Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing: What’s The Difference?

“Make your marketing so useful people would pay for it.” – Jay Baer, author of New York times bestseller, Youtility

Marketing is very important to every company. In fact, I think marketing is king. Marketing could make or break your company. Even if you have a great product, without the right marketing, people would not know how great your product is.

There are two types of marketing, inbound and outbound:

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is also known as the traditional marketing. We see this in televisions, newspapers, and radio. The company is the one who initiates the interaction with the audience. Digital versions of outbound marketing are PPC, banner ads, and email blasts.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is the new age of marketing. Usually, it uses social media, blogs, search engine optimization, and subscription-based email marketing. Instead of the company initiating the interaction, the audience is the one who finds the company through its quality content that aligns to the audiences’ interests.

Here are their key differences:

1. Interference vs. Consent

The first difference between inbound and outbound marketing is how they try to engage with their customers. In outbound, it is always interfering with anything that we are doing. When we watch television, we watch our favorite shows. But, every ten minutes or so, the show is momentarily paused in order to give way to advertisements.

On the other hand, inbound marketing focuses on waiting for the customer to give his consent before giving out further information regarding your product. This is usually done through sharing in social media. A person shares and reads a post because he wants to, not because it is forced upon him.

2. Extra vs. Lead Role

The second difference between inbound and outbound marketing is how they are seen by people. In a movie, usually, you do not remember the actors who were just walking in the background because they were not important. But, you always remember the star of the show. Outbound marketing always only has the extra role. They buy advertisement space, only to be shown at the bottom-right parts of newspapers where no one bothers to read.

Inbound marketing focuses on being the star of the show. They are always the most talked about in facebook or twitter. The more they are talked about, the easier it is for information to spread like wildfire.

3. Indefinite vs. Exact

The last difference of inbound and outbound marketing is how the companies know that their strategy is effective. In outbound marketing, it is indefinite or cannot be quantified. They heavily rely on the responses of their consumers on “how did you hear about us?” forms. Customers can just check anything in that form.

On the other hand, inbound marketing can be quantified. It is exact. Our technology is already advanced which is why we should take advantage of it. Companies who use the inbound marketing strategy can easily know whether or not their campaign is effective through online analytics. Every time a person looks at their article, they could automatically know who is reading it and where that person lives in.