Inbound Vs Outbound Marketing Channels
In this article, we will discuss both inbound and outbound marketing, as well as their key channels, which are the core line of distinction.
Table of Contents
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is defined as a form of outreach, where the goal is to attract buyers who are new to the brand, through engaging, informative and value adding content, based on the stage of buying journey.
Web content and SEO, Social media marketing and advertising (both digital and outdoor) are close channels of inbound marketing. While out-door advertising is referred to by some ad outbound, this usually comes from a misunderstanding of the function. Any channel that ‘attracts’ unknown customers such that they enquire about your products and services, rather than you going after them individually (which can only happen if you have prior information on the prospect), is an inbound marketing method.
What is Outbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing is defined as a form of outreach, where you already have some information on the customer, hence are not fully unknown, and the goal is to reach out, communicate, educate and convert them into qualified leads/ customers.
Examples of outbound include lead qualification calling (you have their name and number at the least), email marketing (mass or one-to-one), appointment booking for sales teams (branches into sales-enablement, but still very much part of outbound marketing), mobile push notifications, SMS marketing etc.
According to Hubspot’s 2018 State of Marketing report, 74% of global organizations say that inbound is their ‘primary’ approach to marketing.
Inbound Vs Outbound Marketing Channels
Key Channels of Inbound Marketing
There are various channels of inbound marketing that are used independently or collaboratively for more effectiveness. Here are the key channels of inbound marketing.
1. Web content with virality factor
First- when we say web content, we mean informative pages, blogs and articles. When it comes to inbound marketing, the virality factor of content is key to driving shares and setting up a snowballing effect- be it social media posts. In other words, organic word-of-mouth, both digital and offline, are key to establishing an inbound flow of traffic.
For example, let’s say one of your videos or articles became very popular among a certain set of readers and went viral. Among these new readers, some percentage will connect with your brand and visit your site for content or better yet, product purchases.
2. Web content with search-ranking factor
One way to build sustained traffic with least ROI (when done right), is creating content that is capable of ranking in top positions (at least Page 1) in Google for target keywords. If the keyword rankings of these content pieces can be maintained, you can guarantee sustained traffic from these pages.
Text is the primary mode of search traffic currently, although videos are increasingly part of search results even on Google’s primary results pages. The scope is enormous for companies that can hire really good search optimizers and writers.
For example, Martech Advisor ranks for pretty much every advertising tech related keyword in Page 1. As a result, we can depend on these pages to definitely source a certain amount of traffic every month, reliably.
Search is also by far the biggest source of traffic for any site. All businesses today understand that paid traffic (especially unfiltered traffic) can never be used as a sustainable model, since traffic comes to a halt once your spending stops. Organic search on the other hand, is an evergreen source of traffic, which can deliver with little maintenance/ content update cost.
3. Social media posts, hashtags and groups
Social media is a great place for filtered traffic through dedicated groups and hashtags. In other words, social traffic will not be as voluminous like search, it still carries quality intent for conversions. In other words, you may get 5 rather than 100 users, but these 5 users will still have much higher conversion ratio and ROI than outbound channels.
Social media groups are particularly a good source of targeted inbound campaigning, since we know the context and interest of people in these groups. For instance, if you own a CMS SaaS product, you will find much better returns from posting in dedicated groups of users who are already interested in content management and are involved in publishing and managing content, than just a general timeline post which will most likely be lost in the air of the web. Groups are also a great more gain targeted followers who are more likely to buy your products/ services.
Despite being named as an intrusive, aggressive, and carpet-bombing approach to marketing, outbound marketing is an effective strategy to market to the maximum section of a target demographic, especially when the cost of targeted messaging may be more.
4. OOH and DOOH
Out of home (OOH) and digital out of home (DOOH) advertising include roadside banners, public digital displays, public internet kiosks etc. OOH is the traditional print advertising, whereas DOOH is ofcourse the digitized version of the same channels, both in terms of display as well as buying and selling of these ad spaces.
DOOH is just the upgrade of OOH and has recently gained significant growth momentum. According to Statistica, DOOH ad spend in the US is expected to expand from $ 3.5 Billion in 2019 to $ 5.2 Billion by 2023. Entertainment, telecom, food and beverages, digital products are amongst the top outdoor advertising spenders today.
Learn More: What Is Outbound Marketing? Definition, Types, Strategy, Best Practices, and Examples
Key Channels of Outbound Marketing
Alongside traditional channels, the advent of the digital media has also contributed to newer platforms for outbound marketing. Below are the key channels for outbound marketing today:
1. Broadcast media
Broadcast channels such as television, newspapers, magazines and radio are traditional outbound marketing channels used by brands to promote their products and services. Broadcast advertising campaigns often cost more than other channels – but they also provide mass awareness and are key to driving sales for broad-base B2C companies. The reason is simple – B2C products have a larger mass appeal than specialized B2B business/ niche B2C companies.
2. Digital Advertising
One of the pain points of broadcast and OOH media is the lack of focused targeting of individuals that are best suited for advertising based on parameters as broad as demographics and interest, to granular targeting based on web browsing history and engagements.
Examples of digital advertising include Google ads on text search and display ads across partner sites etc, and retargeting strategy across these ad channels as well.
3. Exhibitions and outdoor events
Outdoor events such as trade shows and exhibitions are another traditional channel for outbound marketing, especially in the B2B sector. They help brands communicate with their prospective customers directly in a special setting, giving brands the opportunity to meet and warm up prospects, collect business cards for sales follow ups, expand networks for partnerships etc.
One key reason why outdoor events are successful is because the attendees/ potential customers who come here, do so out of interest in product offerings, and is a key selling point to brands.
4. Email Marketing (one to one)
Similarly, buyers in different stages of customer journeys also take different approaches to find solutions. Hence, while mapping content to different stages of the buyer journey, you will be able to deliver the right message at the right time to the right prospects. This is why it is important to build workflows based on the buyer’s journey.
Example: Grammarly uses promotional emails to upsell their subscription using outbound marketing.
5. Email marketing (one to many)
Email marketing used to be a rather simple concept – send emails with links/ product infos to prospects. This used to be a direct and purely outbound activity, typically done by sales teams. However, now that we have an outpour of affordable, and in some cases even free to start, mass email marketing tools- this is now purely a marketing role, inbound marketing to be specific.
Email marketing effectiveness increases rapidly with intelligent audience management and segmentation, where different sets of emails and workflows are used to target different groups of people in the database. Typically, this segmentation is done based on the varying degrees of sales potential spread across the purchase funnel.
For example, if you have an email database of 1000 people for your product marketing, you will need to identify and group your audience into people who are in their solution awareness stage, evaluation stage or decision making stage. Each stage requires a different set of messaging to move them along the funnel and finally convert them into happy customers.
Learn More: What Is Paid Media? Definition, Types, Process with Examples
How do you plan to combine inbound and outbound marketing for your 2020 marketing strategy? Tell us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.
