Inbound and Outbound Marketing and Your Growth Strategy
Marketing can be a scary word for many businesses. And that word has many equally frightening and confusing terms that go along with it, like inbound marketing, interruption marketing, content marketing, digital marketing, and many more. No need to feel overwhelmed, though; we can simplify it and explain how these elements can help expand your business’ growth strategy.
Let’s start with the basics. There are two main types of marketing currently utilized: Inbound and Outbound.
Outbound marketing is what you would traditionally think of when consider “marketing” or “advertising.” This is creating advertising, whether for billboards, trade publications, online advertising, or other media. It’s your business making a directed effort to put your products and services directly in front of the customer’s path, and getting their attention. This is also called Push marketing, because your product or service is being pushed into the path of the potential customer. It’s also called Interruption marketing, as it is perceived as disrupting the tasks the potential customer was already doing to draw their attention to your product and service.
Some of the most common Outbound marketing tactics include online advertising on Google, or Facebook, telemarketing, print advertising in publications, cold calling, direct mail, tv and radio ads, and even email, if you are sending to a big list that is purchased where the contacts are not directly known by your company.
Inbound marketing works differently. It’s a technique that draws customers to your products and services through useful content and a great customer experience. Useful content in this instance would be educational content, such as helpful information about your products and services, tips and recommendations on how to get the most from your goods, and thought leadership, which build trust with potential customers to position your business as a resource. The term content marketing is also applied to this approach, as useful content is the foundation.
Some of the most common Inbound marketing tactics include blog articles, white papers, case studies, videos showcasing how your product or service functions, podcasts, ebooks, and other content that helps educate your potential customers. Email marketing can apply here as well, if the list you are sending to are known customers or past customers, and are people interested in hearing from you. They have requested information from your business, compared to purchased lists, where they have not.
Inbound marketing doesn’t stop with just creating useful content for your potential customers. Where this approach gains traction is when the content is shared. This can be via email marketing, social media posts, and search engine optimization. Your website is the central hub for all of this information, being the ultimate repository for useful content. This content is then shared on social media, in emails, and discovered by search engines, drawing customers to your website and business. The same content can be leveraged into multiple different media types. For example, a blog post can easily be turned into a recorded podcast, or used to create an ebook that can be emailed out to your current and past customers. A single blog post can be reformatted into multiple marketing pieces that are then shared on social media and found by search engines. All of these will drive visitors back to your website, where you can provide more information and resources, and convert the visitors into leads via contact forms.
When it comes to your overarching growth strategy, choosing only one of these approaches is not always the best idea. A solid growth strategy should include both Inbound and Outbound marketing approaches to reach customers. Inbound marketing’s useful content can be leveraged in Outbound online advertising and email marketing, for example. One can feed the other, giving your Outbound marketing more usefulness for the potential customer, positioning you are a trusted resource, and show you are more than just another company pushing for a sale.
We’ll be driving in deeper into how these two approaches can work together to expand your growth strategy and drive leads into your business during our upcoming webinar on September 30th. Click here for more information or to register.
Learn more about DVIRC’s marketing services here.
About Sagan Medvec
Sagan Medvec is DVIRC’s strategic partner, and Co-Founder and Creative Director of Brand Llama. Sagan helped start Brand Llama because of his passion to help small-to-midsized businesses. Providing meaningful branding, marketing, and interactive services and solutions is the mission of the company. All in the name of their clients, Brand Llama works hard to product unique works that help businesses succeed. Brand Llama has been a partner of DVIRC for over 10 years.
Republished from our article on DVIRC’s website:
https://www.dvirc.org/insights/inbound-and-outbound-marketing-and-your-growth-strategy/