Is Your MSP Marketing In, or Out?

When it comes to the marketing that businesses can put out there, there are generally two camps: there’s outbound marketing, and there’s inbound marketing. While both have their place and purpose, it benefits a business to know which strategy is in play in terms of any of their given initiatives. Let’s explore outbound and inbound marketing alongside one another to see how each could benefit your business’ promotional efforts.

What Makes Inbound and Outbound Marketing Different?

Let’s begin by defining the difference between these two approaches to marketing. When all is said and done, the real differentiator is how a particular piece of marketing’s audience is introduced to the messaging that a company wants to share:

Outbound marketing presents a message to the world for an audience to find, while inbound marketing focuses on the needs that the members of an audience would have and draws them in with the answer to those needs.Outbound marketing presents a message to the world for an audience to find, while inbound marketing focuses on the needs that the members of an audience would have and draws them in with the answer to those needs.

Don’t worry, we’ll go into a little more detail:

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing tactics require you to create a message and send it out into the world with no specific recipient in mind. In military terms, outbound marketing is kind of like a strategic carpet strike: throw out a whole lot of generalized material and see what happens to stick.

In many ways, outbound marketing is the more familiar form of marketing, insofar as it represents what most people think of when they think about advertising. Things like billboards, television and radio spots, space in the newspaper classifieds…all of these are considered outbound marketing, where a company broadcasts what it has to offer in the hopes that a promising prospect picks up on the message.

Inbound Marketing

On the other hand, inbound marketing tactics require you to focus your efforts more inward. To mirror our analogy from before, inbound tactics are a business’ sniper shot: the most high-value targets are highlighted and very specifically engaged.

Rather than simply throwing a business’ message out into a crowd and hoping that enough sticks to generate some interest, inbound marketing instead makes it simpler for prospects to find a business that has positioned itself properly using things like blogs and web design to increase its search engine optimization score.

So, as their names would suggest, outbound marketing pertains to the messaging you send out, while inbound marketing pertains to the content you use to draw traffic in.

There are a few other differences between the two marketing tactics. Inbound is focused on organically providing a solution to a problem, while outbound is inherently sales-based and disruptive in nature. 

Which Approach Should Your Marketing Take?

In a word: both!

While every situation is different, it is generally good to have some mix of inbound and outbound marketing tactics in play at the same time. Ideally, these tactics will play off of one another: a postcard directing its recipient to a certain blog, which in turn directs the reader to a landing page or contact form.

Furthermore, when the success of your marketing as a whole is dependent on the number of impressions you can make with it, it only makes sense to diversify your efforts a bit. Different people will respond differently to different things… why not put enough out there to resonate with everyone?

Whatever Shape Your Marketing Takes, Our Team is Here to Help

We can assist you in developing a marketing strategy to promote your MSP services, with fulfillment services to support the successful implementation of said strategy. Learn more about how we can help you showcase your business through the numerous services we offer by calling 888-546-4384 today.