As the digital age has progressed, both inbound marketing and content marketing have become important slices of the overall “pie” of online marketing. Chances are, you are focusing your efforts on one or the other, without having analyzed which one is actually the better investment.
They both have their place, but the intentions behind inbound marketing and and content marketing are very different. Likewise, their value to your overall marketing strategy will also vary. A recent Google Trends report compared the two types of digital marketing to an investment in stocks. According to the report, over the past eight years the values of each type of “stock” (the payoff from your investment) would have grown at quite different rates. A 10,000-dollar investment in inbound marketing in June of 2008 would now be worth $490,000. Sounds great, right? And yet, that same 10,000-dollar investment in content marketing “stock” would now be worth over a million dollars sildenafil citrate 100 mg viagra.
Clearly, both types of marketing provide value, but the value of content marketing is far outpacing that of inbound marketing. What’s the difference?
Inbound marketing revolves around ‘being found” online. You could think of inbound marketing as different activities that pull new people to your website. Inbound marketing happens at the top of the marketing funnel, where your goal is to reach as many new prospects as possible. Of course, you know that only a few of those will eventually make it to the end of your funnel, and become clients.
Content marketing, on the other hand, revolves around working with the customers you already have. Target emails, social media posts, and blogs that address your current clients help to boost your retention rate. Yes, these activities can also sometimes draw interest from new prospects, but they are primarily bottom-of-funnel activities.
Both types of marketing involve creation of digital content, but one focuses on locating new clients while the other focuses on client retention. They each have their place, but content marketing (directed toward current clients) is more valuable. As the authors of Managing Business-to-Business Marketing Communications point out, “The fundamental principle of marketing is that it is exponentially more profitable to keep existing customers than it is to acquire new ones”. In the marketing industry, our general rule of thumb is that it costs five times as much to gain a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.
In other words, your marketing strategy is an investment in your business. Why not invest your resources in the method that carries the larger payoff? According to Harvard Business School*, a 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase your profits by 25 to 95 percent! When devising your digital marketing strategy, remember to direct the appropriate amount of energy toward content marketing to drive client retention.