5 Easy Inbound Marketing Ideas

Once you’ve decided to take the plunge into inbound marketing, you have to face your toughest question – what will your content offerings be?

The cornerstone of inbound marketing is offering valuable content your audience wants to engage with. Creating that content is a challenge, especially for first-time inbound marketers. Below are some actionable content items you can create yourself to base your inbound marketing campaigns around.

1. eBooks

If you don’t want to do much heavy lifting to create content, eBooks are the way to go for inbound marketing content. eBooks may seem daunting to put together, but they’re a lot easier if you can leverage existing content. Take a look back at some blogs you’ve done – a simple eBook idea is to take a few blogs you’ve written on the same topic and compile them into one larger eBook. eBooks are also popular downloads from a visitor perspective because they provide more information than can typically found in articles.

2. Quizzes

Gone are the days of huddling around a magazine and taking quizzes to find out which member of a boyband should be your husband, but quizzes have found a resurgence online. Quizzes don’t just have to be about fluffy topics, they can also be used as valuable information mining tools. At BizzyWeb, we’ve used quizzes in the past to entice people back to our website. You can create targeted quizzes related to your industry and gate the results – simply have people enter their email before they can see their results. Quizzes are unique content offerings in that they’re interactive and allow you to mine more information about your leads before you meet with them.

3. Gated Videos

Video should be a vital part of any marketing strategy, but they can also make valuable gated content. Try creating a webinar about a topic that you’re knowledgeable about (or even have a roundtable discussion with other thought leaders in your industry). You can then work this into an inbound marketing campaign by gating the video – requiring visitors to fill out a form or RSVP online before they are given access to the video. 

4. Templates/Worksheets

Everyone is busy and everyone is looking for ways to ease their workload. Templates or worksheets are a fantastic way to deliver content to your audience that they can use. Best of all, these content pieces will be used again and again. Start with a process that’s important in your industry and work from there – for BizzyWeb, we could create a blog template or a marketing budget worksheet. Think of similar everyday processes in your own industry that could translate into an actionable worksheet.

5. Checklists

Santa isn’t the only one who loves lists – checklists are an important way to stay organized. Checklists are also valuable  tools for your audience. A checklist can help someone new to a process or concept navigate through it with ease. Checklists are also very simple to create as they’re typically only a few pages in length. Another benefit to checklists is that they streamline nicely into an inbound marketing campaign – you can send follow-up emails with other content like blogs for each stage on the checklist.

With these inbound marketing content offerings in hand, you have what you need to pave the way into a full inbound marketing campaign.

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Free Checklist: How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign

Are you dotting your T’s and crossing your eyes? Getting a marketing campaign off the ground is a frustrating mess of trying to pull together disconnected tools and channels. Instead of relying on notes scribbled on a thousand different notepads, use our Free Inbound Marketing Checklist to make sure you’ve covered all your bases.

Need a new digital marketing or web design plan? We are a Minneapolis SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, web design and HubSpot inbound marketing agency. We’re located just outside of Minneapolis. Stop on by and get started – and while you’re here, pick up a free honey stick (yes, we love our bee-related theme).