Generating leads is a necessary part of any business’s sales process. With the digital age in full swing, capturing the attention of your target audience comes down to selecting the right approach. Two major approaches to lead generation exist—inbound and outbound.
In this guide, you will learn the similarities and differences between inbound and outbound marketing, as well as how these two can bring valuable insights to your lead generation efforts.
Outbound Lead Generation
Outbound lead generation involves reaching out to a target audience and pushing messages, regardless of their interest in your content or company. This is sometimes called “interruptive marketing.”
Approach
Outbound marketing is known as “interruptive marketing” for the simple reason that its methods interrupt the target audience’s habits. This is like how an ad disrupts the lineup of programs on a TV channel or how a cold call interrupts an employee’s workday.
The main approach of outbound prospecting relies on the brand starting the conversation with its audience. With the right strategies, this approach allows them to reach and interact with decision-making prospects actively.
Medium and Techniques
Outbound marketing includes many traditional marketing practices such as cold calling, print and TV advertising, mailing lists, and word of mouth. It also includes in-person activities like event sponsorships, trade shows, and door-to-door pitches.
Digital-based techniques that fall under the umbrella of outbound marketing are pop-up ads and banners, as they disrupt the consumption of online content.
The strategies used for outbound marketing are more linear, as the same message is sent out through all available channels. Messages can be tweaked to fit a specific group or channel better but will be general enough to catch the interest of as many people as possible.
Skills
Outbound marketing relies on ads and copies to attract and compel prospects into taking action. Copywriting, graphic design, web design, and campaign management are critical skills for marketers taking this approach.
Strong interpersonal skills are also essential for cold calls and door-to-door pitches. As these people will be the first encounter prospects have with the brand, communicating well can easily turn prospects into customers.
Inbound Lead Generation
Inbound lead generation is focused on drawing in a target audience by providing them with valuable information and incentives. Rather than putting your brand message in front of them, inbound marketing helps you be visible to audiences already looking for what you have to offer. In this respect, inbound marketing can be seen as the opposite of outbound marketing.
Approach
Inbound marketing lies in giving the audience control over when they want to receive your message and how they receive it. Content plays a crucial role in attracting, educating, and enticing the audience to register, subscribe, or fill out a form.
Good content is critical in convincing prospects to open up a line of communication with the brand. Content that focuses on helping rather than selling builds trust with the audience and provides the right foundation for establishing a relationship.
Medium and Techniques
This approach heavily relies on digital tools like search engines and online platforms to lead prospects to valuable content that they are interested in. Part of the techniques under inbound marketing includes search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and blogging.
Other techniques include online events such as webinars and podcasts, as well as the creation of gated resources such as eBooks, whitepapers, and the like. By the way, if you use one of these techniques, be sure about the voice quality beforehand, to avoid technical issues or other failures during the sessions.
Skills
Creating content that delights and attracts visitors is a critical part of inbound marketing. Like with outbound marketing, planning, copywriting, and graphic design are essential skills for producing content that leaves an impact on prospects.
However, inbound marketing is largely a digital practice. Aside from the above skills, being knowledgeable in SEO and web design is a must for making these strategies work. Specialized knowledge in social media marketing, website management, community management, and certain digital tools will also be necessary for attracting and nurturing prospects.
Cost
Outbound lead generation can incur higher costs when running campaigns due to the channels your ads and messages need to be distributed in. This cost also comes with a higher risk of getting little to no conversions.
Meanwhile, inbound lead generation generally costs less as traffic is generated organically with the right content. Additionally, cost per lead lessens over time as content can yield leads for a longer, if not indefinite, period of time.
Similarities
Despite their significant differences, both inbound and outbound marketing share some similarities. Firstly, both require marketers to be familiar with their target audiences. Knowing where to reach your prospects, how they do their research, and other details on their behavior make any marketing effort more effective.
Secondly, both inbound and outbound marketing leverages incentives to motivate prospects into taking action. The drive to fulfill a need or offer a solution serves as the foundation of both approaches.
Finally, both place importance on nurturing a relationship with prospects. By successfully gaining their trust and cultivating this relationship, it becomes more likely for a prospect to move through the funnel and eventually close a sale with the brand.
Which Should You Choose Between Inbound and Outbound Lead Generation?
On the one hand, outbound marketing has become synonymous with offline traditional marketing strategies that demand time from prospects. On the other, inbound marketing is associated with online platforms and choosing to draw in prospects rather than reach out.
Deciding which approach is better can devolve into an argument of “inbound vs. outbound lead generation.” In reality, both approaches are valid.
Depending on your brand’s business goals and other objectives, either of the two lead generation services may work better and yield more leads for your brand. It’s a matter of picking the approach that suits your goals best.
10 Top Digital Marketing Tools & Why We Love Them
The digital marketing industry is constantly changing, and if you feel like you’re being challenged to do more with less, you’re not alone.
Marketers need tools more than ever to automate repetitive tasks, augment our skills, collaborate more effectively, and scale what we’re doing right.
