Inbound Marketing vs Content Marketing: How Are They “Related”?
Posted by Jason Hughes on Thu, Feb 10, 2011 @ 02:03 PM
I used to think Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing were synonymous. In family terms, kind of like identical twins. It turns out I was wrong.
In fact, they are closely related, but more like a normal brother and sister with similar but different DNA. I’ll explain later, but first let’s attempt to define exactly what content marketing and inbound marketing are.
Inbound Marketing
According to Wikipedia:
“Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers.“
If “getting found” is the objective of inbound marketing, then the exact opposite would be outbound marketing, which focuses on ‘finding’ customers.
Kind of like the difference between casting a net into the deep sea and hoping to snag some fish verses providing gourmet fish food and waiting for them to come to you.
Content Marketing
Again from Wikipedia:
“ Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. “
So the opposite of content marketing would be any marketing strategy that did not seek to educate the consumer….”one time only” sales come to mind.
What Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing Have in Common
Basically, they share two incredibly important traits:
- Both leverage information
- Both formulate a strategy around that information
The disparity between the two comes from the different ways they employ these traits.
What are the Differences?
The funny thing is that inbound marketing and content marketing can kind of drift in and out of each other without being synonymous.
I say this because:
- Content marketing can be inbound or outbound. For example, a magazine print article is an outbound form of content marketing. Take the same article and publish it on a blog and it becomes inbound marketing. Why?.....not solely because it’s on the web, but because it can “get found” by the consumer who’s actively seeking the information. The web just so happens to be the venue people utilize to find information.
This speaks to the way each form of marketing leverages information.
- Inbound marketing isn’t necessarily content marketing. Inbound marketing is more than content on a web page. It includes offers, landing pages, lead nurturing, etc. and all of these go beyond the scope of content marketing.
This speaks to the way each employs its own unique strategy.
So we can see that despite the fact that both children are the offspring of the same parents (information and strategy), each has its own dominant and recessive traits that it takes from each.
I’m just thinking out loud, what do you think?
Where am I wrong here?
Let me know, I’m just a pool guy!
Hey, thanks for being here and please chime in and join the conversation below in the comments section.