At Ascend, we believe in inbound marketing so much that we even included in our agency’s name. But most of the time when we meet with a business for the first time, they have never even heard of inbound marketing. So what exactly is inbound marketing, what is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Thanks to the Internet, marketing has evolved over the years. Consumers no longer rely on billboards and TV spots — a.k.a. outbound marketing — to learn about new products, because the web has empowered them. It's given them alternative methods for finding, buying and researching brands and products. The new marketing communication — inbound marketing — has become a two-way dialogue, much of which is facilitated by social media.
Another reason why inbound marketing is winning is because it costs less than traditional marketing. Why try to buy your way in when consumers aren't even paying attention?
Let’s look at some quick statistics about outbound marketing:
- 44% of direct mail is never opened.
- 86% of people skip through TV commercials
- 84% of 25-34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an irrelevant or intrusive ad
- The cost per lead in outbound marketing is more than for inbound marketing.
- Companies are 3x as likely to see a higher ROI on inbound marketing campaigns than on outbound.
- Companies that blog 15+ times per month get 5x more traffic than companies that don’t blog regularly.
- Companies that increase their blogging from 3-5x a month to 6-8 times a month almost double their leads.
- Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing
- 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine.
It’s easy to see that inbound marketing is more effective in generating marketing return on investment. If you’d like to learn more about inbound marketing, subscribe to our blog at blog.ascendinbound.com.
