There was a time when promoting your business meant putting together a radio commercial or printing a sales flyer that promised reduced prices. Times have changed. These days business marketing is a complex thing that requires you to become an expert on an assortment of topics, including inbound and outbound marketing.
Before you incorporate inbound and outbound marketing into your business plan you not only have to understand how the two types of business marketing differ from one another, but also how they can work together to drive members of your target market into your sales funnel.
Understanding the Types of Business Marketing
What is Outbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing is the type of marketing that most business owners are the most familiar with. This is also a push style of marketing. It employs traditional sales techniques such as:
- Television/radio commercials
- Print advertisements
- Cold calls
- Flyers
- Paid emails
- Search engine advertising, etc.
Outbound marketing is an inorganic form of marketing that relies on your customer actively seeking out the service/product you’re promoting. Or stumbling across one of your promotional efforts and becoming interested in your business. It’s considered a push style of marketing.
While outbound marketing methods aren’t as effective as they once were, that doesn’t mean you should completely discount them. You shouldn’t dedicate all of your marketing resources to outbound methods. Using some outbound marketing can help with lead generation. The exact effectiveness of outbound marketing tactics often depends on your business. Pet groomers, flooring stores, dentists, as well as restaurants are examples of businesses that can effectively use outbound marketing. Particularly when the marketing is focused on local demographics.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing involves using a series of marketing tools that are designed to pull and entice your customers. Instead of being a straight-up sales pitch, inbound marketing methods use education and information to help drive consumers towards your service/product until they eventually make a purchase. The ultimate goal of inbound marketing methods is to create a solid and loyal customer base.
Examples of highly effective inbound marketing include:
- Blogging
- Content media
- Earned social media
- Email newsletters
- Website content
- Search engine optimization
- Video marketing
As a rule, inbound marketing generates the best ROI.
All businesses benefit from solid inbound marketing efforts. But the ones that get the best results are the businesses that pair their inbound marketing with a good sales funnel.
Creating a good customer persona is one of the best ways to make sure your inbound marketing is attracting and keeping the attention of your target market. Each time you sit down to create a piece of inbound marketing material, review your customer persona. Make sure that the material provides something the fictional character would find appealing.
Effectively Combining Inbound and Outbound Marketing
While marketing experts urge businesses to use inbound marketing efforts, there’s no getting around the fact that both marketing styles can effectively mesh. Combining both methods not only extends your business’s reach but is also the key to a well-rounded marketing approach.
Tips for combining inbound and outbound marketing include:
- Creating paid advertisements that provide valuable information and build brand awareness
- Sending cold emails that are full of useful information instead of being strictly promotional
- Pay-per-click advertising that drives consumers to interesting content, blogs, as well as social media posts
The best way to learn how to effectively combine inbound and outbound marketing is by getting to know your customers as well as learning what types of paid advertising they frequently respond to.
There is a place for both inbound and outbound in your local marketing strategy. What’s important is to have the correct mix of both, and for that, you need a marketing strategy.
Contact us! Learn how we can help you create a marketing strategy that perfectly combines inbound and outbound marketing so that you can reach your entire target market.
