The Difference Between Outbound and Inbound Marketing | EP 799

The Difference Between Outbound and Inbound Marketing

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 Tim Strifler: Hey everyone welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast i’m Tim Strifler and today we are talking about the difference between outbound and inbound marketing. Now i mentioned at the end of yesterday’s episode i’m a marketing nerd so i can nerd out over the stuff all day long and talk about it when i have friends who are small business owners and they ask me marketing questions it’s like i just like unload. Right, so this is this is a fun topic for me now traditional marketing is more outbound, right if you think of like old school methods like billboards or commercials or ads in the phone book or direct mail campaigns, right it’s outbound. You’re out bounding your marketing message you’re putting it out there you’re sending it to people you’re paying money to get in front of them. Right so that’s outbound marketing, that’s the old school mess methods, but still today think of Facebook ads. Right that’s outbound. If you think of uh youtube ads uh different things like that that’s all forms of outbound marketing. Right now inbound marketing is a little bit different in that it’s more customer centric it’s things that they’re specifically seeking out. Now for example the most common form of inbound marketing is content marketing, which is you write blog posts that are very helpful that help solve the problems of your potential customers. So that they will come onto your site, so basically you’re figuring out what are the types of things that your ideal customer is searching for right that you have the answers to you do that through keyword research, then you write blog posts about that. So when they’re searching for that eventually over time you will start to rank in the search engines for those things, that your customers are searching for those questions, that they’re trying to get answered about you know whatever space, that you’re in and then they come and they land on your website they see you have really helpful content they might subscribe to your newsletter, uh you can offer them a freebie or a content upgrade to get onto your email list and then you can follow up with them through through some email marketing. Um and that’s kind of the strategy is it’s them coming to you you’re still putting stuff out there but you’re not pushing promotions and ads and stuff like that. Um and it kind of goes along the principle, it’s once i say this all the time people love being sold too but they hate, i’m sorry people love to buy but they hate being salty instead of backwards people love to buy but they hate being sold too. So when you’re constantly promoting ad you know hey hire me hey buy this product people put up that barrier right they put up a wall but if you’re putting out free content, you’re putting out uh really valuable content that helps solve their problems, and now they’re searching for that content, they find it. Well now it’s like they want to hire you, it’s like you never even said hey hire me or hey buy my product or whatever it is, but now that you have helped solve their problem now they want to hire you without you even asking. Right and so that’s that’s inbound marketing, it’s them coming to you because of your reputation because the content that you put out there and that sort of thing. So content marketing is the most popular form of inbound marketing they kind of go hand in hand and some people kind of use those terms synonymously, but if you think of the principle of of inbound marketing um you can see in other places too. You could like google ads, almost could be a form of like paid inbound marketing, right because you’re putting ads based off of what people are searching for. So it’s them seeking it out it’s a little different because it’s a paid advertisement you’re not really offering anything for free, but it is kind of a hybrid a form of inbound marketing and so so yeah so that’s kind of the the whole thing. Um now there’s not necessarily one better than the other outband versus inbound. In my opinion the best marketing strategy is one that utilizes both outbound and inbound so that you’re not just constantly promoting through paid ads, but you’re not just relying on organic methods with the inbound marketing too, and so you’re using kind of a combination. So um those are the differences between outbound and inbound marketing. Let me know in the comments if you like the marketing focused episodes because as i mentioned i love talking about them. Um and so it does go uh hand in hand with like web design and WordPress and stuff like that so let me know if you want to hear more marketing focused episodes like this until tomorrow take care bye.