Inbound and outbound marketing, How can you choose for your work plan?

The blog is one of the active sections any company should have on its website.

In addition to providing insights and keeping customers interested in what they have to say.

You have to keep updating your SEO blog.

You have to know what kind of questions your customers want to ask and answer, that will help you in the keyword research.

And try to make your blog longer and informative, to make your customers benefit from it.

According to a recent study from QuickSprout, longer articles perform better than short ones.

2- Social media platforms

Along with your SEO and its blog, social media has a huge part in the inbound marketing strategy.

Social media is considered as an important form of attracting customers.

Understanding social media’s role in inbound marketing helps you to have the best process.

It represents the best form of interacting and engaging with your customers, you post, they write comments and feedback, and replay to them.

Social media is the best place to promote your business to the world, and it is perfect for your customers’ service.

There are too many platforms to represent your posts like, (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest).

And choosing the best platform for your business depends on too many things such as your country, your posts’ type, and the nature of your audience, you also must know your persona.

Social media is so powerful in your marketing strategy.

And here are some statics according to HubSpot:

Companies that blog regularly receive 55% more web traffic than companies that don’t and receive 70% more leads.

Only 22% of all leads come from traditional marketing methods.

In 2013, 52% of companies acquired customers through Facebook, 43% acquired customers through LinkedIn, 43% through blogging, 36% through Twitter and 15% through Google+.

3- Email marketing

Email marketing is another form of inbound marketing which allows you to send personalized emails.

It is a late step in your marketing process, but it helps in building a strong relationship with your customers.

This form’s cost can be much lower than the other forms, it also can be used to reach large audiences or smaller lists.

But always put in your consideration that files need to be small enough to be downloaded quickly, to avoid losing your customers’ interest.

4- Content marketing

It is a form in which you can share videos, photos, short caption, or even long articles about your brand.

It is not only about promoting your business.

But it also works on increasing the interest in its products or services.

Inbound marketing methodology

Every marketing type and every business plan has its own strategy or methodology, so inbound and outbound marketing have their own methodology too.

And since we are talking about inbound marketing, so let me show you how its methodology goes?.

Inbound marketing is all about attracting visitors and turning them to customers.

It increases brand exposure and creates brand authority through the creation of valuable content.

Inbound marketing methodology is a little bit complicated and indirect if you compared it with the other marketing types.

Its process contains four actions ( Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight).

These four actions every company or any business owner needs to follow in order to convert sales leads into customers.

The photo attached below explains the methodology action.

1- Attract

In this stage, you have to focus on how to attract individuals or your buyer persona and make them your customers.

Attracting your buyer persona requires a very well studied marketing plan with the perfect content creation.

Here are some steps to follow to attract individuals:

Start blogging:

Most of your audience will come in via social media, so blogging will be perfect.

You have to know your target audiences and what they will respond to.

Your captions must be catchy, you only have a couple of sentences in the preview window.

So make it attractive in order not to lose their interest.

Figure out the right time to publish your blog and promote it.

And that leads us to the second step.

Be active on social media platforms:

As you can notice that you can’t do anything without the platforms of social media.

They have their own superpower.

You just have to know when are people most likely to view your content.

Post videos or photos to get more engagements.

Ask for their opinion about a specific topic to create a simple discussion.

Remember that it is a two-way relationship.

Building your presence on social media takes time.

Your blog must be a tool to increase your reach on social media platforms and your social media presence also must be a tool to drive traffic to your blog.

Keywords research:

Keywords are the way how your buyer persona is going to search for your products or your brand.

Using keywords perfectly on your website will help you to market your brand better to your visitors.

Do your own search on the suitable keywords for your business, it is an important step.

2- Convert

This step comes directly after attracting your buyer persona to your brand.

In this step, you have to convert those visitors or customers into leads.

And you can’t achieve this without having some personal ways of communicating such as their emails.

Some tools are being used in this step such as, (submissions, landing pages, contact information, and calls-to-action).

Converting is the first step in creating a relationship between your company and a potential customer.

Calls To Action:

Your content is not complete without encouraging the reader to take action.

The action could be (Call now or send a message).

That needs a landing website page that helps customers to respond to your offers.

Landing pages:

A web page which refers to the entry point for a website or a specific part of a website.

It has a form that allows you to get visitors’ information in exchange for the desired offer.

Visitors will fill out the form on the landing page because they believe the content they are accessing will be valuable to them.

3- Close

The following step in the inbound marketing methodology process is closing.

Its when you have to turn your leads into happy customers.

Using the right marketing tools will help in closing the leads at the right time.

Here are some of these tools ( Email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM system).

Marketing automation:

It is a platform that marketers use to plan, manage and measure all of their marketing campaigns.

