Inbound Lead

Inbound leads are leads that initiate contact with the business directly as opposed to outbound leads which are obtained through proactive measures taken by the company. These leads find the company through sources such as social media, blogs or articles, and recommendations of friends and family. 

Inbound vs Outbound Lead Generation 

• Inbound leads are generated by focusing on attracting leads to the company while outbound lead generation focuses on going out to get leads.
• Inbound lead generation uses tactics that will increase the company’s presence online such as creating content, using social media and campaigns. Outbound lead generation included tactics such as mass emailing and cold calling to spread the name of the company amongst the target audience. 
• Outbound lead generation allows the company to directly market to their target audience, whereas inbound lead generation strategies there is less control over who the content is seen by. 
• Inbound campaigns generally take a longer time to yield results as compared to outbound ones, simply because it will take some time for the content to spread and get noticed by the right people. Outbound campaigns can be organized and executed in a much smaller time frame and have a higher lead flow speed. 
• With inbound leads it is much easier to build good relationships as with these leads trust is developed before the lead comes in, whereas with outbound strategies the company has to prove themselves after the lead comes in. 
  

Common Inbound Lead Generation Strategies 

• Content marketing - This strategy involves attracting leads through developing high-quality content that will be of interest to the business’s target audience and using that to bring them to their website or offering it in exchange for an email id. Content such as eBooks, infographics, and newsletters are usually used for this purpose. 
• Social Media - Marketing on social media is another effective way of bringing in leads, it is an easy way to build brand awareness and guide potential leads towards following through with a CTA. Besides platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram which are the ones that businesses tend to flock to, YouTube is another promising platform that can help bring in leads. 
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - SEO is concerned with employing tactics that will help a website appear on the search engine ranking pages through optimizing structure and content. This ultimately helps to bring in more traffic to the website and hence more leads.