Lots of bloggers now-a-days are using the terms digital marketing and inbound marketing, interchangeably. A novice may at times interpret digital marketing to be a form of internet marketing, or get confused in the cobweb of these digital marketing terms. This article will help you understand the difference between the two terms.
INBOUND MARKETING
There are two types of marketing strategies –
a) Inbound Marketing,
b) Outbound marketing.
Inbound marketing may be referred to as the pull technique of marketing, wherein, a business does not directly reach out it’s customers, but increases its visibility via targeted ads and uses re-marketing techniques to draw potential customers to its website or landing page. Eg. – The ads that you see on search engines, or social media platforms are basically guided by your internet search behaviour.
Outbound marketing may be referred to as the push technique of marketing, wherein, a business reaches out to it’s customers directly, by way of cold calling, email marketing, etc.
How Internet search behaviour is gauged?
Website track user behaviour through COOKIES. A cookie is a small packet of information that stores data about your activity over the internet. For eg. – Once you visit a website, you start seeing similar ads over social media and other platforms. This is because the website you visited stored some cookies in your browser. Nothing to worry about – cookies do enhance user experience. Wanna learn how?
Try this –
- Clear all history and cookies in your browser. Open any website, let’s say – www.lightscamerasocial.com
2. Observe the loading time of the website on your browser
3. Close your web browser and re-open it.
4. Open the same website and notice the loading time.
5. You will realise that the loading time has increased!
How & Why?
When you visited the website in the first place, some cookies were installed in your browser automatically to enhance your user-experience. Now, when you open the website for the second time, it took less time to load because, most of the information, let’s say the structural elements of the website, some other backend technical data is already stored on your browser, so it doesn’t load again. As simple as that!
INTERNET MARKETING
There is a very thin line of difference between internet and digital marketing. Internet marketing includes all those digital marketing activities for which you have to use the internet. Eg. – Google Advertising, Social media advertising, Email marketing, etc., whereas, Digital marketing > Internet marketing as it includes Internet marketing + all those marketing activities which are done using digital devices, but may or may not use the internet. Eg – SMS marketing is done using a digital device, however, it does not use the internet.
DIGITAL MARKETING
This is a broader term than Internet marketing, or one can say it’s an umbrella term.
The process of advertising or promoting your website over the internet, using digital devices like laptops, palmtops, tablets, desktop, etc. In simple words, one can say that, it refers to marketing over the Internet.
It’s not wrong to use the terms Internet marketing and Digital Marketing, interchangeably, however, Inbound marketing and Digital marketing is not one and the same thing.
Inbound marketing is a marketing methodology, whereas digital marketing is a marketing technique. Even tradition form of marketing can use inbound marketing to attract its potential customers.
To understand this better, let’s first understand how Inbound marketing works –
6 pillars of INBOUND MARKETING
- VISIBILITY
- BRINGING TARGETED TRAFFIC
- ENGAGEMENT
- CONVERSIONS
- MEASUREMENT
- RETENTION
We will be discussing these terms in details in our next article. Meanwhile…
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