As a video marketer, I have experienced this kind of strategy for marketing myself. Therefore, I will provide you with all the information I have gathered while witnessing this first hand.

Hopefully, I will be able to help those who are thinking about migrating to inbound marketing from outbound marketing. So, let’s find out the answer to the question: is inbound marketing truly effective for modern marketers?

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is a strategy where you will focus on nourishing and guiding a lead to become a customer. In a sense, you are attracting or pulling relevant leads rather than just looking blindly for people.

So this is a modern take on marketing strategies and it is very different from the latter that was popular during the first stages of the internet. In addition, The main purpose of inbound marketing is to draw customers into buying with a call-to-action.

Mostly, this is partnered with tools or strategies like content marketing, but we will further delve into that subtopic later.

Basically, all your potential leads have a journey. In this path, they will acquire all the information they want and need with regards to your product or service. Finally, they will decide whether to go with your business or not.

So, there is certain information that we need to understand for us to achieve a goal: inbound marketing truly effective.

For this article, we will try to understand what inbound marketing is, what its strengths are, and what how does it differ. By the end of this article, our goal is to understand and help those who are thinking of changing strategies and rethinking their whole marketing process.

Difference of Inbound and Outbound Marketing

To put it simply, they are the exact opposite of one another. They are like the north and south pole. So, outbound marketing refers to using strategies and tools that might seem a little forced for our potential leads.

For example, outbound marketing uses cold calling, email blasts and other methods that will acquire all the lead it can get. They do not go for relevant and quality leads.

The main purpose of outbound marketing is to get as much leads as it can get. The higher the number of leads, the higher the chance of getting a customer no matter what happens. In our modern age, a lot can happen, including mistakes and all the negative side of marketing when it comes to outbound.

For inbound marketing, this is totally the opposite. Because inbound marketing aims to acquire quality leads. Furthermore, they aim to get leads in a sense that they are letting everyone make their own decision.

It’s like inbound marketing does not want that potential lead to feeling that he or she is being treated as someone who will buy. Also, they aim to promote and flourish visitor and everyone’s engagement to the relevant brand. As a result, inbound marketing is better than outbound marketing.

To summarize their difference, outbound marketing aims to find leads no matter what happens. While inbound marketing aims to attract leads in their own time and context. This will already give you an idea about how is inbound marketing truly effective.

Benefits of Switching over to Inbound Marketing

As you all know, the internet is part of our daily lives. Even looking into the future, you will see that in will be fully incorporated to what we do and how we do stuff every day.

So, inbound marketing is, in fact, working because it is perfect for digital and content marketing. Content marketing refers to selling or promoting your brand while pushing out rich and relevant content to the public.

Plus, with inbound marketing, you will be able to attract all the right people. Because you have set your environment so that all the visitors and leads you will get will be interested already.

Remember, inbound marketing does not force, rather, it pull and attracts. So that means everybody will already want to avail your service. It’s just a matter of nourishing and giving them all the information they need to take the very important step: to take action.

This also helps your business because first, inbound marketing is cost efficient. For example, with outbound marketing, you will usually outsource to a call center company for cold calling.

With inbound marketing, the tasks can easily be handled with a handful of people. But of course quality is important so don’t forget that when building your inbound marketing team. In addition to that, outbound marketing requires a lot of budgets.

It’s high-cost but it will still yield lower that the results of inbound.

Cons of Inbound Marketing

There aren’t a lot of cons when it comes to inbound marketing. Well, compared to outbound marketing, everything is on the positive note aside from a couple of points. The most noticeable one here is time.

First, inbound marketing will require a lot of your patience and effort. Also, you need to take your time to achieve certain goals like a constant flow of leads.

Getting leads is the most prominent challenge that will emerge when you migrate to inbound marketing. This is because I noticed that inbound marketing is great when your business is a little popular.

And having this strategy will surely boost your brand awareness, which is something all business start-ups solely needs. Well, at first it will be a challenge getting leads, just be patient, perform all the necessary tasks.

