Outbound vs Inbound Marketing: Which Works Best?

Every business figuring out how to grow has to navigate the same question: what’s the right marketing mix for us? Because the options are endless, narrowing your focus to the few best options can take a lot of work. After all, every marketing strategy has worked for someone, right? 

Perhaps you’re leaning towards running ads on Facebook, but someone you respect says it has to be Google. You might consider placing a billboard on a busy freeway, but then you read a case study about how buying ad space in an industry newsletter single handedly built a small company.

You’ve probably heard of inbound and outbound marketing, both of which are proven to help companies generate quality leads. However, understanding their distinct benefits and challenges can help you settle on the right growth strategy.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing focuses on pulling customers towards you by providing helpful and engaging content. Done right, this content builds a connection with your prospects and establishes your business as the solution to their needs.

Brands often use content at every stage of the customer journey. Consider a brand that attracts new leads through a major keyword with its homepage ranking #1 on Google.

While on their homepage, a lead downloads a white paper to learn more about the product. Then, they’re sent an email with even more information. After they speak to a sales rep, they get a text message with a link to a testimonial video.

Here are a few examples of popular inbound marketing strategies:

• Website/blog - The goal is to create SEO-optimized content that ranks on Google for high-intent keywords. 
• Videos - These can be testimonials, product explainer videos, webinars, or purely informational.
• Social media - Clever social media campaigns are a surefire way to get people to fall in love with your brand.
• Newsletters - Informational newsletters, especially round-ups of what’s happening in the industry, are increasingly popular. Every dollar spent on email produces an average ROI of $36 - $42.
• Podcasts - 464 million people listen to podcasts worldwide, a number that has been growing and is expected to continue to grow.

Pros and Cons of Inbound Marketing

While inbound marketing can be highly effective, it also has drawbacks.

Pros of Inbound Marketing

• High lead quality - Your leads have searched you out and generally will have consumed high-intent content before talking to a sales rep.
• Versatile - Content can be used to generate new leads, nurture prospects, and increase conversions during the sales process.
• Less pushy - A great piece of content leads people to the sale, but in a natural and educational way.
• Cheaper - While you certainly can spend big on inbound marketing, it’s easier to produce on a measured budget than to run ads.

Cons of Inbound Marketing

• Lower quantity - You’re limited to people who seek you out.
• Longer adoption - Creating a top-notch lead magnet or webinar can take dozens of hours.
• Harder to pivot - Because it’s so time-intensive to create, it’s much harder to change course later. 
• Harder to track - It’s difficult to quantify the impact of a YouTube video or a social media post on conversion rates.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing involves actively reaching out to where your prospects are and delivering your message. This type of marketing has been around forever, as evidenced by door-to-door salesmen, radio and TV ads, and telemarketing.

Of course, digital outbound marketing is now massively popular, with more than 5 billion people plugged into the internet. Users tend to give plenty of signals about their preferences through websites they visit, groups they join, and information they give out (such as on social media)—making it easy to target the right people.

Here are a few examples:

• Offline advertising - Billboards, direct mail, TV ads, 
• Online advertising - PPC ads on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon; display advertising on websites, ad space in a newsletter, podcast ads, and many others.
• Door-to-door sales - Perhaps the oldest form of outbound marketing.
• Cold email and phone calls - You procure a list of potential clients and reach out to them. This strategy is only as good as your data. Many new businesses grow their businesses this way because it’s inexpensive and you can see results immediately. 

Pros and Cons of Outbound Marketing

Let’s dive into why companies love outbound marketing, but also where it falls short.

Pros of Outbound Marketing

• Fast implementation- You can set up cold emails and run them in short order. Cold calling can happen as fast as you can get a list of targeted prospects numbers.
• Scalable optimizations - If you send out a cold email that doesn’t get results, you can test different versions of the email the following day.
• Hyper-targeted - It’s easy to find and reach out to people nearly anywhere in the world that are exactly within your ICP.
• Measurable ROI - While it’s hard to measure results on a radio ad, strategies like cold email give you an incredible amount of data to trace returns on.

Cons of Outbound Marketing

• Competition - Everywhere you look there are ads interrupting your day, your message will need to stand out amongst the crowd.
• Requires continuous optimization - What works this week can change the next and cold outreach strategies require constant monitoring for changes and optimization. It’s not a “set it and forget it” strategy.
• Additional sales effort - Cold leads require additional trust building as they’ve liekly never heard of you before.

Is Inbound or Outbound Marketing Right for You?

Of course, established companies with big budgets spend a ton of time and resources on both inbound and outbound marketing.

But what if you’re like most companies trying to gain a foothold in a crowded market with limited resources?

While inbound marketing is often a tremendous long-term strategy, it’s usually not viable for a new brand seeking growth right away. 

Imagine trying to get into the personal finance space and fighting with Investopedia for the #1 search rankings. Or, being in vacation rentals and hoping people pay attention to your social media with Airbnb around. Competing with publicly traded giants isn’t a viable short-term strategy for building a small business.

Grow Your Small Business with Outbound Marketing

While inbound marketing is a terrific, long-term strategy, it’s unlikely to help you here and now.

That’s why we recommend cold emailing to targeted lists of prospects. It’s worked incredibly well for us and our clients who have shared some of their strategies for success publicly.

Cold email success starts with two things: 

1. High quality lists - “fish where the fish are”
2. Implementation - a list is only valuable if you USE it

Let’s say you want to grow your digital agency that provides SEO services to dentists. You’ll likely want to target smaller practices that don’t have much marketing in place. You’ll also want an email address that gets right to the decision-maker, not a general office email or one that’s no longer in use.

The same goes for other industries, from originating deals as a business exit advisor, to scaling corporate sales teams. Growth is at your fingertips with outbound marketing.

At Coldlytics, we don’t build a list until you request it—and our email addresses go to the person at the top. Create a free account today to see how our lists have helped many small businesses grow.