On an average I receive 10 phone calls, 105 emails daily regarding various services. These calls and emails are nothing but marketing efforts made by various companies. But for me, these are spams. There is very less likely chances that I would entertain or get across an email or call that interests me.

This is what most of the companies do for generating leads. They send emails, contact through purchased distribution lists, make cold calls etc to get to their prospective customers. But in all these cases, they try to reach a mass that not necessarliy would be interested. This kind of marketing is what I call as outbound marketing.

Consumers these days have become smarter to block your outbound efforts. They have caller ids, spam filters and other machanism to stop you to reach them. They do it because they do not need your services or usually get annoyed and do not convert into leads.

What if you focus more on marketing techiniques that hit your actual prospects that can convert into leads? How about your potential customers come looking for you because they need your service or product? I call it inbound marketing.

Most of the companies do not use inbound marketing. But personally I would prefer doing inbound instead of outbound marketing. Outbound marketing requires lot of money and time. On the contrary, if you have brains and are creative, you can do inbound marketing with very less money and time.

With the increasing numbers of internet users, potential customers are aware enough to look for you. They have hundreds of channels to search you and reach you. It could be search engines, social networking/ media sites, blogs etc. Through these channels you can reach to more broader audiences without even annoying them.

Instead of trying to reach masses those are avoiding you, I would prefer to be found by the potential customers. If you have brains – go for inbound marketing or if you have lots of time and money – go for outbound marketing.

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