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You’ve probably heard the terms Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing before. What exactly is the difference between these two types of marketing, and which is better to drive traffic, leads, and sales?
If you’re reading this article, you’re probably interested in increasing your traffic, leads and sales revenue. The problem is, you’ve got so many options, and it’s difficult to know which one will have the most impact for you.
The same applies to inbound marketing and outbound marketing. There’s just as many advocates for inbound marketing as there is for outbound, so it can be difficult to get an honest answer on which is right for you.
In this article, we’re going to cover:
What is Outbound Marketing?
Outbound Marketing focuses on pushing your marketing message to as many people as possible with the goal of generating a return on your investment.
This form of marketing focuses on getting in front of your buyer and “interrupting” them, and hopefully spurring action from the buyer. Because of this, Outbound Marketing is sometimes referred to as “interruptive marketing”. Basically, any platform that allows you to send your marketing message to a group of buyers – where you’re reaching out to buyers as opposed to them coming to you – you’re dealing with Outbound Marketing.
Frequently, consumers are not even aware of or looking for the product that’s being advertised. Prospects could be watching TV or perusing a website and be interrupted by an ad illustrating why they should buy a certain product. It’s this nature of interruption and pushing your message to your prospective buyer that defines Outbound Marketing for what it is.
Outbound Marketing represents more traditional forms of marketing such as TV Ads, however, with the advent of social media it can now be utilised across digital marketing channels as well.
Examples of Outbound Marketing
Some examples of Outbound Marketing include, but are not limited to:
- Direct mail
- Billboards
- Cold Calling
- Newspapers
- Radio
- TV
- Social Media Advertising, such as Facebook and Instagram Ads
- Outbound email
While we’ve given you some examples of Outbound Marketing, that doesn’t really paint the whole picture. To fully understand the inner workings of Outbound Marketing, we need to take a look at what a buyer’s journey looks like as they are exposed to this form of marketing.
How does Outbound Marketing look as a Customer Journey?
A potential customer is driving on the highway and sees a billboard for a swimming pool company in the area. It might cross their mind that having a pool in the backyard for their kids would be nice, but they don’t think too much on it.
A few weeks later, as they’re watching TV with their partner they see a commercial for the same swimming pool company. This time, they mention the idea of having a swimming pool for their kids to their partner.
A month later, they check the mailbox and find a temporary discount coupon for families who want a swimming pool.
From there if they start googling or checking out pools on social media, the algorithms now have activity that they can and serve them ads based on likelihood of purchasing.
Finally, after multiple touch points, the customer decides to go ahead and invest in that new swimming pool for their family.
As you can see, initially they weren’t even looking to invest in a swimming pool – it never crossed their mind, UNTIL they saw the first ad. As ads kept popping up in their everyday life, they shifted their attention to a need that wasn’t top of mind initially. In this way, Outbound Marketing interrupted the buyer and the marketer found a sale that might not have happened initially, because they got in front of a potential customer with a marketing message. This is how Outbound Marketing works.
Pros and Cons of Outbound Marketing
Pros
- Helps you find customers you never would have discovered otherwise
- ROI timeline is faster than other forms of marketing (such as Inbound)
- ROI becomes somewhat predictable with newer forms of technology
- Digital outbound is measurable, trackable and can be instantly updated live based on what is working and what isn’t. Although we’ve touched on digital above, it is worth distinguishing this because of its sheer advantages compared to offline outbound channels, such as radio and billboard.
Helps you find customers you never would have otherwise
Buyers can be categorised into different groups:
- Ready to buy your product or service
- Considering which company to purchase the product or service from
- Considering which product or service to invest in
- Unaware of need for product or service
With Outbound Marketing, you’re not waiting for customers to come to you when they’re interested and looking to purchase. Instead, you’re getting in front of all of the groups above. As a result, you end up getting in front of not only more potential buyers, but buyers who you would have never found you otherwise, since they were never looking in the first place!
This is especially important for disruptor products where no problem aware demand exists but a latent unmet need does. A good example of this is a former client of ours Alta Fitness. Alta Fitness offers 20-week MMA programs with the opportunity to have a real life amateur MMA fight at the end.
Alta is a new concept and there are plenty of fitness and MMA enthusiasts ideal for this offer but they won’t find this organically, they need outbound-triggered awareness.
ROI timeline is faster than other forms of marketing, such as Inbound Marketing
The buyer journey for Outbound Marketing is traditionally slow, however with the advent of social media advertising and the ability to retarget users based on their online behaviour, it’s actually faster to generate ROI with outbound marketing than it is with Inbound Marketing.
While Inbound Marketing focuses on building a relationship with your buyer, Outbound Marketing focuses on getting in front of the right buyer with the right message that results in a sale, and this process tends to happen quite fast. The speed at which you can generate ROI from Outbound for you depends on your industry, your product or service, and your strategy.
