In the revolutionary digital marketing space, businesses are constantly on the lookout for new and improved marketing strategies to help achieve better ROI and reach their target audience. So, what is the perfect recipe to attract an audience and drive sales? The secret sauce here is the combination of inbound and outbound marketing tactics. Think of inbound marketing as your buddy’s warm embrace who provides valuable, helpful, and useful content, building trust and outbound marketing is a captivating storyteller who extends a wide net to reach a broader audience.
Inbound marketing is typically considered the benchmark for demand generation. Marketers leverage both intent and behavioral data from resources distributed across marketing channels to assist prospects in finding their solutions. We are well aware that intent plays a significant role in converting leads to sales. Even though most B2B businesses use outbound marketing, it has earned itself a bad name.
To find new customers, outbound marketers use firmographics, buyer personas, and other cold prospect data. The majority of the platforms have responded to the restriction on consumer data by denying access to users who haven’t shown intent. This leads to the strengthening of the inbound strategy and leaves a gap for outbound resources.
However, the outbound campaign need not feel pushy. After all, we are all used to billboards and television advertisements to learn about new products and businesses. Cold calls and other outbound tactics like emails offer people solutions they might not have otherwise experienced. Without having to deal with significant overhead costs, outbound traffic starts your funnel and activates a steady stream of incoming traffic.
Inbound and outbound marketing are like two peas in a pod. Both are effective lead-generation techniques that direct potential customers to valuable, useful, and helpful content. As marketers, we may combine those channels to produce an efficient plan that is more effective than either one working on its own.
Also Read: Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: What’s the Difference?
5 Ways to Combine Inbound and Outbound Marketing
Are you ready to blend these two approaches for an effective and successful marketing strategy? Let’s study:
1. Make use of a Push-Pull Technique
Just a reminder: inbound marketing pulls interested customers, and outbound marketing pushes information to potential customers. Combine these two approaches and create an effective strategy for your business.
Let us understand this with an example. You might develop an engaging outbound campaign to pique the interest of your potential customers in your business, products, or services. Some people will visit your website right away, but others will search for information about your company online. When that happens, all the valuable content you have produced for inbound marketing will start to work, directing them to relevant web pages that match their interests. Your inbound-focused content is now pulling people because of your outbound efforts.
Now, when they are on your website, you may offer them a chance to download a whitepaper or sign up for your newsletter. This way, they have given you permission to get in touch with them in the future and perhaps close a deal. The push-pull technique is a successful way to combine inbound & outbound marketing to achieve maximum results.
2. Personalized Email Strategy
Here are some interesting statistics for you:
| Statistics | Source |
|---|---|
| In 2020, the global email marketing market was valued at 7.5 billion US dollars and the source projected figure would increase to 17.9 billion by 2027. The compound growth rate (CAGR) for that period is expected to amount to 13.3%. | Statista |
| 47% of email recipients will open your email based solely on the subject line. | Optinmonster |
| The words “free”, “help”, “percent off”, and “reminder” in a subject line have been found to negatively impact open rates. | Unbounce |
| 21.33% is the average open rate for email newsletter across all industries. | MailChimp |
| Mobile devices account for 41.9% of all opened emails. | Litmus |
You must be wondering how to combine inbound & outbound marketing in email marketing. Here is the answer, use demographic information and lead score data to narrow down the list of prospects you want to target with direct mail. Add real value, use your knowledge, and leverage creative thinking. You should know what kind of details should be shared to encourage them to make a purchase. A special offer or creative promotional product might be an ideal way to cement the bond with the prospects. Also, remember, do not send bulk emails without giving them any thought. Instead, tweak your message according to the buyer personas to make the most of outgoing emails.
3. Blend of SEO and Paid Search
Leveraging search engines to promote your business online is both an art and a science. We can agree that they are complicated. Pay-per-click (PPC) and Search engine optimization (SEO) are two essential elements of a successful marketing plan. Both are important and function best together. SEO, commonly referred to as organic search, is a set of strategies used to modify your website to rank highly in search engine results pages. Users can find your content organically by searching for particular keywords your site targets when you use the right language.
Paid search presents ads for online visitors who use certain keywords for their searches, specific to their requirements. When a visitor clicks on the ad, advertisers get paid. They bid on keywords. Paid search can be expensive if you are competing for high-priced keywords. However, you can have excellent clarity to focus on your target audience. Paid social media marketing and retargeted ads that concentrate on customers you’ve already interacted with are excellent strategies to reach your target audience.
Make sure to combine SEO and paid search to achieve optimal results. Make sure you are chasing the keywords you have selected across both channels after choosing your target keywords. To connect, concentrate on using the same keywords in both your online ads and your inbound content.
4. Improve your Branding Strategy
Your digital presence may be of high quality. You might have an excellent website, amazing social media pages, and other digital assets. However, there is a possibility that people may not find you organically in their searches when they are looking for solutions. This is not possible without outbound marketing. Utilize various outbound marketing strategies, such as ad ads, cold calls, and emails, to establish your brand in the community. Outbound marketing gives your brand visibility in the community. It brings your brand in front of the right people (your target demographics).
When you have successfully attracted your target audience through outbound, you can step up your efforts by extending an invitation to join your community. With the help of inbound marketing such as blogs, social media posts, webinars, and more, you can provide solutions and valuable information to your audience and engage and retain them. This is an effective way to combine inbound & outbound marketing strategies for your business.
5. Create a Lead Score Strategy
Lead scoring assists you in monitoring your prospects’ actions and engaging with your marketing ecosystem. It assigns point value to activities as they move along. This gives each prospect a lead score. Theoretically, prospects with higher lead scores are ready for sales. Lead score data gives more important details on the preferences and behaviors of their target audience.
After you understand the preferences and behaviors of your prospects, you can deliver customized emails to make a connection. Utilize your powerful lead-scoring data and create unique direct mail content useful to your specific audience segment. This will help raise brand awareness or even win a sale.
Also Read: Digital Marketing vs. Growth Marketing: Which Strategy Should You Choose?
Conclusion
These were the 5 ways to combine inbound & outbound marketing to increase sales, make a connection with the audience, and boost brand awareness. The sole focus should be on your customers and prospects. Look for the potential to seamlessly integrate outbound engagements across your prospect’s buyer’s journey to improve the effect of your inbound marketing initiatives.
Make sure your outbound strategy aligns with their expectations by taking into account the data they require to go on to the next stage of the journey. Inbound and outbound marketing techniques should also be monitored so that you understand whether your efforts are paying off.
Eventually, you will need a combination of inbound and outbound marketing techniques for exceptional marketing success. Together, they improve your marketing quality, solve customers’ problems, and highlight your business’s engaging storytelling.
More resources for you:
- What Is PPC? Basics of Pay-Per-Click Marketing
- 15 Powerful Reasons Your Business Requires SEO Today
- 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2023
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 4 elements of inbound marketing?
The 4 elements of inbound marketing are:
– Attract
– Convert
– Close
– Delight
The conversions are made feasible by precise procedures that must be followed at each stage.
What are some examples of inbound and outbound marketing?
Outbound marketing uses TV ads, billboards, cold calling, and display ads. Inbound marketing includes strategies like blogs, referral marketing, and video marketing.
What are inbound marketing channels?
An inbound marketing strategy is any channel that “attracts” untapped people to learn more about your products and services rather than you going after them directly (which can only happen if you already know anything about the prospect).
