In the words of David Mackenzie Ogilvy, nicknamed “Father of Advertising”:

“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”  

– David Ogilvy

That’s pretty much what inbound marketing aims for. It aims at creating interesting content that gets people interested in your brand. 

Inbound marketing does that by providing answers to people looking for them. It is about personalizing marketing in such a way that you promote without actually promoting your business. In this blog, we’ll be talking about inbound marketing and the types of content that can help you with it. 

Inbound marketing – an overview 

There is a subtle difference between selling to people and making them buy from you. Inbound marketing taps into that difference. 

Put simply, inbound marketing is about allowing customers to find you in the most organic way possible. In other words, you put your content out there. When people are looking for answers, recommendations, or even reviews they come across your content. And if this content happens to answer their questions, two things can happen: 

• You win their trust and they keep visiting your website for more information on that topic. 
• Or they find the content so convincing that they voluntarily convert into leads or even customers without friction. 

The idea of inbound marketing works because customers come to your brand by choice. They don’t feel pressurized. Outbound marketing, on the other hand, reaches out to prospective leads based on various targeting strategies. 

If you are finding it difficult to get your head around the ideas of inbound and outbound marketing, we’ll give you an example. 

Consider a customer looking to give her home a makeover. She does a quick search on “home decor trends” and comes across your blog post. Your blog post talks about all the latest home decor trends and provides easy ways to implement them at home. If this customer likes the ideas and finds them to be easy to follow, she’ll see if you also have product recommendations for the same. If you add your product links there, she might consider purchasing from your brand. 

Or if you have a newsletter to help this customer stay updated about home decor trends, she might sign up for it. So, she either becomes a valuable lead or a customer. That is how inbound marketing works. 

The essential stages of inbound marketing 

To understand the types of content that work well for inbound marketing you should know about the stages of inbound marketing. 

• Attract – the stage where you attract leads through blogs, social media posts, or even videos. 
• Convert – at this stage you convince visitors to provide information that registers them as leads. They start following your brand on social media or signup for your marketing newsletter. Lead capture pages and lead magnets come in handy at this stage. 
• Close – by nurturing relevant leads you convert them to customers. You can use emails for personalized campaigns and for influencing their buying decisions. 
• Delight – after your leads make a purchase, your efforts are focused on delighting your customers. In other words, to proactively keep them engaged and thus build loyalty. After all, a 5% increase in your customer retention rate can lead to a 25% to 95% increase in your profits. Personalized emails and social media posts are the most effective tools to make this happen. 

Are you ready to hear about the content types used in inbound marketing? 

6 indispensable content types for inbound marketing 

A good inbound marketing strategy is a combination of content marketing, SEO, and social media publishing. Creating various content formats for these platforms and keeping them relevant to your niche are key to successful inbound marketing. Let’s look at some of the content types that most brands use in their inbound marketing strategy. 

1. Blog

Long-form content like blogs are some of the most popular choices in inbound marketing. About 48% of the businesses using content marketing prioritize blogs as the most important type of content. That’s why most big brands have an active blog where they consistently engage with and educate their audience. 

Blogs have grown into popular marketing tools mainly because of their impressive ROI. Moreover, nearly 80% of business decision-makers find it easier to decide based on a set of blog posts rather than based on ads. 

All these data also show that it takes consistent effort and quality content to stand out. Because there might be hundreds of other posts out there giving the same answers that yours does. A few things that help:

• In-depth keyword research. And then comes the creation of relevant content based on these keywords. 
• Addin engaging visuals. Yes, stock images help break the content into easy-to-consume sections. But custom blog images are even better. They summarize and visually communicate your idea more effectively.  

Images like the one above make it easy to share your blog on social media too. That’s one way to win inbound leads through both web search and social media search. 

Kimp Tip: Blog images also help your posts rank well in image search. And if you have a strong style guide that defines a visual style for your blog images, it helps strengthen your brand image. Good content and great visuals together make your brand appear more authoritative in the niche. 

Need help with your blog graphics? The Kimp team is just a call away. 

2. Lead magnets 

One of the best content types to convert your website visitors into leads is a lead magnet. This can be in the form of:

• Ebooks
• Whitepapers 
• Video demos 
• Case studies 

In short, any downloadable asset. But to make it work, you need to position the right lead magnet in the right place. You should have informative short-form content that convinces customers that the information in your lead magnet is worth referring to. That’s when they will be willing to provide their contact information to download the content. Add your ebook cover or even a sneak peek into what your ebook covers. 

Lead magnet is a whole topic worth discussing in detail. Do check out our other blog here for an in-depth analysis of the different types of lead magnets that help build your email list in no time. 

