What’s the difference between Content Marketing and Inbound?
I get it. It’s slightly confusing. And if you’re reading this you’re probably not sure if content marketing or inbound marketing… or even both… are the right choice for your business. Or you might not know how either would benefit you.
Well, keep reading to learn all about both methods and why they’re important for any business wanting to drive qualified leads to their company.
Let’s look at both.
Content Marketing
Sometime around 2001, Content Marketing was coined to describe the way brands used content to market to consumers. Unlike your traditional methods of advertising like TV and radio commercials, print ads or billboards, content marketing relied heavily on magazines, blogs, and books to introduce customers to companies.
Content marketing involves the creation of content that a customer in the brand’s target audience profile would find helpful, useful, or interesting. It’s used to drive brand awareness and build brand affinity. Basically, content marketing is the answer to consumers who ignore invasive marketing messages and sales pitches. Content marketing slowly builds relationships with potential customers that eventually lead to sales.
Inbound Marketing
Like content marketing, Inbound marketing has been around for only a few years and has really emerged as the preferred marketing method in the last 10. Again, as consumers begin to lose interest in invasive sales messaging, brands have had to find new ways to reach potential customers, and convert them into buyers.
The idea behind inbound marketing is that folks are not interested in being interrupted by marketing while they’re doing something else. The premise of inbound is to engage with people at their leisure. If you’re using the Inbound Marketing method, your message is heard when folks search for an answer to their problem. This makes inbound leads far more likely to accept any targeted offer, or respond to a call to action because they are already in the mindset of finding a solution to their problem and they may have already heard about you at this point.
They sound like the same thing.
So if you read the above, it sounds like i’m splitting hairs. But there are some distinctions between the two. Inbound marketing and a content marketing strategy are similar because:
they both involve a more holistic view of marketing that focuses on satisfying visitor or customer needs;
both are non-interruptive.
both rely on the long game—building relationships between the brand and customer to make a sale.
However, the differences are the activities involved. In fact, content marketing is part of a holistic inbound marketing strategy.
Inbound marketing focuses on the actions taken to convert a visitor into a customer once they have ended up on a website. Content marketing is a section of that, because it focuses on very specific methods of content creation and distribution. For an easier understanding of the differences, see the infographic below sourced from Spiralytics.
Source: Spiralytics
Which method should I use?
Well… both. Both content and inbound should, ideally, be part of your online marketing strategy. Neither method is better than the other, and when used together, can create great results.
Inbound marketing is necessary because it drives folks to your website. The methods you use, and the content you make available, can compel visitors to take action and convert into customers. Content marketing, will make your site more attractive to visitors. It will give them helpful material that convinces them you are the right solution and can also positively impact your search rankings.
So the short answer complete with high reaching analogy…
Imagine the inbound marketing strategy is a cook book. The Inbound strategy defines all of the ingredients. The content marketing puts all of the ingredients together and serves them to your various audiences.
Inbound marketing is about developing a strategy to answer common questions and find solutions to common problems by adding images, videos and other content that adds value. The goal for Inbound marketing is to bring in qualified users to the website and nurturing them until they’re more likely to convert.
Content marketing should focus on the creation of compelling and helpful content and its distribution across different channels. This includes writing blog posts and guides, promoting them on the various social channels, building links to them, and so on. There truly is a need to do both in tandem to get the best results for your business.
Want to learn more about Inbound Marketing?
The Inbound Lab is here to help with all your online marketing needs. Whether you’re new to inbound marketing or just looking for a few new ideas, I would be happy to chat. Send me an email and let’s set up a time to chat.
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