In the B2B industry, lead generation is deemed one of the crucial processes of attracting prospects as well as converting them into buyers. Now, there are two methods with which you can generate leads; inbound lead generation and outbound lead generation. Inbound lead generation primarily focuses on attracting new customers through relevant and valuable content marketing whereas outbound lead generation depends on a few interruptive tactics like email blasting, cold calling, and advertising.
However, a lot of B2B marketers get confused about whether they should focus on inbound lead generation or outbound lead generation. The truth still remains that you need to understand both to yield the best result. In some cases, inbound lead generation performs better than outbound, and in other cases, it is reversed. So, both these methods are required to grow your business to the fullest potential.
In this article, we will talk in detail to find out whether inbound lead generation is more effective than outbound lead generation. So, let’s quickly find out,
What is Inbound Lead Generation?
Inbound lead generation is permission-based targeting where the prospects first approach your business because of valuable content or SEO practices that you have followed. Inbound marketing is more about helping your prospects understand your business, solution, product, pricing, and everything rather than just selling the offerings.
So, the methods of inbound lead generation are also different than outbound lead generation. These methods include,
- Content Marketing
Content marketing is a crucial part of inbound lead generation that involves creating valuable information, sharing it in various mediums, and promoting it to reach out to new prospects. This information can be created in different formats like videos, social media content, blogs, and whatnot. However, to effectively yield the benefits of inbound lead generation, and improve your lead quality targeting via content marketing, it’s crucial to have a strategy.
- SEO Marketing
SEO marketing is another important part of inbound lead generation, putting you directly in sight of your target customers. SEO marketing basically helps you to optimize the content to improve the audience targeting for your brand offerings. By leveraging the best SEO practices, and incorporating the keywords, you can improve your organic ranking in the Google search result as well.
- Live Chat
Even though reports show that 62% of customers prefer talking over phone calls, having an option for them to connect via chat is an added bonus. This is the reason why live chat software plays an important role in this scenario. This is another excellent method of lead generation through inbound marketing.
What is Outbound Lead Generation?
Outbound lead generation is about targeting people proactively. So, the process involves sending proactive communication to all the target audience on different channels like email, calls, social media, and many more.
So, the methods of outbound lead generation involve the following:
- Direct Cold Calling
Cold calling is a crucial part of outbound lead generation tactics where the sales development representatives initiate cold calls to target customers. The primary aim of cold calling is to schedule a demo or organize a meeting with these prospects. Although many sales professionals think that direct cold calling is one of the most difficult tasks to overcome due to the rate of rejection, it is deemed highly effective when done right.
- Email Marketing
Another essential method of outbound lead generation is cold emailing. In fact, it is the most used sales technique by marketers. Generally, in email marketing, the sales representatives send a single email or a chain of emails to prospects to encourage them to open up a conversation. It also can be effective as cold calling when done professionally and precisely.
- Social Selling
Social selling is one of the powerful methods of outbound lead generation, allowing brands to build stronger and deeper relationships with their customers. However, it’s also important to figure out the perfect platform or channel where most of your target audience is searching for services or products similar to yours. It increases the effectiveness of social selling by a significant percentage.
The Differences Between Outbound & Inbound Lead Generation
Although inbound and outbound lead generation may sound similar, there are a lot of differences between them. To help you understand better, here are some of the following differences between the two:
- Inbound lead generation encourages people to reach out to you by providing them with freebies information like free e-books, or any other form of content. Further, they feel more curious about finding out more about your product or services which pulls them to your website. However, outbound lead generation means you are reaching out to people with direct mail, advertising, phone calls, emails, or any other methods.
- Inbound lead generation can be described as permission marketing. Because you will need permission from your prospect to reach out to them. Nevertheless, outbound is about interruption marketing. Because you interrupt the prospects with your efforts.
- The primary difference is that outbound lead generation is about push marketing whereas inbound is about pull marketing.
Which One Should You Opt For?
Both inbound and outbound lead generation have their own unique benefits. Inbound marketing is deemed highly relevant by some marketers because the prospects opt to communicate with you. However, outbound lead generation targets a wider sector of customers. Besides, outbound lead generation provides you with more control over your marketing strategies. Therefore, it lets you stand out from the crowd.
Some people still say that outbound lead generation is dead while others believe that it’s really worth putting your effort into these to grow your business. The truth is that outbound lead generation can’t be dead. However, a lot of people are unaware of the process of how to yield the best result from outbound lead generation. This is why SocialBloom is here to help.
We are one of the renowned B2B lead generation specialists especially in outbound campaigns, generating leads through contact sourcing, calling, LinkedIn marketing, email marketing, etc. To know more about us and our process, schedule a discovery call now!