What is the differences between INBOUND Marketing and outbound Marketing?

In the world of Marketing, there are numerous names and phrases that marketers, whether usual or digital ones are using on their routine working days. They also invent the new kind of words to fill a void and make the communication and comprehension between their colleagues way simpler, or sometimes for just showing off their experience. By the way, the notion of "inbound marketing" and "outbound marketing are two of the keywords that separate the Marketing principles and belongs to two definitely different worlds.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing refers to the traditional sort of marketing that has been in centuries. Imagine that in the 119th century, business persons and merchants were publishing the advertising papers to be used to inform their customers and having a kind of brand awareness. In the 20th century, by the invention of Radio and TV, the outbound marketing stepped further and the motion pictures helped marketers to distribute their ads for more audiences internationally. 

In this sort of marketing, the conversation is mainly one way, pushy, occasionally annoying and it accused that sometimes it has brought the negative impacts. For example, it might happen to you that during watching a TV show, or a movie in the Cinema, you had to watch advertising clips that made you irritated instead of attracted. 

Meanwhile, the brochures and flyers that marketer distributes in streets, put under the glass blade of cars, that majority of them would not even be read, and contribute anything except the cost and environmental impacts.

What is inbound marketing?

By the introduction of the internet and the expansion of its usage globally, and it's interference in every point of people's lives, a new notion came into the marketing world. Nowadays, each marketer, with having decent knowledge about the media and software, with way lesser budget, could be as effective as an outbound marketer. The inbound marketing in contradict to outbound would be less irritating, does not interrupt you from watching or listening to something, and is greatly efficient. 

in decades before, for doing any sort of advertising or marketing, a business owner should rely on marketing agencies or advertising companies, pay a huge bulk of the money to have its product or service shown on TV or on the billboards. Unlike this, Currently, any company, from the lowest budget to even a freelancer, are capable of distributing their ads in a certain area, to their target audiences, with more and effective real-time interaction, and analytical response rate.

Where is the host of Outbound marketing, and where is the host of Inbound marketing?

As I explained in upper paragraphs, Outbound marketing usually hosted on newspapers, magazines, booklets, billboards, TV commercials, Brochures, banners, telemarketers, and places related to the actual position. 

On the other hand, Inbound marketing is hosted on the internet solely. It can be a website, Social media platforms, like Facebook, or Linkedin, through Email, and so on. 

Which one is more efficient than others?

Undoubtedly, Inbound marketing is far more efficient than Outbound marketing. According to the latest survey from the Digital marketers in European countries, more than 67% of them admit that they completely shifted their marketing budget to Inbound marketing.

 Nowadays, due to the development of the internet and various methods on social media marketing, allocating budget for Outbound marketing is limited either for traditional businesses such as a local bar or restaurant that is seeking to attract the passing by customers, or the giant multinational companies that still prefer their presence of TV ads within sports events or popular TV shows.

Let me explain one of my own friend's experiences that revealed Inbound marketing to be such a reasonable method for advertising.

Our company just established, and I as a marketer has to promote our brand and bring customers. Actually, we were an education institution, and as you know this business because of the growing participation of students on Online learning, is going to lose its profitability.

Anyway, in a period of time, I was told by the marketing manager to promote one of our computer short courses. frankly speaking, my manager was a kind of tough guy that never convinced that digital advertising is becoming an international trend, and insisted me to prepare a brochure and distribute it.

After hours of argument, I finally gave up and I started to design the brochure. Meanwhile, for proving him that digital advertising is way better, after finished my brochure and sent it for printing, I designed a poster for Facebook ads, and after choosing the target audiences and the region along with the duration of the promotion, sent it for being promoted by Facebook. 

It was Tuesday afternoon, and yesterday, all the brochures were distributed between university and college students. It was awkward to say that we just had 5 calls from students and no one interested to enroll. The budget for brochures was around 500 USD, but From the time that I posted that promotion, we had more than 58 numbers to call, 7 enrolled without any call, and the whole budget was 380 USD. 

How can I know that my inbound marketing was successful or no?

Answering this question is simple. Nowadays, in almost any platform that you do the advertising or run a campaign, you can have precise details of the information about your ads performance. This is something that you can not have it on outbound marketing. 

In inbound marketing, from marketing Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, to google ads or bulk emailing, there are plenty of analytical data given by the software, from social media Softwares that they have their own analyzing software, to a large number of individual analytic Softwares, that provides realtime data, through ROI, CPC, Conversion rate, KPI, and more. You are completely in control of analyzing and observing your success rate and your sale rate through different campaigns and different content.

Is this an end or era for Outbound marketing?

Absolutely not! it might sound funny, but still, Outbound marketing has its own fans, and companies and organizations are printing brochures as they believe and as they have had a positive experience in such marketing. 

Despite all the advances that we have been confronted with digital marketing, TV is a popular entertainment and people still are watching it, and spending time on it. During the sports events, such as Olympics or world champion, or while following their favorite TV series or reality shows. 

Additionally, the newspaper still is being sold worldwide, and its kind of our culture and expresses our open kindness to read it while having our breakfast or during using public transportation.

By and large, Inbound marketing is like having a regular car, and outbound marketing is like riding a luxurious Bently. it's up to you which one you prefer.