Inbound — Content-Based

Inbound marketing can be described as a strategy for attracting customer attention and interest by offering content that responds to their needs. The main goal of this strategy is to address specific questions and help solve the problems the user is facing. How is this done? For example, through instructional, specialized, or expert content that we publish on our channels, and which ranks high in search results for a given query. This approach helps build the brand’s image and fosters user loyalty.

Inbound relies heavily on content, which forms the foundation of our efforts. This includes a broad spectrum of formats — blog posts and articles, social media posts, graphics, videos on social media and websites, e-books, podcasts, and other formats that deliver valuable content to the audience. Authenticity and meeting customer needs are crucial here. The content we share must provide value that helps solve a real problem. Materials that focus too much on promoting a product or service are prone to falling victim to “banner blindness” — where users ignore purely promotional content, perceiving it as quickly worthless.

Making Content Work Like a Magnet

High-quality content that genuinely addresses customer needs is not enough. You also need to ensure the customer can find it. To effectively implement inbound marketing, a blog, website, or other permanent hub where traffic can be directed is essential. But where will this traffic come from?

Search engines — particularly the most popular one — are a great place to get your content noticed. However, it’s not as simple as it seems. For popular queries like „how to set up a Google Ads campaign,” you’ll find countless answers, dozens of pages of results, and users likely won’t search too far. They’ll just click on one of the first links that appear in the results.

This is why building content optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial. It helps improve your ranking and makes it easier for customers to find your site. Easier said than done, so it’s worth seeking help from specialists and collaborating with an agency.

You can also use Google Ads to display your content at the top of promoted search results. However, users often approach results labeled as ads or sponsored content with caution, so focusing on organic traffic might be more effective (and definitely cheaper). The same goes for paid social media efforts.

Traffic on the Site — What’s Next?

Simply driving traffic to your site isn’t enough to succeed with inbound marketing. A user finds content that answers their question, consumes it, and moves on. But we don’t want them to just leave the site armed with the knowledge they’ve gained. It’s important to think about what we can offer and how we can present it to keep them engaged with our channel. Encouraging users to subscribe to a newsletter in exchange for additional content, like a dedicated e-book for subscribers, suggesting related articles, or directing them to our social media for a live Q&A with an expert, can all help. Building a leads database becomes a valuable resource for future efforts.

Once the user is in our channel, we should focus on providing them with more in-depth knowledge and engaging content of tangible value. If the user finds our content valuable, they will be more inclined to continue using our expertise and will view the brand favorably. Building a relationship with the user and earning their trust is an easy path to conversion.

Outbound — The Opposite Approach

Outbound marketing is a somewhat older strategy that is still thriving and often works alongside inbound marketing. The key difference here is that the brand, not the customer, initiates the process. In this case, the customer isn’t looking for a solution and finding us — we reach out to the customer with our solutions, and they decide if they’re relevant or not.

At one time, outbound marketing had a reputation for being pushy and intrusive. However, as consumer awareness has evolved, brands have adjusted their efforts to be as non-invasive as possible. Outbound has evolved significantly and is now quite different from what it was 5-7 years ago.

How to Reach the Customer?

Outbound is primarily based on paid activities, especially ads on social media like Facebook Ads and in search engines (Google Ads, Bing Ads, etc.). These can be divided into different types, including display campaigns using banners as communication tools, and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) — paid ads that appear in search results for specific queries.

Outbound marketing also involves email campaigns. Previously, “cold mailing” was popular, where offers were sent to various people who might be interested or sent blindly, hoping that 1 out of 1,000 recipients would respond. However, with GDPR, these activities are much more restricted, requiring explicit consent from recipients to receive marketing content. Additionally, acquiring someone’s email address must be done with their knowledge and consent.

Nevertheless, we can still conduct email campaigns targeted at individuals in our contact databases, as long as they’ve been obtained correctly and in compliance with current regulations.

Other outbound marketing activities include video ads on TV or YouTube, audio ads on radio, outdoor campaigns, billboards, and other traditional media formats.

Outbound — When Is It Worth It?

Outbound activities are unfortunately one-sided, with communication flowing only toward the customer. However, there are situations where it’s worth taking this approach. Building brand awareness through broad-reach campaigns and gathering potential interested parties around the brand is one example. We shouldn’t expect customers to make purchase decisions based on a few ad views — although it does happen — but outbound efforts will help them recognize and remember the brand. This is important because it makes future inbound efforts more effective.