It is mostly used along with lifecycle marketing strategy to manage and generate leads aiming to convert them into customers.

CRM system:

Customer relationship management or CRM is a system where you can manage your business’s interaction with current and expected customers.

It allows tracking every single action which is taken with the company and supports collecting information about the customer.

4- Delight

With inbound marketing, you don’t leave your customers once they have bought something
from your brand.

Your goal is to establish brand loyalty, and in order to do so, you need to continue to show your customers that you still value them hoping that they will become promoters of your business.

This is the most critical stage of the inbound marketing methodology.

Social monitoring, smart content, and surveys are some of the tools that are being used in this stage.

Social monitoring:

It gives you access to know what people are saying about your brand, industry, or competitors across social media and the web.

Smart content:

It creates a unique experience that is made specifically for the visitor or reader at that moment.

One of the most world-famous examples of smart content is Amazon’s recommendation engine.

Inbound marketing benefits:

1- More valuable leads

Inbound marketing helps you to gain people that are looking for what you’re offering.

And to learn more about your offering or perhaps they’re even ready to contact you about your product or services.

2- Build trust

Compared to outbound marketing as we are going to see.

Inbound marketing strategies are far less intrusive and rely more on the user to take the initiative.

Inbound builds long-term relationships because it’s based on mutual communication between you and your customers.

3- Worth the cost and a good ROI

Inbound is cost-effective, since setting up a website is cheap and adding a blog to an existing website is free.

The more the cost is low of inbound is more for better opportunities for ROI.

And here are some stats that been recorded in 2013 by Hubspot’s report:

79% of companies that have a blog reported a positive ROI.

57% of marketers who blog monthly acquired a customer directly from their blog.

77% of businesses that market directly to consumers have acquired a customer with Facebook.

Secondly: The outbound marketing

Inbound and outbound are entirely different types of marketing.

So now you can figure out that outbound marketing is all about the old traditional way of advertising.

Outbound marketing tries to reach consumers through general media advertising as well as through a person’s contact.

In comparison with other types, outbound marketing can be extremely broad such as television and radio advertising, print advertising, telemarketing, direct mail, and outdoor advertising.

It starts with some basic knowledge of your target audience.

Then you set a plan to inform those very specific people about your products and services in a meaningful way.

Examples of Outbound marketing methods

Outbound Emailing:

An Outbound email can come in a variety of different forms.

Both the sales and marketing departments are responsible for outbound email.

The goal of the sales department is to close more deals with customers they are dealing with.

But when it comes to the marketing department, it aims to engage both new and current buyers in different marketing activities.

TV/Radio/Newspaper:

Many companies still do advertising via tv, radio, and newspaper.

This generally means creating an advertisement that promotes your business via these channels.

This marketing technique used to be effective, but nowadays these ads are so boring that people no longer pay attention to them.

The disadvantages of outbound marketing

Customers can’t easily get attracted

It is not easy to attract people due to the lack of using social media in outbound marketing.

People prefer to discover things themselves, rather than having things forced upon them.

It’s expensive

Outbound marketing is a little bit expensive and it’s absolutely more costly than inbound marketing.

To run an effective outbound marketing campaign, you have to invest in your promotional materials, and then invest in distributing it.

It is difficult to get feedback

This is mostly because of that outbound marketing only depends on a one-sided relationship.

If you want to find out how people are responding to your ads, you have to organize focus groups and carry out surveys.

Inbound and outbound marketing, what works for you?

Inbound and outbound marketing are entirely two different methods.

So of course, every method has its own field that can work for it.

For a business owner or someone who works in the marketing field.

you have to ask yourself what is perfect for your work.

I can’t tell you a specific answer, because, yes, inbound marketing is more effective, but maybe it won’t work for you.

The answer to this question depends on your business model and the nature of your field itself.

But I think that you should use both methods in your business.

Because for example when you try to win customers it is better to connect with people in real life not through the platforms of social media so that is so outbound marketing.

Another example, if you’re targeting people who are technology freaks, it is better to connect with them through posting a video or writing a post, rather than printing ads.

So, in this case, you must use inbound marketing.

So yes, in my opinion, you should consider both techniques.

The Conclusion

The marketing field contains too many methods.

Inbound and outbound marketing are completely two different methods.

You have to study every method and figure out what works for your target.

If your target depends on visuals and social media, go fo the inbound type.

If you target depends on the traditional ways, then the outbound is your choice.

Both of the outbound marketing and inbound marketing have their benefits and disadvantages.

Yes, the inbound is more effective but that doesn’t mean to abandon the outbound marketing.

You just have to find the right type for your brand, pay attention to your results and analyze them.

Always update your business plan to keep up with the market.

And this is how you’ll succeed.