3. Informative infographics 

Infographics have the potential to increase web traffic by 12%. And there are many benefits to using infographics in your content marketing strategy:

• They strengthen the credibility of your brand. 
• Infographics are easy to share 
• They are versatile and can be repurposed in many ways.

With a high-conversion infographic, you can share a lot of information in a small space, and that too in the most engaging manner possible. That’s why infographics are effective assets in inbound marketing. 

Kimp Tip: Just because infographics are meant to capture data do not give in to information overload. And when it comes to styling an infographic, use as few colors and fonts as possible. Go for a clutter-free layout that intuitively uses symbols and other imagery to simplify the message. 

Want to create stunning infographics to share on social media and other digital platforms? Sign up for a Kimp subscription today. Here is an interactive infographic created by the Kimp team. 

4. Social media posts 

Social media publishing has a special place in inbound marketing. Like web search, social media search is also an important area of focus for brand visibility these days. 

Like your website content, your social media content should also focus on adding value to your customers. But remember that the kind of information they are looking for might be different in different places. 

For example, a customer who is looking to understand the technology behind a new smartphone feature might go to a blog for information. But if the customer is looking for a quick look at the features or an overview of how the features work might look for information on social media. 

In fact, data shows that 27.9% of buyers use social media to find ideas on things to buy. So, by creating short informative posts you can score well in social media search. You can always link back to your blog to boost traffic to your long-form content. Customers who find your social media posts useful will be ready to check out your blog and they are more likely to become leads. 

Among all the social media formats, informative single-image posts, carousels, infographics, and videos are the most effective when it comes to inbound marketing. 

Kimp Tip:  About 75% of internet users rely on social media when it comes to understanding a brand better. So, your social media posts and the overall aesthetic should be a reflection of your brand identity. You cannot ignore your brand’s colors and fonts while creating social media posts. 

To create visually cohesive social media posts and create a memorable social media aesthetic for your brand, choose a Kimp subscription. 

5. Newsletters  

Email marketing can be used in all stages of inbound marketing but they make the most sense when you use them to close your sales and delight your customers. 

To attract or convert visitors you need cold emails which fall into the outbound marketing category. So let’s not get there today. Let’s talk about using newsletters in the last two stages of inbound marketing. 

Your email list starts growing once customers discover your content through search and find it worth signing up for your newsletter. At this stage, your customers have expressed intent. So, they make valuable leads worth nurturing. And what better way to do that than with emails? 

Segregated email lists and personalized emails are important to make email marketing work. From a simple welcome email to how-to guides, shopping guides, and recap articles there are many ideas that work for marketing newsletters. 

Emails are also useful to retarget customers who quit at the last stage of your purchase funnel. Marketing automation helps you keep track of such leads and to quickly reach out to them to gather feedback. 

Finally, emails are effective ways to re-engage old customers and therefore build customer loyalty. Thanking a customer after an order, and asking for feedback about the experience will help create a proper closure for a business transaction. Further, targeting these customers for upselling and cross-selling based on their past purchases ensures that they keep coming back to your brand for their future orders.  

6. Video content 

Only a few years ago, marketers did not have to worry about videos at least in inbound marketing. But now things have changed. YouTube has changed the way people search for information. Videos make it easier to visually grasp the idea and also to see live demonstrations that make the idea even clearer. So, while creating an inbound marketing plan, you now have to take videos more seriously. 

When customers identify your brand as one that updates informative content regularly, they will trust your brand. And your brand will be the first name they remember when they make a purchase in the future. So, even if a sale does not happen immediately, there are better chances of a sale happening soon. Videos help with both inbound and outbound marketing. 

We’ll give you a simple example to understand the difference between videos created for outbound and inbound marketing. A video ad that randomly pops up in the middle of a game or YouTube video is outbound marketing targeting customers based on preset criteria. An informative video on your YouTube channel or your social media page appearing in search will be inbound marketing. 

With the growing popularity of short-form videos, you can also tap into the trend for discoverability. These short-form videos can be used as anchors to your long-form videos. 

Give your inbound marketing a boost with Kimp subscriptions 

Content lies at the crux of a good inbound marketing strategy. And you will find extensive use of visuals on all content types. That’s why a design subscription that gives you unlimited designs per month will be one of the most reliable ways to keep up with the graphics requirements. And working with a dedicated team at Kimp means that you can continue to create relevant and informative content that continuously engages your customers at different stages of their buyer journeys. 

Want to give your inbound marketing a boost? Sign up for a free trial and see how Kimp can help.