Outbound marketing is the traditional way of doing marketing. This is textbook marketing that people learn from school. In this method of marketing, the marketer seeks out the potential customers. To do this, he uses traditional methods such as giving out flyers, making cold calls, posting advertisements in the newspaper, TV advertisements, public relations, trade shows, email marketing, text marketing and radio advertisements.
These are but some of the ways that an outbound marketer attracts the customer’s attention. The aim is to create brand awareness and brand recognition on the client base. The method is more proactive. It advertises to people who do not necessarily seek for the brand.
The result of this kind of marketing is usually quick. Since the business is not waiting for the customer to find them, they are taking steps to locate their clients. This means quick boost of sales for the company. On the downside though, not all companies can afford to post ads on the local dailies or promote their products on TV commercials. The cost of promoting through outbound marketing means can be prohibitive depending on the methods chosen. But the rewards can be commercially satisfying, if done right.
Inbound Marketing for the Internet
Inbound marketing is the new method of marketing brought about by the internet. The thrust of inbound marketing is to get found by potential clients. This means doing marketing efforts that will attract people who seek out the information, products or services they provide.
Inbound marketing is more concerned with the quality of information they are giving out. People who already have the mind set to look for products they are selling will come to their website due to the excellent information and content they are providing.
Inbound marketing levels the playing field. It does not require spending huge amounts of money for advertisements to be found. Marketers do the inbound marketing by blogging, guest posting, search engine optimization, social networking such as Facebook and Twitter and video posting. This method of marketing follows by the rule that ‘content is king.’
Optimized Inbound Marketing
A website that is properly optimized for search engines and contains informative and helpful content will most likely get inbound traffic from visitors seeking the information it provides. Visitors will frequently visit a site that provides them value. For instance, a website that helps people find the best travel deals will attract a huge number of visitors compared to a site that aggressively promotes a product.
As more traffic comes in, the ranking of the website will also go up. This means the site will be on the first page of the search engine results. When this happens, more and more people will be able to visit the site. This method of marketing is less expensive compared to outbound marketing. However, it might take a while to build a website from scratch and optimize it so visitors can find it. Also, maintaining a blog or website requires a huge amount of time. To be able to get excellent results in marketing, the best method to adopt is to do both outbound and inbound marketing at the same time.