest in the brand and earn their trust to turn them into a customer and retain them.
One of its strengths is the use of entertainment as a means to attracting customers .
The communication is bidirectional , since one of the objectives is to generate interaction with the user to create a strong and emotional relationship with them.
Result cheaper than outbound marketing since most of the value lies in the creativity when creating the content.
It is an entirely digital strategy , since it uses content generated for the web, blogs and social networks. The objectives are multiple, since they allow to work on different areas of a brand, such as its SEO positioning , its reputation or its branding.
Outbound marketing: Goal, sales
Just as Inbound focuses on users and content, Outbound marketing is a strategy focused entirely on sales. Therefore, it is a more impersonal and cold strategy, since it is aimed at large audiences and does not allow feedback.
In this way, unlike inbound, outbound goes in search of the customer directly . As for the content, this is focused exclusively on the characteristics and functionalities of the product or service and on highlighting the problem or the specific need that it can solve.
It is a type of one-way communication where the user has very limited or no feedback (none, beyond converting and showing that they are interested).
As for the channels in which it operates, Outbound can be digital , through advertising on websites, on platforms such as YouTube or on the search network. But it is also offline, being in the media as the press, radio and television.
The segmentation is much less specific in the Outbound marketing, so it is usually more difficult to permeate the right audience.
Regarding its usefulness, Outbound marketing does not usually offer useful content or added value for the user, since its tone is fundamentally promotional.
The cost is also much higher than in inbound marketing, since the hiring of advertising spaces is usually expensive and usually presents a lot of competition.
Combine Inbound and Outbound marketing: a smart decision for your business
Combine Outbound and Inbound marketing
The most interesting thing in order to obtain good results in your entire business strategy is to understand that Inbound and Outbound marketing are completely complementary. The reason is that both have their advantages, but also their limitations, especially in terms of scope.
Inbound is certainly a strategy with a lower economic cost than Outbound, since it does not require a large investment. However, its reach is relatively limited if it is not accompanied by paid advertising strategies .
Keep in mind that the greatest disseminator of content are social networks and, although many still maintain the idea that they are totally free, the truth is that getting a lot of visibility requires paying for it. Thus, if you want to spread the content of your blog on the networks, but do not take advantage of the promotional options that they offer, it is very possible that the number of users who come to see your content is quite limited.
In part, this is due to the way social media owners capitalize on social media, making it essential to invest in advertising to gain greater reach. In the same way, think that more than 50% of users who visit a website for the first time have no intention of making a purchase.
Therefore, it is clear that an effective lead nurturing strategy needs to be developed before users are ready to purchase products or services. Something that is more effective applying Inbound marketing strategies.
A global strategy to build a solid brand
Be that as it may, combining Inbound and Outbound marketing you can achieve enormous advantages. Outbound will allow you to get results quickly. However, it is not cheap at all and can even be more risky when it comes to branding, since tracking audience sentiment is practically impossible.
For its part, Inbound marketing must work alongside the promotional strategy of a company. And although its progress is slower, the result over time is much more solid. Not only because a good organic positioning is achieved, but because using this discipline is the best way to work on the image and reputation of a brand.
How to make inbound and outbound work together
As you may have already noticed, creating quality content that is attractive and boosting its dissemination through direct promotional methods are the most common way to put Inbound and Outbound marketing to work together.
However, there are other strategies that can be put in place to create a synergy between the two and achieve whatever goal you set for yourself.
