Digital Marketing 101: Digital Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing and digital marketing are often lumped together and considered the same. However, there are actually some differences between inbound marketing and digital marketing.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is a strategy that utilizes digital content (think things like SEO, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, and social media). Digital marketing is great for creating brand awareness, getting traffic to your website, and improving your online presence.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Like digital marketing, inbound marketing aims to create brand awareness and attract new leads in the hopes that they will convert into new sales. According to the marketing geniuses over at HubSpot, “inbound marketing is a methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, engage, and delight customers online.” 

Inbound marketing actually uses some digital marketing tactics, but the ultimate goal is for these new highly-qualified leads to find your business instead of directly advertising to them. And, once these new website visitors become new leads, it’s you and your marketing staff’s job to engage with and nurture them so that they eventually convert to new sales.

How Inbound Marketing Works

Like we said earlier, inbound marketing uses digital marketing assets. High-quality digital content is perhaps one of the most popular inbound marketing tools. You want to create high-quality industry relevant content that your target audience will find helpful. The content has to be something of value, and it can be entertaining, informative, or even educational.

Inbound marketing content should also have some kind of component that encourages engagement, like:

  • Call-to-action buttons
  • Sign-up forms
  • Clickable links
  • Clickable phone numbers

Inbound Marketing Tools

According to Wordstream, inbound marketing includes:

  • Content marketing
  • Blogging
  • SEO
  • Opt-in email marketing
  • Social media
  • Downloadable guides, whitepapers, infographics, webinars, etc. 
  • Paid search advertising

While paid search advertising might seem more of an outbound marketing tool, it actually falls into the category of inbound marketing because a company’s ads only appear when people are searching for the products and services they offer. So, they are actively searching for your offerings when your ad pops up.

The Power of Inbound Marketing

At the end of the day, inbound marketing can be very effective for businesses because it is a great way to get more leads and build relationships with potential customers. To learn more about the benefits of inbound marketing, check out our post: What Is Inbound Marketing? How Can My Business Use It?

EmoryDay Can Help Your Business Grow

EmoryDay is a full-service digital marketing agency that loves to utilize inbound marketing strategies to help businesses of all sizes grow. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our digital marketing services. 

Sources: 

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-digital-marketing#versus
https://www.wordstream.com/outbound-marketing

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