ROI becomes somewhat predictable with newer forms of technology
With traditional forms of marketing such as newspaper and radio ads, it would be next to impossible to measure ROI, because you can’t exactly track who is listening to the radio or who is reading your newspaper ad. This makes it very difficult to determine whether or not returns are being made.
However, with the advent of digital technologies, in particular social media advertising and other forms of online advertising, tracking ROI has become possible – and even predictable. With online advertising, we can track conversions from our ads to get an understanding of what is working and what isn’t working, and ultimately see exactly how much we’re spending and exactly how much we’re making back.
In this way, ROI becomes predictable, because we can find patterns in the data that tell us if we continue running a specific ad, we’ll continue to generate a specific return. While it’s more complex than this and there are new privacy laws which have impacted this, ROI is still somewhat predictable. This is a major benefit for any company as it gives leadership a clear idea of how much they need to spend to get x result.
Cons
- Difficult to make it relevant to everyone
- You’re competing for attention, which is difficult in today’s digital landscape
- Can be difficult to accurately measure ROI
- Upfront investment is higher than Inbound Marketing
Difficult to make it relevant to everyone
Unless it’s digital, with Outbound Marketing you’re pushing your marketing message to a broad group of users. While you can utilise demographic, interest and behavioural targeting with social media advertisements (and to some extend traditional advertising i.e. commercials at specific times when certain demographics are most likely to watch TV) there are limits.
Ultimately, when you push your marketing message out to a large group of users, you’re always going to reach people who aren’t interested and aren’t relevant. This means that it’s next to impossible to make your advertisement relevant to everyone who is seeing your ad.
As a result, Outbound Marketing can become a numbers game, where your ROI is determined by the amount of people you reach and the percentage of those who are relevant to your marketing message.
You’re competing for attention, which is difficult in today’s digital landscape
Since Outbound Marketing is interruptive, you’re finding the buyer, as opposed to the buyer putting in effort to find you. This means that you need to interrupt the buyer and capture their attention in order to generate interest, and hopefully a sale.
The thing is, this can be extremely difficult. There are marketing messages at every turn and corner, and they are embedded into the very fabric of our lives through our smartphones and other devices. When you’re using Outbound Marketing, you’re competing against all of these other marketing messages, which is extremely difficult. This ultimately becomes costly – the more you spend the more opportunities you have at capturing attention. And so, Outbound Marketing can become a money pit where you continue spending money to try and capture attention in a digital landscape which is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in.
Can be difficult to accurately measure and predict ROI
While social media advertising and other forms of online ads have gifted us the opportunity to measure and predict ROI, there are limitations to this. With new privacy laws and concerns, it is becoming harder to track buyers as they interact with online advertisements. The power we have today to do this is far less than two years ago, and it may become increasingly difficult to do so.
Upfront investment is higher than Inbound Marketing
If you want to get in front of people, you need to pay. It’s as simple as that. As a result, Outbound Marketing comes with a cost, and generally speaking, this cost can be quite steep. Online advertising is cheaper than more traditional forms of advertising, however in either case, if you want to generate a ROI, you’re going to have to spend, and this can become quite costly.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is about attracting customers to your products and services as opposed to getting in front of them. With Inbound Marketing, you’re getting the buyer to come to you instead of going to the buyer yourself. With up to 63% of consumers starting their shopping journey online, this form of marketing works quite well.
Remember the different categories of buyers we discussed earlier? Let’s revisit that – buyers fit into one of these four categories from warmest to coldest:
- Ready to buy your product or service
- Considering which company to purchase the product or service from
- Considering which product or service to invest in
- Unaware of need for product or service
Inbound Marketing focuses on generating sales from all of the above EXCEPT for the “unaware of need for product or service” category.
Here’s how it works:
A buyer discusses the idea of having a swimming pool with their partner, but they aren’t sure if they actually want one yet, or which type of pool they would even get. So, they begin doing research on who a pool is right for, the different types of pools, and the cost of installing a pool.
As they do this research, they come across your brand, which has all of this information for them in the form of blog articles and videos. As they go through all of your information, they want to compare your company to another company to help them make their decision. That’s when they find out that you’ve already created a blog article reviewing some of the other alternative swimming pool companies in the market.
After going through their options, the buyer is ready to go with you because they view you as the most trusted voice in the space and as an authority and leader. As a result, you end up getting the sale. To top it off, the customer knows exactly what swimming pool they want, which add ons they want and which they don’t, which makes the sales process so much easier and quicker for you.
There are many ways to implement Inbound Marketing, but generally it involves producing content in the form of blogs, videos, podcasts, guidebooks and other free resources. At RedPandas, we recommend utilising They Ask, You Answer, a business and marketing philosophy and practical framework that embeds Inbound Marketing into its principles.
