Inbound and outbound marketing are the two popular methods for demand creation.
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing refers to using content marketing to position ones business and online site to attract online visitors and traffic and to convert them to leads. Content creation, therefore, is a major component of the inbound marketing process. The time and dollars investment to strengthen ones inbound marketing systems focuses on content creation around blogs and posts on the blog, product descriptions, and creating other useful content meant to attract online visitors through various online channels. Social media is another major source to implement inbound marketing as posting content for the benefit of your online community organically attracts visitors, which then can subscribe as leads on a site. The build up of original and good content around certain topics and industry verticals also contributes to strengthening ones organic SEO position and ranking thereby attracting visitors through search engines.
Popular inbound marketing tactics in the digital and online space use the following methods:
- Blogs with rich content
- E-mail Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Establishing and running online communities related to specific verticals.
- etc.
In the above methods, online visitors usually land on the marketers website by looking for information. It is therefore referred to as inbound marketing because online visitors make the move to find the organization and its products and services.
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing on the other hand refers to reaching out to targeted audiences in an attempt to capture leads. It refers to crafting content with the intention of using it to attract visitors and leads. The focus here is to reach out to online audiences who are not actively looking for an organization’s products and services. However, an organization reaches out to specific target audiences with specific content with the hopes of creating or highlighting a need for the online user thus trying to entice them to sign-up as a lead.
Examples of outbound marketing include the following:
- Writing Press Releases
- Online advertising
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) methods
- etc.
— End
Back to Online Demand Generation