Just like with any other marketing strategy, there are pros and cons to inbound marketing. This will discuss the most salient pros and cons so that you’ll know if this is right for your business.
What is Inbound Marketing?
The inbound marketing definition is that this is a philosophy where you make people come to you. Unlike outbound marketing, where you are sending messages to your clients, inbound marketing means that you make content that brings clients to you.
Instead of reaching out to clients and hoping they respond, this marketing philosophy means that you create a welcoming and informative place for your audience.
Pro: Helpful Instead of Obtrusive
Outbound marketing is all about forcing your way into your client’s life and making sure they know about you. It can get annoying as they receive your emails, letters, and other communications.
Inbound marketing is about making yourself a helpful resource for your clients. They will see you as a nice, welcoming place where they want to spend their time. This can go a long way to increasing your leads and audience.
Con: Takes a Long Time
Inbound marketing makes you look trustworthy, but it also means giving away information and resources for free.
It can take a long time to strike the balance between gaining trust and making money. Not only that, but the field is always changing.
You might get thousands of visitors today and close to none tomorrow. It takes time to become sustainable through the search engine changes. This strategy often takes more than a few months to really become profitable.
Pro: Detailed Feedback
Inbound marketing gives you detailed feedback about the market. For example, you might be running a blog and writing content for clients.
You will notice how some pages get lots of traffic while others don’t. You might also notice that there is seasonal content that gains interest during certain times of the year.
This is important because it shows you exactly what topics people are interested in. Not only that, but you can also see what topics aren’t gaining traction. This can help you refine your business to best target your audience.
Con: Not Always Applicable
Some business niches aren’t applicable for inbound marketing. This is especially true with B2B sectors, but there are many other industries that simply don’t get a lot of traffic.
If this is the case, then inbound marketing may not be right. It could be good to add content to your website so that those responding to your outbound marketing can learn more about you, but it may be best to put inbound on the backburner in this case.
You can often determine this by looking at the monthly searches for applicable keywords. If most of your relevant keywords only get 100 or fewer searches per month, then inbound marketing may not be the best strategy.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing is a philosophy where you make an environment that makes clients come to you. This can be great when it works, but it’s best to know the pros and cons before you use this as your dominant marketing strategy.
