Inbound or Outbound - What's the Difference?

Traditional marketing techniques are all outbound techniques, including cold calls, direct mail and TV advertising. For many manufacturing companies today, however, inbound marketing is proving to be much more effective. Inbound marketing solutions involves drawing prospects in rather than chasing after them, such as by providing useful website content.

Here are the top five reasons why you should switch your marketing efforts from outbound to inbound.

Traditional marketing techniques are all outbound techniques, including cold calls, direct mail and TV advertising. For many manufacturing companies today, however, inbound marketing is proving to be much more effective. Inbound marketing solutions involves drawing prospects in rather than chasing after them, such as by providing useful website content.

Here are the top five reasons why you should switch your marketing efforts from outbound to inbound.

1. Outbound Marketing Techniques are Losing Effectiveness

According to Manufacturing Talk Radio, outbound marketing is becoming less effective all the time. Here are some of the reasons they cited:

• Cold-calling doesn't work 90.9% of the time, and it costs 60% more per lead than other marketing tactics.
• Forty-four percent of direct mail isn't opened.
• People skip TV ads 86% of the time.

2. Your Competitors are Using Inbound Marketing

The Content Marketing Institute has published reports indicating that inbound marketing solutions are being used by 82% of the marketing staff in manufacturing firms. If you're not already heavily involved in inbound marketing, your prospects will probably decide that your firm is behind the times.

3. Inbound Marketing Brings Prospects to You

Traditional marketing involves sending your sales dollars out to try to find potential customers, then convincing them that your company is the best vendor for their needs. Think how much more effective it would be to have your prospects coming to you of their own accord.

Why inbound marketing works is no mystery. The Internet is one of the first places people look to find vendors. If a prospect finds your website and is drawn in by how easy the site is to use or how much excellent information they can find there, your product or service will start to sell itself.

4. Inbound Marketing Positions Your Manufacturing Firm as a Premier Provider

How do you prove your company is an excellent vendor? Do you tell them you care, or list the professional bios for your employees, or publish lots of testimonials?

None of those approaches is going to be as effective as letting your prospects come to that conclusion on their own. With inbound marketing, you have the opportunity to display your company's expertise by writing content that is insightful and valuable. Once you've accomplished that, you'll have customers tracking you down themselves. You'll make it easy for your prospects to decide to work with you.

5. You'll Easily Make Your Marketing More Effective

There are many variables to consider when you try to gauge the effectiveness of outbound marketing. If you're not getting the response you expect, is it because you provided sales with an unqualified prospect list? Alternatively, maybe your sales people are just not very good at cold calling, or your creative is not touching the right nerve. Inbound marketing offers much easier and more accurate ways to track success and prove a return on your investment:

• Website analytics will let you track how many people reached your site and how many of those people took advantage of a call to action that turned them into a lead.
• Lead conversion is much more effective when you have a well-defined and consistent method for following up with new content offerings.
• Making changes to your web pages and calls to action is easy to do and takes effect virtually immediately. You don't need to wait for the next brochure print cycle to refine your message.

Where Will You Go From Here?

If you want to learn how inbound marketing works, we're here to be your B2B inbound marketing guides. Call us or download our free checklist, "How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign."