There are two schools of thought for marketing.

• Outbound marketing
• Inbound marketing

You’ve been exposed to both of them, but perhaps you haven’t realized it.

Outbound marketing is a type of marketing where a company (you) push out a marketing message to someone (customer, the market, etc).

Inbound marketing is where you make your marketing message available and create paths for people to find your message.

Outbound’s easiest example is advertising. A company pays for advertising which broadcasts the marketing message to TV viewers, radio listeners or mail readers.

An example for inbound marketing would be blogging or content marketing. The company writes about a topic and relates it to their product and services.

For a long time I thought outbound marketing was evil and inbound was the new thing. Marketing 2.0 or whatever.

It wasn’t until a while ago that I saw the big link between the two.

Outbound and inbound are just two sides of the same coin. The end goals are the same – to find potential customers. They’re just different approaches.

Different strengths and weaknesses.

With my bias against outbound marketing, I only did inbound marketing. Which hurt me.

I’ll get into the details of them soon but for now, look at your own biases.

• Do you have a preference for inbound or outbound marketing?
• Do you feel like one is a waste of time, or that it’s evil?

You don’t have to use both of them, but you’ll be limiting who you can reach if you don’t.

You’ll see much better results if you’re open to both types and are willing to give each of them a try.

Eric Davis