The Inbound and Outbound Marketing Mix in 2013

Inbound marketing is the hot term of the year but it doesn’t mean outbound marketing has gone away forever. The difference between the two is that outbound marketing means you are going to find leads, while inbound marketing helps leads find you. The latter sounds much more interesting and effective, but that doesn’t mean you can forget outbound strategies.

Outbound marketing gets your brand/product in front of a target audience that may not have heard of you before. Inbound marketing gives the customer time to learn about and trust you before they continue on in the buying cycle. The right mix of the two depends on what works for you, but you should at least have a mix. 

Inbound Strategies

• Content: Content is king for a reason: it engages your audience in a way that builds trust and offers them increased value without having to purchase anything. Examples include white papers, blogs, video, infographics, and photos. 
• SEO: Organic efforts are still extremely important. The tactics have changed, but ensuring you show up at the top of search results is the most effective inbound marketing. Instead of keyword mania, now start thinking about semantic search for your SEO strategy.
• Social Media: Inbound marketing also includes real time marketing such as having a one-on-one conversation with a fan on Facebook. Don’t use social media as an outbound marketing channel; it is strictly for being social and providing great content and service to your fans.
• Conversion Optimization: Inbound marketing eventually leads people to landing pages on your site, which then need to be optimized for conversions depending on where the user is at in the sales cycle.

Outbound Strategies

• Display Ads: Ad Networks can get your message in front of people who are your target audience but might not have made it to your content organically. A little nudge in the right direction with strong display adsand remarketingcampaigns can broaden your reach.
• Webinars: Webinars are a mix between inbound and outbound strategy, but since you are pushing something out there we will consider it outbound. Webinars can help educate your audience and establish you as a thought leader in the industry. 
• Sponsored Emails: Paying a small fee to send out a custom email to another brand’s email list is a strategy that most marketers use to boost lead generation quickly. The trick to effective sponsored emails is finding companies that have a very specific target audience equal to the user profile you are targeting.
• PPC: Still very important, PPC campaigns need to be extremely focused on an audience, keywords, and where they are in the sales cycle. Advertising Online remains vital for the marketing mix, but the tactics and strategies have changed.