Pros & Cons of Inbound Marketing
Pros
- More traffic, leads and sales
- Shorter sales cycles and higher sales close rates
- It is non-invasive
- Sets your company up as the leading teacher in the industry
- ROI can be tracked if you use an appropriate CRM
More traffic, leads and sales
When you implement Inbound Marketing, you end up having a positive impact on the SEO of your website, which results in more traffic, leads and ultimately sales.
The factors that influence SEO today are very different to what they used to be 10 years ago. Today, SEO is more about how helpful your content is which was validated by Google’s most recent algorithm update that is literally called the ‘helpful content update’. Writing three customer-centric TAYA articles per week is the best SEO strategy you could utilise in 2023 and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that supports this.
As you develop this content and improve your SEO, you’re ultimately going to generate more traffic and leads. An example of this in action can be seen with Bill Ragan’s Roofing. They are a small regional based roofing company, who had 100 visitors to their website per month before producing content consistently.
In 2 years, they had a 2,500% increase in organic traffic, close to 10K organic visitors per month. As a result, they have more leads and sales than ever before.
Shorter sales cycle and higher sales close rates
As you develop content for buyers, you have the opportunity to then use that content in the sales process as well, in order to increase close rates and shorten the sales lifecycle.
Using content in the sales process to give assignments to your prospects (aka Assignment Selling) dramatically shortens the sales cycle and increases close rates, leading to more revenue more quickly. Salespeople love this type of selling too because it genuinely feels less salesy and positions your reps and business more as trusted advisors.
In this way, Inbound Marketing has a positive impact on sales and sales reps.
It is non-invasive
With Inbound Marketing, prospects won’t ever feel like they’re being sold to, because it is non-invasive. They can engage with the content you produce in their own time and they’re seeking it out in the first place, so it just seems less salesy. This makes it easier to sell and helps you build a better relationship with your customer, which leads me to the next point…
Sets your company up as the leading teacher in the industry
When you produce content and answer buyer questions honestly and accurately, you build trust with your buyer. As trust is built and you educate the buyer, you are positioning yourself as a trusted advisor, as opposed to a company trying to sell a product or service.
This makes it easier to sell your product and service and helps you build better relationships with your customers.
ROI can be tracked if you use an appropriate CRM
If you use a good CRM, you should be able to track ROI across all of your marketing and sales efforts when utilising Inbound Marketing. Since you can track ROI, it becomes easy to see which pieces of content produce revenue and which don’t, meaning that you can use this information to produce more content that generates revenue and thus positively impact your ROI over time.
The problem here is that choosing the right CRM might be difficult for you. We highly recommend HubSpot as a choice for your CRM. Here’ some resources to help you decide:
- You’re unsure whether HubSpot is right for your company or not. Check out our article which helps you decide whether HubSpot is a good investment for your company.
- You’re sold on HubSpot, but you’ve heard about Salesforce and are wondering whether it might be a better investment. In this case, you might want to check out our HubSpot vs Salesforce article.
- You know that HubSpot would be great for your company, but you’re working in an enterprise company and are wondering whether HubSpot will actually be powerful enough. Check out our article on whether HubSpot is powerful enough for large enterprise companies.
Cons
- Requires continuous maintenance
- Large time (and potentially money) investment
- ROI isn’t instant
Requires continuous maintenance
In order to have an effective Inbound Marketing Strategy, you’re going to need to continue producing content and updating previous content to remain relevant. This means that yourself, or someone else, will always have to be working on it and generating content which leads us to the next point…
Large time (and potentially money) investment
First of all, it takes time, energy and focus to produce content that accurately answers buyer’s most pressing questions. And, since it is a continuous job, it’s going to be a large time investment.
Ideally, you’re going to want to hire someone to do this for you, which ultimately means that this is going to come as a cost to your business. While the possibility of ROI outweighs this initial cost, the returns aren’t instant.
ROI isn’t instant
If you think you’re going to post ten blog articles and all of a sudden have better SEO, more traffic, more leads and more sales, then you’re thinking about Inbound Marketing in the wrong way.
Inbound Marketing is a long term game – it’s about producing content to slowly but surely become the most trusted teacher in your space. This takes time, but it’s guaranteed to happen, if you put in the time and the effort.
Which is Right for me?
Ultimately, both Outbound Marketing and Inbound Marketing can have a positive benefit on your revenue, and so we would recommend to engage in both.
But, what if you don’t have the resources to engage in both of these?
In this case, we recommend focusing on Inbound Marketing. By producing content that answers buyer’s most pressing questions and becoming the most trusted voice in your space, you’re more likely to build a trusted customer base, which you can then use as a launchpad to also execute Outbound Marketing.
So, what’s next?
If you’ve decided that Outbound Marketing is your next step, then you might want to check out what we offer. See our Outbound Marketing offers here.
On the other hand, if you’re more interested in getting started with Inbound Marketing, then you might want to check out our Inbound Marketing offers here.
If you’re set on using Inbound Marketing but you’re not ready to work with someone yet, then these articles might interest you:
