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Inbound vs. Outbound Sales: What’s the Difference?

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When creating your ideal marketing flywheel, it is important to understand the difference between inbound and outbound sales. Identifying this difference will allow you to properly calibrate inbound vs. outbound marketing strategies to maximize your value in both of these critical areas of business growth.

In this guide to sales, we’ll cover:

What are Inbound Sales?

Inbound sales are conversions from leads seeking out your product or service but haven’t chosen your brand yet. These leads often come from content marketing that puts your product and brand in front of consumers who haven’t expressed interest yet but share characteristics with existing clients or demographics that are likely to purchase from you.

Your inbound marketing efforts will allow potential customers to connect with your products through content they were already searching for. Using inbound marketing tactics like blogs, videos, pillar pages, or any content that potential customers can discover themselves is an integral part of a successful inbound sales campaign.

What are Outbound Sales?

Outbound sales are when you acquire customers by directly appealing to them through targeted marketing channels. Because your outbound client pool is internally identified, it can be narrow, and you can fight hard for their business. This simplified approach allows you to create strategic goals that differ from the broader inbound marketing strategies.

An example of traditional inbound sales from inbound marketing would be a real estate agent posting a billboard in their city and a home buyer choosing them because of it.

Why are Inbound Sales Important?

Inbound sales are important because the process focuses on reaching current and potential customers during all stages of a strong marketing flywheel. Giving your prospective purchasers the information they need in a non-interruptive way can be reassuring, more convincing, and brand-building.

Your product or service is solving a problem they need, and the ability to bypass marketing gimmicks in exchange for authoritative content that adds value to your clients’ lives is significant. With strong inbound sales and marketing, you can create loyal brand ambassadors who will continue to purchase and refer your products for years.

Why are Outbound Sales Important?

Outbound sales are important to your business because they allow you to be aggressive during the early stages of growth. They also allow you to create personalization while perfecting your messaging and gaining insight from your customer interactions with the sales pitches you create.

Outbound sales also allow you to be less generic – cold emails in a sequence or flow chart have proven incredibly cost-effective and sustainable for small businesses. Outbound lead generation is often seen as cheesy or intrusive, but when done properly, it can showcase your company’s consideration of the customer and their needs.

Examples of Great Inbound Sales Techniques

It is easy to get distracted by too many marketing and sales techniques. Good inbound marketing is all about finding what is hyper-effective for your business and can be replicated time and again to create a reliable flow of potential customers.

Some of the best inbound sales techniques to leverage include:

  • Content Marketing
    Publishing and properly sharing authoritative blog content across multiple platforms can be extremely powerful. This can be done through your website, shared by other high-authority sites, or email lists. Sharing your expertise to create value will typically yield great results.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
    Getting eyes on your content, website, and products is the name of the game, and SEO is one of the most effective ways to draw attention to these things. Optimizing your content will allow it to rank higher as users type in keywords that are recognized by a search engine algorithm. This will create new organic customer flows, and the process is highly sustainable.
  • Market Automation
    When you are creating a high-powered marketing flywheel, there will be many tasks that need to be done repetitively to keep your customers engaged and delighted (among other things). While these could be assigned and done manually, fantastic marketing automation can be implemented to save you time and money. These include software that schedules social media, sends automated email campaigns, follow-ups on leads, and analyzes your data.

These are just some ways that inbound marketing can be used to create a constant stream of strong clients. The best part is that a consistent marketing flywheel will build momentum and make these inbound sales techniques more effective and inductive for long-term success.

Examples of Great Outbound Sales Techniques

Inbound marketing is often recognized as the preferred modern outreach methodology, but that doesn’t mean outbound marketing is dead. Outbound marketing can create a significant branding boost and deliver exceptional leads by contacting your potential clients directly.

Some of the most effective outbound marketing and sales techniques include:

  • Cold Email Outreach
    Email has been one of the most consistently effective marketing methodologies for decades. Having a direct line to someone’s email inbox means you have domain over their attention for at least a moment – and the best outbound efforts will capture their interest and move them to the next steps of your marketing campaign.
  • Paid Search Ads
    Using paid ads in conjunction with strong SEO can help you cast the widest net for your marketing flywheel. Some customers will react better when your campaigns target them proactively to interest them in your services. Using compelling messaging and addressing broad pain points of your industry in these ads can attract leads in droves.
  • Social Media Ads
    As traditional outbound efforts such as billboard and print ads are losing their luster, they are being replaced with digital ideations. While people spend less time watching cable TV or interacting with physical objects, they spend more time on their phones and online, meaning social media ads will have a great chance of being seen by the customers you desire.

The best outbound marketing techniques will work to create their foundational channels. You can analyze how they interact and coexist with your inbound efforts to maximize your reach and ability to convert high-value clients.

How to Create an Inbound Marketing Flywheel

In the past, the concept of an inbounding marketing funnel was prevalent, with a top, middle, and bottom of a funnel representing the stages your clients go through. However, modern inbound marketing has pivoted to the marketing flywheel; It emphasizes focusing on multiple purchases and creating brand ambassadors out of your clients who keep returning to support your business.

The stages of the marketing flywheel are:

  1. Attract: Gaining the attention of unknown leads via content by searching through the likes of Google.
  2. Engage: Once you have the prospect’s attention, you must compel them to take action.
  3. Delight: Continuing a positive relationship after a customer’s first purchase to create retention.

During each phase, your inbound marketing techniques should be intentional and efficient. The goal is to have your potential customers resonate with your messaging, see the value in your product or service, and feel confident that their first purchase is the beginning of a relationship with your brand. They may not know this overtly as they interact with your content, but if you provide the right marketing through proper channels, your efforts will be rewarded repeatedly.

Improve Your Marketing and Sales with Striventa

At Striventa, we help businesses accelerate their growth by using modern inbound and outbound sales techniques. Our experts can provide your business with the insights and tools needed to take your marketing to the next level without compromising your product or brand. We know how difficult the road to the top can be, and our goal is to provide partnership for success.

If you are looking to take the next step in your business journey, please reach out to us today. We’d love to plan for a brighter future together.