Are you familiar with the two major types of marketing strategies for businesses today? If you’re a business owner, or if you work for a large or small business (which covers the majority of us) and the answer is “no,” then keep reading. This post was written especially for you.
OUTbound Marketing
Simply put, outbound marketing is pushing a message out to reach as many people as possible, many times by forcing that message down people’s throats. Now, that may sound harsh and biased, but that’s virtually what it is. Many of us have learned to purposely tune out or ignore this type of marketing. Do you enjoy talking to telemarketers? How about having your favorite music station or television show interrupted every 15 minutes with a commercial break? Do you read every email you get from every store or business that collects your email address? Admit it…the answer to these questions is usually NO.
There is a time and place for outbound marketing, but when it comes to small businesses, inbound marketing is usually a much more effective strategy for many reasons. Outbound marketing is an attempt to reach a large amount of people in hopes of getting at least a handful of responses. It's kind of a “hit or miss” type of marketing. It's also very expensive and doesn’t always provide the best ROI.
Examples of outbound marketing:
- Cold calling
- Advertising (TV, radio, billboard, online, newspaper)
- Telemarketing
- Seminars
- Trade shows
- Direct mail
- Email blasts
INbound Marketing
Instead of pushing a message at its audience, inbound marketing pulls in visitors and customers by supplying great resources for interested people to access. The first step is to strategically set up a great website. Then you fill it with outstanding content to draw visitors and nuture those visitors into leads, customers, and promoters of your brand.
A successful inbound marketing plan requires 3 things of your company:
1) BE ATTRACTIVE. If you want to pull people into your website, you need to be noticed first. Attract visitors by providing great material that people want to view and by optimizing your website to make it easy to find on search engines. You can do this through
- Blogging
- Search engine optimization
- Social media
- Content marketing (eBooks, newsletters, photos, videos, etc.)
2) BE ENGAGING. Once you’ve drawn people to your website, you have to keep them there and get them to keep coming back! Use
- Calls to action
- Landing pages
- Marketing automation
- Email marketing
3. BE SMART. Analyze statistics. Get the facts. See what’s working and what’s not. Adjust your strategy to be more effective. Keep track of
- Visitors
- Leads
- Customers
- Conversion rates
- Content performance
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Now that you’re clear on the main differences between outbound marketing and inbound marketing, it’s time to think: Which marketing strategy does your business more closely follow? Are you happy with how many leads you are generating? Are you reaching your monthly and yearly goals?
If not, it’s time to make a decision. If you follow an outbound marketing plan, it may be time to try something new and adopt a great inbound plan of attack. If you are already following some sort of inbound marketing strategy, and it’s not working well for you, we can help.
We would love to sit down and talk with you about your current business and marketing goals and strategies and see how we can help you grow your business, bring in more leads, and set you up to be as successful as possible.
- Need more traffic?
- Would you like to learn how to more effectively convert visitors into leads?
- Do you need better follow up to convert more leads into customers?
No matter how successful a business is, there’s ALWAYS room for improvement. By using smart data analysis, you can learn how to meet your goals and maximize your game!
Inbound Marketing in Denver & Des Moines
If you’re interested, give us a call or shoot us a message! Blue Frog Marketing has one office in Des Moines and another in Denver. If you don’t live near either of these cities, don’t worry! We work with clients all over the country and would love to work with you, too, no matter your location!
