Let's start by establishing the inbound marketing definition. While creating content plays a role in traditional marketing activities, organisations are now moving away from outbound marketing (with its reliance on direct sales pitches and aggressive promotional techniques) and pushing content creation for inbound marketing purposes. Inbound marketing focuses on making the most of content and its direct link with search engine optimization to increase their reach.
Why inbound marketing matters
Outbound marketing puts its focus on reaching out speculatively to potential customers, whereas inbound marketing works for lead generation and nurturing by delivering valuable content(a blog post for example) to a target audience at various points along the sales funnel. This engaging and relevant content keeps target audiences informed, enlightened and assisted as they move towards making purchases.
To this end, inbound marketing focuses on content marketing that meets potential customers with help and advice relevant to their specific stage in the buyer’s journey. This approach clearly has the edge over traditional marketing techniques. In fact, research suggests that an inbound marketing strategy costs $14 less than traditional marketing for each newly acquired customer. What’s more, a well planned inbound marketing strategy is ten times more effective than outbound marketing strategies in terms of lead conversions.
So, what types of inbound marketing can you use in creating valuable content? That’s what we shall discuss in this article.
1. Interactive content
[Image source: Ion Interactive]
For inbound marketing, interactive content promotes audience engagement by requiring the active participation of potential customers. Inbound marketing examples of interactive content include surveys and customer feedback loops, social media polls, calculators, and slide shows.
Inbound marketing strategies with this type of content attract customers, promote audience engagement, and enhance inbound marketing efforts by helping marketing managers improve lead conversion rates and drive more traffic to their websites.
2. Email newsletters
Email newsletters or eNewsletters are a form of email marketing that enables organisations to serve a target audience with valuable content that keeps them up to date with developments and activities concerning the brand. This might for example include press releases, information on new product or service launches, upcoming events such as a free webinar or in-store shopping experience, and a chance to highlight relevant social media posts, product reviews, or customer testimonials.
Distributing a newsletter can enhance the overall quality of your email marketing, which can be a key contributor to a successful inbound marketing campaign. With a measurable Return On Investment (ROI), every $1 invested in email marketing typically returns an average of $42.
3. Live streaming
[Image source: Epiphan Video]
Live streaming enables content marketing professionals to hit their target demographic with visual content and sounds directly from a live event. This is one of the immersive inbound marketing examples that uses video content to engage potential customers, and draw them into an experience. It’s an effective tool for marketing managers.
According to research by Conviva, live content earns 27% more minutes of watch time per viewing than video on demand. Grand View Research projects that the live streaming industry will achieve a value of $184.3 billion by 2027. Much of this growth is currently being driven by the retail and services industries (especially in Southeast Asia), where social media marketing often includes video content from popular influencers, as they relate their experience of using a particular product or service.
Other inbound marketing options to consider
Beyond these previous three types of inbound marketing, your inbound marketing strategy may benefit from using these content creation options:
Webinars
Delivering relevant content through a webinar enables your brand to position itself as a thought leader or trusted advisor in a particular area of expertise. Webinars provide a forum for inbound marketing to effectively create long form content that explores issues and ideas in greater depth than might be possible with written content or a social media post.
Offering a free webinar also provides an opportunity for lead generation. Using relevant keywords to promote the webinar can attract an audience from your target demographic, and asking viewers to register before attending your online event helps in growing your contact list of potential customers.
Visual content
Besides video and live streaming, you can enhance your inbound marketing strategy by using high-quality images in your content creation. These may include high-resolution photographs, detailed infographics, charts, and tables to increase the impact of the written portions of your digital marketing output. Hubspot reckons that articles with an image once every 75-100 words receive double the number of shares on social media as articles with fewer images.
Partner wisely for inbound marketing success
Whatever content creation avenues you pursue for your inbound marketing strategy, you’ll benefit from collaborating with an inbound marketing specialist with experience and expertise in the field. Many inbound marketing strategies aren't fit for your specific industry and/or company. Having a specialist to guide you through the process is a decision you will not regret.
At Incisive Edge, we help develop inbound marketing strategies that engage with timely and relevant content, supported by video content, social media, email, and with the right systems and processes to rank on search engines until they convert.
Whether you're a startup and want a ready-formed team at your disposal for your inbound strategy , or a scaleup who wants expertise in specific areas as well as your existing inbound strategies, we work with you to meet your exact needs.
To discover how Incisive Edge can help you identify the types of inbound marketing that most suit your company profile, get in touch with us.
