Why Inbound Marketing is so Much More Effective Than Traditional Outbound Marketing

When it comes to marketing, most companies have two primary options: inbound marketing and outbound marketing.

If you are unfamiliar with these terms, outbound marketing is the more traditional version of marketing and involves a company initiating a conversation and sending a message out to an audience. Examples of outbound marketing include radio ads, television ads, billboards, newspaper ads, trade shows, flyers, tradeshow booths, etc.

Inbound marketing is a type of marketing that involves trying to attract your customers naturally by creating content that is organically appealing to them. In this way, they end up seeking you out instead of you seeking them out. With inbound marketing, a company creates blogs, articles, videos, social media posts etc.

Customers seek out this content either for educational or entertainment purposes. This brings them to the company’s website or social media accounts, where the leads can be nurtured and eventually converted to sales.

The shortcomings of outbound marketing

Perhaps the greatest problem with outbound marketing it that it is interruptive and because of this, people often react negatively to it or simply ignore it. For example, most people have hung up on a telemarketer at one point or another. Some people do it every single day.

Over the years, outbound marketing has just lost a lot of its power. For example, a lot of people just don’t watch tv ads anymore. In fact, roughly 86 percent of people skip them and skipping them has become easier than ever.

Also, there are now over 200 million phone numbers on the Do Not Call list. So, doing outbound marketing cold calls is nowhere near as effective as it used to be either. Additionally, 44 percent of direct mail is never opened.

People are increasingly finding ways to be able to tune out and ignore outbound marketing efforts. The truth is, many people just find outbound marketing to be annoying and tedious and so they make a conscious effort to avoid dealing with it.

Outbound marketing is also significantly more expensive than inbound marketing. In fact, outbound leads cost roughly 60 percent more than inbound leads on average. So, not only is outbound increasingly becoming less effective, but it also requires companies to spend way more money than is necessary.

The advantages of inbound marketing

Inbound marketing succeeds in all of the ways that outbound fails. It is non-interruptive, it doesn’t annoy the users and the customers, it works better, and it costs less.

Companies that blog receive 434 % more indexed pages and 97 % more indexed links than those that don’t. So simply adding a blog to your business website can be an extremely effective inbound marketing technique.

Part of the reason why inbound marketing is so effective is because 68 % of online buyers will spend time reading content published by a brand that they are interested in. In other words, inbound marketing appeals naturally to a brand’s customers. It almost acts as a sort of magnet, attracting the attention of the people whom the brand is trying to target.

Also, with inbound marketing, you don’t have to worry about people ignoring the content or going out of their way to prevent themselves from being exposed to it. This is because the only people who will end up viewing it are the people who want to view it. No one is being forced to be exposed to it.

The fact that inbound leads cost roughly 60 percent less than outbound leads is also extremely significant. This means that companies can generate way more leads with inbound marketing campaigns than with outbound marketing campaigns if the same budget is used.

Conclusion

Outbound marketing may have been the dominant option for hundreds of years. However, search engines and social media networks have made it possible for companies to appeal to their customers in a much more organic and wholesome way.

Inbound marketing is a win-win for both customers and for companies. It is unlikely that outbound marketing is just going to suddenly disappear. However, because inbound marketing is so much more cost efficient, it is definitely likely that outbound could slowly fade out over time.

It is becoming increasingly important for companies to have effective social media pages and websites. Customers are using these channels more and more to perform research about businesses and their products. So, if you want to be able to engage and market to your audience in the best way possible, then you will need to have great digital marketing campaigns.

If your company has never done any inbound marketing, or if you need help boosting your current efforts, then we would be happy to help you. We are experts and know all the helpful tips and tricks.

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