Inbound and Outbound Marketing Defined

JUSTINE MURPHY, SENIOR EDITOR, justine.murphy@photonics.com

Inbound, New Age Marketing involves the promotion of a company through outlets available in the digital world.

Social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
Blogs
E-newsletters and e-books
Internet search engines
White papers
Video
Optimized websites
Event sponsoring
Pay-per-click advertising

This content marketing approach also feeds off word-of-mouth among existing and potential customers, as well as referrals.

“Inbound marketing is all about creating a good reputation. You’re earning your potential customer’s interest, rather than forcing your attention on them,” according to Kris Nickerson — founder of Kris Nickerson Inc., an agency that assists with lead generation, inbound/outbound marketing and training — in a LinkedIn article focusing on “helping businesses to generate leads and retain customers.”

Outbound, Traditional Marketing relies on more established marketing and advertising methods.

Print advertising
TV and radio advertising
Billboards
Direct paper mailings
Cold calling
Print sales flyers
Telemarketing
In-person meetings
Trade show booths

Such marketing is essentially a proactive approach to establishing a customer base, and allows the company to make a quick impact on the target market. “It’s also easy to split test marketing pieces (sales letters, web pages, ads, etc.) to see what’s working and what’s not working,” according to Nickerson. “Done correctly, you can also easily track the path from putting out the advertisement to the potential customer coming back in on that same path using specific tracking codes and landing pages.”