A Comparison Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing
Social media has not only enabled us to freely express our ideas and thoughts and facilitates us with interactive communications media with friends, but also allows businesses to use it as a platform for marketing. Since social media facilitates businesses to keep in touch with their consumers at low costs while catering to their specific needs and wants in order to satisfy them. As a result, there is a trend towards inbound marketing, in which customers are persuaded to actively find useful and relevant information on products or services to suit their needs and wants. In contrast, conventional marketing is outbound marketing where businesses push marketing contents to their customers regardless of if they need such contents or not, which may annoy them. This chapter compares inbound and outbound marketing and discusses advantages of inbound marketing over outbound marketing.