What is Inbound Marketing and OutBound Marketing

The inbound marketing term was coined by HubSpot’s CEO and founder Brian Halligan, who is also the author of a book entitled “Inbound Marketing: Get Found in Google, Blogs, and Social Media” .

More and more new terms are coined each and every day and as a good entrepreneur we have to keep up with the world.

What is Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing, is the old, traditional way of marketing through

• print ads
• Banners
• Television ads
• Telemarketing/cold calls
• Direct mail/e-mail

It can be also thought as reaching out to people and showcasing your product. Traditional marketing i.e. outbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on finding customers by building brand awareness through advertising and promotion. Causing interruption during television show and meeting through telemarketing can also call it as interruption marketing.

As everybody know this kind of marketing can be huge on your pocket, specially the small businesses and startups in India.

What is Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing with contrast to the outbound Marketing focuses on getting the customers to your website and converting them to leads and close the sale. Inbound marketing involves getting found by potential customers who searches for a product that you are selling through search (opposite of Outbound Marketing).

Inbound Marketing concept in five stages:

1. Attract Traffic
2. Convert visitors to leads
3. Convert leads to sales
4. Turn customers into repeat higher margin customers
5. Learn customer behavior and improve

And how is this achieved is by various modern social Media

Firstly content has to be created to attract the customer through

• Blogs – Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, OpenDiary, TypePad, Tumblr, etc
• videos- YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe
• white papers
• eBook.

Then get the Search Engine Optimization and keyword analysis done so you are visible in the search results when somebody is searching for the product that you are selling. Turn the leads into your customer through email subscribers. Promote and build your customer base using Social media like Twitter, Linked In and Facebook. Use traffic stats to improve your website and content.

Why Inbound is better than Outbound Marketing

Customer is becoming more and more smart and blocking all the unwanted interruptions that their are facing.

Average human today is flooded with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day and is figuring out more and more creative ways to block them out, including caller ID, spam filtering, Digital Tv, and Do not Call Registry. Most of us don’t have time to see and advertisement or a print banner.

Second, its very easier to shop and order from the comfort of the home than to drive down to the mall or a trade show and buy something, people prefer to order vegetable too online now a days.

Third it works out much cheaper for small businesses and start-ups to invest in inbound marketing services or inbound marketing software than to invest in costliest outbound advertisement.

You may think how much of this inbound marketing in relevant in India, then just think about Flipcart which changed the Indian eCommerce story. they get 50 lakhs + hits from India.Your business whatever it is selling…, too have the potential to reach maximum customers online.

Inbound Marketing Services

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There are numerous companies which are giving out these services for you. If you ask me who is the best, then just Google it and whoever is capable will come in the first page and you will get the best service provider.

List all the services for Inbound Marketing

• Website Design
• Website optimization
• Content Creation
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Pay per Click
• Video Creation
• Public Relations

All of the above can be done by yourself or you can hire a professional to do it for you. In each case the cost will be much cheaper than the Outbound Marketing. There are Inbound Marketing software’s too available. Change is the only thing that is Constant so keep up with the world.

All the best Startups!