Inbound Marketing vs Content Marketing: Capitalize on Your Traffic
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Marketing is a pretty straightforward topic. The goal of any form of marketing is to generate leads, attention, and awareness for a company. Within the world of marketing, there are various subsets.
Stacking Inbound marketing vs content marketing is kind of like comparing apples to apples. They’re just two examples of the marketing subsets.
The purpose of this guide is to help you understand the differences between these two types of marketing so you can understand how to better implement them in your own business.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a customer-centric methodology that focuses on attracting, engaging, and delighting your audience through tailored content and experiences.
Instead of bombarding potential customers with interruptive advertisements, inbound marketing strives to create a magnet-like effect. It lures prospects in by offering valuable content, addressing their pain points, and building meaningful relationships.
The current landscape of business and marketing demands a more personal touch because we’re so used to being inundated by advertisements.
Inbound marketing subtly sells while also providing some form of value to help make the marketing experience more enjoyable for the user and more prosperous for the marketer.
Examples of Inbound Marketing
Taking a look at this page above from ARC Relocation shows us a page explaining what a realtor rebate is and how you can use this to save money on a home purchase.
The page provides tremendous value to the reader because they’re explaining how the user can save money on real estate commissions through a rebate program they offer.
If we Google the keyword “realtor rebate,” they rank number four for this keyword which isn’t bad. This is due to the fact that the page provides a ton of great information and resources. It converts naturally without the need to go out and explain and hard sell customers.
This is the foundation of what inbound marketing is. Someone Google’s “realtor rebate” because they’re looking for a rebate to help them save money on their home purchase. Boom, they find resources that help them do just that.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a multifaceted approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a target audience.
Unlike traditional advertising, which relies on direct sales pitches, content marketing seeks to build trust and credibility by delivering informative, entertaining, or educational content.
See any similarities here? There are a few buzzwords that connect the two:
- Value
- Trust
- Relevance
- Consistent
- Engage
These words are at the core of what content marketing is and it’s important to understand that content marketing is inbound marketing.
In fact, content marketing is the primary way of generating leads using inbound marketing.
If you’re creating content on your website, you’re doing so with the intention of drawing potential customers in, getting them to learn more about you, and ultimately getting them to convert.
Examples of Content Marketing
Let’s go back to the previous example:
This is top-notch content marketing because the company provides reviews of various realtor rebates and compares it to theirs. This comparison is valuable because it helps readers compare the options and choose what works best for them.
Putting Them Together
Like I said, comparing inbound marketing vs content marketing is like comparing two of the same things because they rely on each other.
Inbound marketing focuses on users identifying their desires, pain points, and wants on their own. Then, they look for a resource to help them with their issue and if you’re targeting correctly and providing great content, hopefully you can become that resource.
This is where the world of content marketing and SEO collide. You can have the most valuable content in the world but if you don’t understand keyword research, link building, and foundational SEO; you’ll never rank your content so no one will ever see it.
Keep in mind that content marketing can be used at all steps in the funnel. It’s used to draw people in but you can use it to nurture leads through email and social media marketing as well.
Can You Have One Without The Other?
Not really, because if you have one, you have the other. It’s best to think of these two things as the same. Both are useful in the current landscape because people aren’t receptive to pushy marketing anymore and companies are adjusting.
Pulling customers in rather than pushing them is the way to go and learning how to do this through inbound marketing and content marketing will pay off for many years to come.
Final Thoughts
The debate of inbound marketing vs content marketing is not about choosing one over the other but understanding how these two strategies complement each other in the digital marketing landscape.
Inbound marketing provides the overarching framework, emphasizing a customer-centric approach that draws potential clients in through personalized experiences.
While, content marketing, on the other hand, is the lifeblood of inbound marketing. It’s the engine that drives the strategy forward.
By producing high-quality, optimized, relevant, and consistent content, you create the substance that captivates your audience’s attention and builds trust. Content marketing feeds the inbound funnel, serving as the means to execute an effective inbound strategy.
The synergy between these two is what rounds out a complete digital marketing strategy. By implementing these in your business over the long-term, you’ll build lasting connections and a larger audience.