Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Understanding the Difference

From traditional marketing strategies like TV and print advertising to innovative digital approaches, there are more ways than ever for your business to reach new customers. And with the average Australian consuming 6 hours of digital content every day, that adds up to a prime opportunity to capture their attention.

But there are challenges, too. Australians’ trust in advertising is lower than the global average, and they’re more likely to think adverts are low-quality. In this environment, how do you cut through the noise and get your message across?

Inbound and outbound marketing are two key approaches to focusing your marketing efforts and getting your business noticed. By understanding how they work and what makes them effective, you’ll be able to develop a marketing strategy that outpaces the competition.

Differences Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing

There are a number of key differences between inbound and outbound marketing, but the underlying contrast is simple:

• Outbound marketing is about actively reaching out to customers and showcasing what your business is offering.

• Inbound marketing is about encouraging customers to come to you by providing engaging or useful content.

In the table below, we’ve summarised the key differences between the two approaches. You can also read on below for an in-depth breakdown of the two strategies, including the benefits and challenges of each.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is all about getting your message in front of as many potential customers as possible. Its main focus is on paid advertising, and it usually leverages more “traditional” marketing channels, such as print, TV and out-of-home (OOH).

Outbound marketing is often “linear” – it mostly uses a one-to-many approach in which you address a single message to a large number of people at once. This can be a highly efficient method, but it does rely on you finding the right message to use – and choosing the right channel to share it on.

With this in mind, your outbound marketing strategy should focus on communicating as powerfully and effectively as possible the benefits your business offers. By sharing these benefits with the widest possible audience, you can maximise the number of new customers you’ll be able to attract.

Examples of Outbound Marketing

• TV and print advertising
• Billboards
• Press releases
• Digital display ads
• Video ads
• Cold calling

Benefits of Outbound Marketing

• Reach a wide audience. Outbound approaches allow you to actively push your message out to a large number of potential customers at once. In some traditional channels, such as TV or print advertising, you can potentially reach millions of people with a single advertisement.

• Immediate results. Once your outbound strategy is underway, you should see a near-instant impact – an immediate flow of new leads to your business, for instance, or a noticeable increase in order numbers.

• Simpler to manage. Because of its one-to-many approach, you can focus your marketing efforts on producing a small number of powerful messages to share with potential customers. While this is certainly not easy, it requires less consistent oversight and monitoring than inbound strategies.

• Effective in isolation. Unlike inbound marketing, outbound can work well by using just a small number of channels. Moreover, it’s less important to ensure that each channel is working in an integrated way – many outbound activations will lead directly to sales without further nurturing.

Challenges of Outbound Marketing

• High upfront costs. The downside of targeting larger audiences is the sheer cost of doing so. While getting your business in front of millions of customers at once might sound great, it will come with a serious price tag. Even smaller-scale efforts, such as cold calling or streaming video on demand (SVOD) ads, can be relatively expensive if you don’t adopt the right techniques for success.

• Less targeted. Larger audiences aren’t just more expensive to reach – they’re also more likely to include people who simply aren’t interested in your services. By the same token, it is harder to tailor your message to the specific needs or pain points of your audience, so you may find it harder to achieve a strong return on ad spend (ROAS).

• Interruptive. Your outbound marketing efforts will usually reach people when they’re busy doing something else – watching a video, reading an article, or just going about their day. As a result, they may be frustrated by the interruption and less inclined to pay attention to your offering. However, there are ways to mitigate this – effective scripting for your cold calls, for instance.
• Hard to measure. For non-digital channels, in particular, it can be very difficult to tie specific conversions to a particular outbound activation. While you can be fairly confident that an upsurge in new customers is likely the result of the prominent trade advert you ran last week, you won’t have the kind of granular data that inbound efforts can bring.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy for attracting prospective customers by offering them something they need. 

Perhaps they’re looking for information or a solution to some pressing problem, or maybe they’re trying to find news on new developments in your industry. By providing what your prospective customers are looking for, you can encourage them to start engaging with your brand and educate them about your products or services.

