Inbound Marketing VS Outbound Marketing

Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CSA of HubSpot, introduced the concept of Inbound Marketing is to earn the attention of prospects and increase the chances customers can get to contact with you. Blogs, SEO, social media, podcasts, video, eBooks, e-newsletters, whitepapers and a bunch of new marketing methods are all considered inbound marketing. Your email address should be there, contact number should be there. And once they find you, HubSpot help you offering them perfect content to learn about your business, allow your mechanisms engage in different level of contact whichever makes them feel comfortable. In contrast, trade shows, seminar series, direct mail, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and traditional advertising, are considered as Outbound Marketing.

For those IT associate industries, who rely on or find it optimizing to perform E-commerce to do business, inbound marketing may bring huge opportunities to achieve market share.

First, inbound marketing lead customers to seek for information proactively, which made the information more acceptable. While outbound marketing is always too naked pushing products & services to customers, making customers uncomfortable. 44% of direct mail is never opened; 86% of people skip through television commercials; 84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant or intrusive ad”. I still remember the aggressive marketing from CapitalOne which drove me crazy. They kept sending me annoying letters twice a month and ask me to open account with them. Not only do I feel a disclosure of personal information at first, but also I feel CapitalOne is passing me useless information without my permission, which is offensive.

Second, it is easier to make money from fans or followers, who are already interested in your products & services, than from other users. Let’s talk about online marketing in social media like Twitter. If I saw a TV advertisement from L’Oreal introducing their new amazing mascara, I probably won’t buy. Because there are too many mascaras in the market and every brand is exaggerating the result using their product. However, if I saw an L’Oreal mascara recommendation Tweet by one of my friends or a fashion blogger I know. I am very possible to take a try. People tend to believe words of mouth and other customer reviews more than before. The cost per lead in inbound marketing is less than outbound marketing and more effective since it’s more targeted as well, given many small businesses a chance to compete in the market.

Third, they vision of inbound marketing integrated many single tools to present value proposition to convince customers, what value added product & service they may receive, and how they can be benefit from certain product. Inbound marketing more are likely to be interesting, informative and creating a positive connection with consumers. Communications are two ways, thus pull customers more likely to engage in your brand and buy the product. As a result, personally I believe inbound marketing are more influential to B2C companies, where business got to be strong social connected and interacted.

However, inbound marketing is not omnipotent, outbound marketing is not dead. It really depends on the industry. For example, a local grocery store like Shaw’s, a pizza house nearby, or a furniture store are still more looking for direct communication with customers from outbound marketing. Bargaining power of your customers, bargaining power of your partners, channels, size, and financial resources of your company…all these matters. Sometimes it would be more ideal if company can create a model with a mix of the two to reach out to more traffic and expand market share, which many large companies using these days. We see P&G launching a bunch of new product advertisements on TV all the year round, and they also arrange many online PR events on many living information forum.