What is outbound marketing?

In today’s online advertising world there is constant talk of inbound marketing, but not so much of its counterpart, outbound marketing.

Both concepts, inbound & outbound marketing, are like two sides of the same coin, so it is necessary to be clear what they are, their origin, the differences between the two and how we can implement them in our strategies.

What is outbound marketing?

We call outbound marketing to the set of promotional actions whose objective is to sell products and services to users and that happen in a single sense, that is, the communication always goes from the company to the user.

Outbound marketing actions are presented unexpectedly, without the user requesting them and usually interrupting other actions (or the consumption of other content).

In general, almost all traditional advertising could be classified as outbound. This is the case of media advertisements, advertising posters and mupis, merchandising and direct sales stands, among others.

But we can also find actions typically outbound within the world of online marketing, such as banners on websites and social networks, pay ads in Google AdWords, inserted advertising videos and so on.

Although it has been with us for a long time, the term “outbound marketing” was not used as a term until 2005, when Hubspot defined the concept of inbound marketing and therefore had to name its opposite as well.

Outbound marketing vs inbound marketing

Inbound and outbound marketing differ in several key aspects:

inbound is based on the user’s permission to consume a certain advertising content, while outbound is based on an interruption model.
That is, in the outbound calls the attention of the user directly (even if it is at the expense of interrupting what it is doing) and in the inbound seeks that the user approaches the brand voluntarily to seek information and content of value.
Inbound communications focus on the user and their needs, while outbound focuses on the brand and attributes.

Outbound marketing tends to target sales, while inbound marketing uses a funnel advertising methodology to gradually guide the user through the conversion funnel.

Outbound marketing uses more aggressive and impactful methods to attract the attention of the potential customer, but inbound marketing attracts them in a non-aggressive way through the creation of value content.

Nowadays, the trend in the sector is to value inbound marketing more, since it has certain advantages. But it is a mistake to leave outbound completely aside, since both strategies are complementary. For example, we can combine the creation of a brand blog (inbound) with ads on social networks (outbound) to attract visitors to a landing page and thus increase conversions.