And when it comes to digital marketing tools, you have tens or even hundreds of thousands of options to choose from – certainly hundreds of options for each channel or task type.
Here are some of the most popular digital marketing tools on the market right now (in no particular order) and why they’re indispensable to many.
- Canva
Steve Jobs once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Canva makes creating design elements simple with a sophisticated platform.
If you can not draw a stick figure, don’t worry. The Canva repository of designs allows you to choose and edit a design without specific skills to create a stunning pixel-perfect design.
Additionally, Canva provides graphic animation, infographics, and videos.
Canva offers a free plan, but if you want to upgrade to a paid plan, it is well worth the investment.
- HubSpot
HubSpot provides a powerhouse of tools to help marketers, but Hubspot CRM is particularly popular due to its powerful features.
The HubSpot CRM provides email tracking & notifications, prospect tracking, meeting scheduling, and a live chat option.
Furthermore, HubSpot’s ease of use makes the platform stand out from competitors.
The best part about the HubSpot CRM tool is the price point, which is free.
Unfortunately, the drawback of the free plan is that it only allows two users to access the CRM.
However, the paid plan has unlimited users, and you can add up to one million contacts.
- VWO
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) can be somewhat esoteric, but it doesn’t have to be with VWO (Visual Web Optimizer).
VWO measures clicks on-site, page scrolling from users, time spent on-site, and exit intent.
The power of VWO is the ability to test different angles for your site to increase your conversion rates.
Testing button colors, headlines, landing page layouts, and several other variables is straightforward with VWO.
You don’t have to be technically inclined to set up tests.
Non-technically inclined individuals without coding skills can set up tests just as easily as a developer.
- Semrush
To drive traffic to your site, you will need competitive intelligence.
Semrush provides 50+ tools to help you compete against your competitors.
Semrush is widely regarded as an SEO tool, but that may be selling it a bit short as the software offers several other digital marketing features.
For instance, Semrush offers features for social media competitive analysis, CRO, PPC spying, and PR monitoring.
If you’re looking for a suite of tools to compete against the onslaught of competitors looking to drive you out of business, Semrush provides a good line of defense.
- Slack
Once upon a time, carrier pigeons, smoke signals, and letters were the norm for communication.
Now, millions of people use Slack as the primary way of communicating.
Slack is the next evolution of communication. Messages are instantaneous, and you can share several file formats through the platform.
Additionally, Slack connects you to video conference calls and allows you to create channels for a select group of contacts for group chatting to increase productivity.
It also integrates well with various other tools and productivity suites.
- Asana
The path of least resistance is not always a linear progression.
Asana realized this when they built this fantastic project management software.
Asana provides project managers, product managers, and executives visibility and accountability of team members.
You can break tasks down into subtasks and assign them to team members.
Additionally, you can set up milestones, and the entire organization can view the progression of projects through tagging tasks.
Through API integrations, Asana also integrates with CRM systems and several other third-party apps.
Furthermore, you can start to use Asana for free.
- OptinMonster
OptinMonster, bought to you by veteran WordPress aficionado Syed Balkhi, is sure to delight.
Whether you are a startup, small business, or even an enterprise-level organization with a WordPress site or blog, OptinMonster monster delivers advanced functionality hidden in simplicity to end-users.
OptinMonster provides a highly customizable lightbox popup for collecting emails, countdown timers, inline forms, content locks, and targeted campaigns based on Google Analytics data that seamlessly integrates with the platform.
- ConvertKit
ConvertKit provides advanced multi-step email journeys called sequences to increase your email open rates.
In addition, audience segmentation called rules within the platform offers complex automation for your email sequences which take minutes, not hours, to build with ConvertKit.
Furthermore, all links inserted within your email sequences are tracked and reported within a user-friendly dashboard.
ConvertKit also enables you to copy and paste code within your articles to create beautiful email opt-in forms that can easily integrate with the CRM platform of your choice.
If you are looking for cost-effective, user-friendly email marketing software that provides advanced automation and segmentation with a plethora of API integrations, try ConvertKit.
- Unbounce
Landing pages can make or break the number of transactions you can drive to your organization.
For instance, if you are running PPC campaigns, Google ads assign a landing page quality score that could either help or hurt your efforts to drive sales.
Unbounce provides a cost-effective way to build responsive landing pages optimized for mobile and desktop traffic that happen to be aesthetically pleasing and functional.
No coding is necessary to create landing pages.
The drag and drop editor provides you with everything you need to make the experience you would like to create for your target audience.
If you would like to add advanced functionality, you have the option of adding custom HTML and Javascript.
Unbounce offers over 120 integrations with third-party applications.
AI technology called smart traffic can dynamically shift your traffic to the highest converting landing page variant, drastically increasing your conversion rates.
- Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a social media tool that has taken the marketing world by storm since its inception by James Blackwell and Henley Wing.
When you need a tool to get to the heart of social media analytics, look no further.
Identifying social media influencers, building trending journalist profiles, and viewing the most shared content are a few features that Buzzsumo offers that will give you a competitive advantage against your competitors.