For this reason, inbound marketing is usually focused on content. This can be anything from in-depth blog posts and engaging podcasts to helpful guides or even just entertaining social media posts. Whichever approach you take, your goal is to generate marketing material that delivers real value to those who encounter it.

Of course, this isn’t about giving things away for free. Your overall aim is to turn these initial engagements into deeper interactions that ultimately lead to sales – by funnelling people from a blog post to a product demo, for instance. For this reason, inbound marketing requires a highly coordinated, multi-channel approach to be effective.

Examples of Inbound Marketing

• Blog posts
• Social media content
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• Webinars

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

• Interested audience. The key premise of inbound marketing is that the audience is actively seeking what you’re offering, whether that’s a helpful explanation of a complex topic or an in-depth analysis of an emerging trend. That means they’re more likely to take an interest in your offering and engage positively with your business from the outset.

• Lasting impact. Your inbound content can continue to generate new leads for months or even years to come – all with no additional cost or effort on your part. As a result, the long-term return on your investment (ROI) for inbound marketing can be particularly strong.

• Building trust. By providing useful and reliable information for prospective customers, inbound marketing helps your company position itself as a trusted source within your industry. The overall boost to your brand can help attract and engage new customers even without them directly interacting with your inbound activities.

• Cost-effective. Most inbound channels are not pay-to-play – there’s no direct cost for adding a blog to your website or posting company videos to YouTube. That means the up-front costs of an inbound strategy are relatively low, and you can get started without needing to commit to a substantial budget.

Challenges of Inbound Marketing

• Lack of immediate results. Many inbound channels will take time to show a clear impact on your business. A blog strategy to target key search terms, for instance, can take upwards of six months to start ranking well on Google and driving traffic to your website. To see success with inbound marketing, you need to be committed for the long term.

• Requires coordinated strategy. Your inbound efforts will likely not work in isolation. Not only do you need to put consistent effort into producing regular content for the channels you’re targeting, but you’ll also need a connected, cross-channel approach to turn those initial visitors into customers. 

• Significant competition. If you want to attract customers through inbound marketing, you’ll need to deliver high-quality content that genuinely stands out. But that’s easier said than done. There are 70 million new blog posts published each month on WordPress alone and more than 100,000 new podcast episodes released every three days. Getting your content noticed is harder than ever, and it could well require serious time and effort.

• Changing demands. The kinds of content that audiences are looking for are constantly changing – witness the recent boom in short-form video. By the same token, platforms like Google or Instagram are constantly updating their algorithms and changing how users find new content. If you want to secure ongoing success, you’ll need to find ways to stay ahead of these shifting requirements.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Which is Right for Your Business?

You should now have a clear sense of the difference between inbound and outbound marketing, as well as the pros and cons of each. But which approach is right for your business?

The first thing to stress is that you don’t have to choose one or the other. Inbound and outbound marketing strategies can be directly complementary. For instance, you might use paid ads to encourage sign-ups to your upcoming webinar. Or you could follow-up on a prospect downloading your latest white paper with a targeted sales call.

Alternatively, you may want to begin with one approach before expanding to include the other. If budget is a concern, starting with blog posts, an email newsletter or a monthly podcast can allow you to get going with a limited initial outlay. Once you start to see success, you can add some paid approaches into your marketing mix.

Whichever route you choose, it’s essential that you find the right tools for the job. If you’re adopting an outbound strategy focused on cold calling, for instance, you’ll want to use software that offers progressive dialling, which can make your process significantly more efficient. This is particularly important for small businesses, where a streamlined and cost-effective approach is paramount.

MaxContact Powers Your Inbound and Outbound Communications

Finding impactful ways to reach new customers is more essential than ever. By making effective use of inbound and outbound marketing strategies, you can generate brand awareness, attract new leads, and build your business for the long term.

But if you want to see ongoing success, you’ll need to leverage cutting-edge tools. At MaxContact, we provide an advanced customer engagement platform that can transform the way you reach out to new and existing customers. With a range of advanced automation, workforce management and business analytics tools at your disposal, you’ll be well-placed to get your message across.

To learn more, book a free demo today.