A or B, white or black, inbound or outbound? The strategy to implement must be studied and precise, as well as in the world of chess, there’s always the risk to make the wrong move!

One thing can be stated with certainty: inbound marketing is the evolution of outbound marketing.

Outbound marketing is a type of marketing which is considered “pushed out”, also known in fact as “push marketing”, because it tends to bombard with informations (in fact, “push”) the client to obtain his attention and convince him to buy a certain product or service.

Inbound marketing is the opposite, inbound, as a matter of fact, is also known as “pull marketing” (“to pull”) because it tries to attract the client and it was born as a response to digitalizazion and the evolution of the “4P”: price, product, place and promotion!

It’s been a few years now, in fact, that is important to intervene in digital communication with products and services, establishing a long term relationship with your own customer, thanks to an immediate feedback.
It tries to intercept consumer demand, giving the answers which are really necessary. 

The two methods are different, but which are the key differences?

Outbound marketing creates content for a wide audience, focusing on what company has to offer and using a “one-to-many” communication, without any possibility of immediate feedback from the customer.
Inbound, instead, proposes his content through a “one-to-one” communication, customizing it. In this case, the company has the chance to build a strong bond with the customer, which is more specific and interested. Here the goal is to build customer loyalty, that’s why the approach to content creation is deeper and more detailed. 

The large part of the contents proposed by outbound marketing needs to be printed or broadcasted live; that’s why its cost of production is really high, which instead is reduced in inbound marketing, which uses online creation methods that don’t necessarily foresee an expense. 

Knowing how many people observe a signage can be extremely difficult (outbound), while in the digital world it’s possible to calculate how many clicked on a link, through data collection, visibility and interactions tracking (inbound). Measuring the views, the interactions, through Google Analytics and the insights from the social networks, we are able to understand where our audience come from, gender, age and it’s useful for the creation of future campaigns, obtaining optimal results. 

Outbound marketing is limited to transmit the message, while with inbound marketing there’s the possibility of making people perceive an added value in the product and consequently in the company, giving also the chance to build a trust relationship with the user, thanks to customized contents. 

Outbound marketing let you reach a large audience in a short amount of time, but it’s really invasive, which can be really annoying for the customer, and its costs are high. Inbound, instead, attracts the user without bother and has the power to change over the time, depending on KPI’s measurement. 

The two strategies are very different from each other and it’s not possible to affirm that one is necessarily better than the other, in advance. 

To understand which one is the best for your company, first it’s necessary to conduct a thorough analysis and study the target audience, how the company communicates e specific marketing goals.