Execute the strategies consistently as well as make sure that all your content is rich. Then you will definitely overcome this challenge and soon enough, get leads.

Second, inbound marketing will really take a lot of time before you can adjust to it. Especially if you are used to the outbound ways of marketing. But you must never rush the process because it will only make things worse.

What you can do is adjust to the learning curve, take seminars and try to notice the difference between inbound and outbound for yourself. This will allow you to experience the changes and adjust to it naturally.

By then, you will truly understand how is inbound marketing truly effective.

Inbound Marketing Process

The inbound marketing process talks about how a person will transform from lead to customer and even a promoter. For you to fully understand how is inbound marketing truly effective, you must first become aware of the methodology.

So that you can imagine someone who will go through it. As a result, it will give you a proper mindset about what to do and what your actions and words should be.

Hubspot has a very detailed picture about the inbound process.

But I will try my best to give you a perspective from a marketer who experienced inbound marketing. Also, a good-to-know is that there are sub-parts of the process, so let’s try and cover those too.

Attract

This stage will cover the strangers to visitors. So that means this stage is where the first impressions will begin. It starts with a certain person that has a relevant problem. That person will possibly access the internet and look for solutions.

When your brand comes up, that’s the time you will have a chance to attract that person. And you can do this with blogs, paying google ad sense or many other types of publishing.

Convert

Conversions mean that those visitors and curious people will become leads. This is where you will present them with call-to-actions or fill out forms that will give you all the information you need for them to take the next step.

This part of the process will usually take place on your landing page or on your social media home accounts. And the more leads you can get, the more chance of converting them into customers.

But never forget that this is inbound marketing. So there is a thin line here in getting a lead and forcing them.

Close

The close is where they become customers, buyers and possibly investors too. So, once they have taken your call-to-action and went to the next step. They are now considered as customers.

You will have tools here that will allow you to understand what you can do for each of the customers to may further encourage them to buy more or avail more services from you.

Delight

This is you, going beyond outbound marketing where you just want them to buy or avail a service. In a sense, you have gathered enough data and made sure that they are fully satisfied until the end.

And when that happens, there are a lot of benefits. Including a transformation from customers to promoters. So achieving this goal will have an effect in your future.

Imagine your customers being so satisfied, that they availed more of your brand or promoted your brand to their acquaintances. Now that’s very good.

And that’s mainly the process of inbound marketing. Have you noticed any other benefits or have you answered the question: is inbound marketing truly effective?

Tools and Strategies used in Inbound Marketing

There are a lot of tools for inbound marketing. There is a perfect reason why I wanted to enumerate some of them. And that is mainly because this will allow you to understand how is inbound marketing truly effective. Plus, it will tell us how inbound marketing is a modern strategy for marketers.

Okay, for me, one of the main tools of inbound marketing is the CRM (Customer Relations Management) tool. This allows you to create personas, look at where the customer is in the process and get real-time data where you can make an analysis.

For me, this is the best part of inbound marketing. Because it really is convenient for marketers like me.

For strategies, you have copywriting and content marketing. They are both perfect for inbound marketing. As well as social media marketing. So all of these can be incorporate for inbound.

Also, you have this perfect call-to-action where you let the customer decide on their own terms. It’s just good for not forcing them and inbound marketing will never annoy a person or make a person feel that he or she is being up-sell or being treated as money makers.

Although that sounds a little biased compared to outbound. But it really is the reality of inbound marketing.

Is Inbound Marketing truly Effective?

As a marketer, this will be my opinion how is inbound marketing truly effective. For me, inbound marketing will truly take over the marketing world. And honestly speaking, outbound might soon be obsolete.

Well, that is in my own observation only. Mainly because outbound will keep on becoming inefficient with the costs. And people will repel any kind of cold calling and spam emails which is essentially what outbound is all about.

So that means that marketers and developers will soon be migrating to inbound. But it will still be in your own context. What do you think will be a truly effective strategy as a marketer?

Maybe, you will have a grasp of the differences, strengths, and weaknesses of inbound and outbound. And maybe, you will have a strategy of your own as a business owner.