Outbound or Inbound Marketing

Via Wordstream

The trend of Outbound Marketing is the traditional way of “marketing,” whereby the particular company or brand adopts interruptive way of reaching out to the consumers. As defined by Wordstream,

“Outbound marketing refers to any kind of marketing where a company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience.” (2018)

Thus, outbound marketing is known for its ‘act of pushing’ the particular product or brand to
the all kinds of people. It actually is not focussed in targeted consumers. The process remains least bothered about the preferences of the audience, and irrespective of their interests keeps in displaying the product or service in the media sources, especially through televisions and telemarketing. Billboards, print media, pop-ups, etc. are all common sources of display for outbound marketing.    

With increasing account of marketing dominance, the outbound marketing approach is losing its charm. In last decade it has fallen out of gaining favours from the consumers. With booming marketing platform led by internet, people are ignoring all kinds of ‘pushing sells’ and ‘displayed advertisements’.

On the other hand, the Inbound Marketing is a very new trend to gain attention of the consumers.  Being a digital marketing strategy, it is gaining grip among internet users. According to Marketing-Schools.org.

“inbound marketing is the strategy of connecting with potential customers through materials and experiences they find useful. Using media like blogs and social networking, marketers hope to entertain and inform viewers with content they seek by themselves” (2016).

As against the ‘act of pushing’, inbound marketing focuses on ‘act of pulling’ only the potential customers. It is very much focussed in gaining attention of only the targeted consumers. Identified as content marketing, the approach of inbound marketing comprises of a steady way of creating various sources and posts in the social media, blogs articles, and infographics. Other reliable customised creations are like newsletters, white papers, and video content that are preferred only by the potential consumers.

Following the thread of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and paid searches, the researcher identifies the potential consumers and engage them with effective content. This customised mode of marketing gets more facilitated by the provisions of interactions of people with common interests and the sharing of the content in the common platforms. In a way, the inbound marketing is great influencer in making the decision to buy in a consumer.

Effectiveness of Inbound marketing has been detected to be more than the Outbound marketing, as it has the capability to nudge the customers down through the sales funnel of sales by means of increasing their interest and their engagement in the product/service, and brand in particular.

However, selection of any of these strategies remains totally dependent on the kind of consumers that the particular product or service will need. If the consumer in not acquainted with internet generated sources, then the preference of outbound marketing should remain your first choice.