Inbound marketing vs outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing
making people come to a neutral point and then making them come to you.
If you have a website and if you want to promote it. Start a blog, make the blog popular (post reviews,answer comments in social forums). Link the blog to your website, thereby increasing footfalls to your website.
Pros
•    It doesn’t take money to market, other than maybe internet charges.
•    Its increases your reputation and fame
•    It makes you popular among your peers and friends; Your peers see you all over facebook,orkut… You
      become a star….
•    You can do it alone, You need not have a marketing team
•    Future clients see you as a person and are able to relate to you more.
Cons
•    It take a lot of time to get a steady flow of visitors your site. (for me it took a year to make steady visitors
      of minimum 1000 a week)
•    If your site doesn’t have great content or if doesn’t have a repeated value (read fresh content every
      week), then your visitors will not come back to your site, further they might spread the word that it’s a
      horrible site to visit. Then you are out of business.
•    You need to be innovative and attract visitors with new events and lots of freebies.

Outbound marketing-
Placing an advt in the newspaper, popular website and hoping that people will see the advertisement and come.
If you have a website and if you want to promote it. Put an advertisement in MSN or Yahoo home page. Don’t worry about the cost, it will cost around $2000 or Rs.1,00,000 per day. I guess it will make a big hole in your purse.
If you are running a retail chain with atleast two outlets in different parts of the city and if you have deep pockets,   Then out bound marketing is your best bet.
Pros
•    It gives your brand good visibility
•    It gives your brand a size( this is necessary for B2C market)
•    It gives you brand a high recall value
•    You get a good social standing from future investors, clients…
Cons
•    It is very costly
•    It has to be sustained over a long period of time
•    You need lots of people to coordinate with you so that all the promotional activities happen at the same
       time.
Overall if you are a just starting a company; go for inbound marketing. If you want to scale up fast go for outbound marketing+ inbound marketing.

Remember there is not right or wrong channel(web,newspaper,posters…) of communication. Don’t forget to simultaneously display the product or the brand through all the channels. Don’t do it one at a time.