Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing: Who Wins?

Marketing is essential to promote any sort of business, product, or service. Naturally, the marketing landscape begins to change as the general population’s abilities and paradigms shift. In today’s social-networking dominated world, companies are starting to rely more and more heavily on the tactics of inbound vs. outbound marketing for their marketing survival. But which technique is optimal? Can a company survive on inbound marketing alone?

Before answering those questions, I want to clearly describe how I understand inbound and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing relies on consumers coming TO the business (INBOUND) via interactive services. This makes me think of PULL from the customer who wants to pull information from the marketer. Inbound marketing pitches usually tend to impress or teach the consumer about the business, product, service at hand. Outbound marketing, on the other hand, relies on information going TO the customer (OUTBOUND). This is similar to the marketer PUSHING information onto the consumer in a one-side, often dry approach that is rarely well received. In doing some research on the topic, I came across the following infographic describing the differences between the two marketing styles.

 

Infographic from: http://mashable.com/2011/10/30/inbound-outbound-marketing/

It would seem as though that inbound marketing dominates in this technology driven world, but can a business survive on inbound alone? YES, but only with a receptive consumer market. If customers are looking for your business, inbound marketing will be less successful, In these cases, I personally think a combination of initial outbound marketing techniques followed by intense inbound marketing is the optimal approach.

Consumers have shifted their paradigm to be information hungry, independent, and in control of what advertising or marketing they subject themselves to. Consumers today – unlike those of the past – are more aware of the plethora of businesses offering the same services and use their own developed product knowledge (through inbound marketing) to develop opinions about these businesses. This shift in consumer paradigm can be attributed as the cause of inbound marketing’s fame. Social-networking and search engines only escalate this change as it helps consumers get better and more accurate marketing information more quickly. The theme of instant gratification has translated in consumer marketing in the form of consumer inbound marketing.

The infographic describes why outbound marketing has been unsuccessful with the images below. Even with expertly crafted outbound marketing techniques, consumer will continue to ignore sources of information that are non-value added to them.

 

Inbound does not just include social-networking sites and search engines. In fact, inbound marketing is any form of marketing where the consumer comes to you (the business). The various forms of inbound marketing include: blogs, ebooks, white pages, infographics, podcasts and other content marketing techniques.

What is so interesting to me is that with all of the advantages of inbound marketing, which companies are still using outbound techniques to gain market share?  The statistics below will have you questioning as well with inbound marketing proving financial wins as well as generating leads and revenue with a single marketing source.