Inbound Marketing or Outbound Marketing? Understand the best way to attract customers!

Inbound Marketing or Outbound Marketing? Understand the best way to attract customers!

According to the “Connected Brazil – Media Consumption Habits” survey by IAB Brasil in partnership with comScore in 2014, it was found that the Internet is the most crucial channel for Brazilians and has even surpassed offline media (e.g. TV, newspapers, magazines and radio). Another study, released by Ancine, demonstrated a significant retraction in open TV in the audiovisual sector, according to the article in Correio Braziliense, recording a drop of more than 20 percentage points.

With this, it must also be considered that traditional advertising, widely used as an Outbound Marketing resource, has a different effect on the public than it did 15 or 20 years ago.

In the past, when watching soap operas or TV shows, we had nothing to do other than change the channel during the commercial break. Nowadays, several tools distract the public: we can look at the Instagram feed, Facebook feed or chat on WhatsApp, which leads us to reflect on the efficiency of this type of advertising nowadays.

It is a fact that this strategy still provides significant results for companies and brands, which justifies millions of reais invested in advertising campaigns. Among other factors, this is because the consumption of television media has become a habit in our country, especially among older people. Still, it is possible to observe that this scenario has been changing and losing space to the Internet and digital marketing over recent years, especially among young people.

Rise of the Internet and Inbound Marketing as a tool to attract more customers

Inbound Marketing is an alternative to the traditional advertising methods used in Outbound, in which the brand plays an active role in prospecting new customers, requiring a high average cost to acquire these customers and being unfeasible for small and medium-sized companies. It also provided tools to segment the audience more precisely. It enabled the emergence of content marketing as we know it today, making customers come to your business rather than you going to them.

In itself, Inbound Marketing is a key to attracting more customers through digital marketing and can be defined, in free translation, as “Attraction Marketing”. Using a set of keywords relevant to your business, content marketing work is developed (based, in large part, on the production of textual content – blog posts, texts for websites and e-books) so that, when users search for these specific terms, your website will be well positioned in the search rankings and gain the necessary visibility.

To attract customers using digital marketing resources and Inbound Marketing, it is necessary to produce rich content that generates value for the user, considering SEO standards and the principles of the purchasing journey.

What are the main differences between Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

Outbound Marketing (in literal translation) consists of disseminating promotional actions and campaigns of the company, brand or product mainly through conventional media, such as TV, radio, billboards, magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers. Still, it can even be used on the Internet, depending on how this action is constructed.

The critical thing to know about traditional advertising used in Outbound Marketing is that it is characterized by being massive (that is, it can reach thousands or even millions of people at the same time) and imposing (even if you are not interested in that product or service, it will appear through advertisements on your home TV, in the newspaper you are reading or in the introduction of the YouTube video you are about to watch).

Inbound Marketing, in turn, consists of a series of strategies aimed at mobile devices, computers, notebooks and tablets to obtain customers in an organic, didactic and personalized way based on four steps: attract, convert, close the sale and delight the customer. Customers, considering this as a cycle that must be repeated, nurture the relationship so that the customer buys and, if they have already purchased, repurchases your products and services on other occasions.

Among the main Inbound Marketing tools are content marketing with blog posts, email marketing, websites, podcasts, e-books, infographics, whitepapers, social networks and SEO. These resources must be combined and structured, guiding the user through the purchasing journey and the sales funnel in parallel to achieve success in your strategy.

After all, what is the best way to attract customers, Inbound or Outbound Marketing?

It is essential to know that none of these strategies is right or wrong, as both generate results, each in its own way. What must be considered is which one best suits your business, your brand and your products or services and for this, you must keep in mind what type of relationship you want to build with your audience if you wish your brand to have good engagement, how it wants to interact with its customers and which way will generate better results.

In Outbound Marketing, you can even have a large audience at your disposal with TV and radio, but, on the other hand, you don’t only direct your efforts to people interested in your product or service; interaction with the public is shallow, as they are passive in front of the advertisement; communication becomes less and less personalized, as it is mass-marketed and when it comes to advertising on billboards and other “out of home” media, it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of these actions in isolation.

Going against this model, Inbound Marketing proposes optimized, segmented and assertive strategies, proving to have the best cost-benefit when compared to traditional marketing; as the Exame article points out, it is estimated that Inbound Marketing generates savings of more than 50% compared to conventional methodologies and an ROI (Return on Investment) of more than 250%.

Why is Inbound Marketing the best cost-benefit?

Inbound Marketing is usually much more accessible and viable than a TV commercial, especially at a time of high audience. Furthermore, on the Internet, with big data, it is possible to segment your product according to gender, age group, location and other specificities, avoiding a heavy and massive investment in which there is a high chance that people will not be interested in the product in the advertisement shown.

As content is developed according to searched keywords, this is not an imposing strategy: users will only find your website if they search for related terms. Measuring results in Inbound Marketing is also easier. It can be done in real-time, making it possible to track which referrers are on your website and how many clicks you got and translate this data into formulas and metrics.

Communication with the public in Inbound Marketing also occurs more openly and horizontally. With the different means of communication available, building lasting and horizontal relationships and generating greater customer engagement is increasingly more accessible!