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Your destination for ebooks, guides, articles, and videos on marketing strategy and content experience.

How to create high-converting content experiences for inbound marketing

Two marketers looking at their computer and next to it you can see they're viewing a Resource hub

Not long ago, I ran a poll on Uberflip’s Twitter asking our audience of marketers what the number one goal of their content was. I wouldn’t say I disagree with the results—and they definitely got me thinking. Engagement is of course important to me and my team at Uberflip, but I was still surprised to see only 11% of marketers we polled responded with “Drive sales” as a top content priority. Isn’t that what inbound marketing is all about? 

A twitter poll and results

Maybe if there had been an “All of the above” option, the outcome would have been different, but just in case there are any marketers who have yet to turn their blogs and resource centers into lead generation machines (that accelerate buyer journeys, too), I wanted to share some strategies we use at Uberflip—along with some examples we really like. These will help you use your content to drive conversions, move prospects down the funnel faster, and ultimately close more deals. 

By focusing on creating content experiences that will engage and convert inbound leads, you can get them to consume more content at once, and accelerate buyer journeys with strategic engagement paths. 

Create high-converting content hubs for inbound marketing 

Many marketers use a content hub as a way to centralize, organize, and personalize their content in a resource center or knowledge base. The possibilities for how you do this for inbound marketing are virtually limitless, but using a content experience platform like Uberflip allows you to house your blog posts, ebooks, videos, infographics, Slideshares, and case studies all in one place, so they can be easily pulled in through an RSS feed. 

The fact of the matter is, when your ebooks live in a different section of your website than your blog posts, and your videos live on YouTube and your slide decks live on SlideShare, that’s a pretty disjointed experience. You don’t want to send your inbound traffic outbound to view your content. So the first thing you need to do is centralize all of your assets so you can organize them into contextual collections. 

Focus on binge-worthy content experiences 

As you can see in the example from Trimble below, they’ve segmented their resources by topic, persona, location, and resource type. This allows visitors to find a collection of content that’s particularly relevant to them and immerse themselves in it. You may be a marketer, but challenge yourself to start thinking like you’re Netflix—getting your audience to binge on multiple pieces of content at once through recommendations, next-asset buttons, and contextual streams. 

Constructible content hub

Every page you click on within Trimble’s hub not only has contextual content, but contextual calls-to-action designed to drive conversions. If you were to navigate to their stream curated for general contractors, you’d notice a call-to-action linking out to Trimble’s product for that particular buyer. The messaging (and ask) is much more likely to resonate with anyone browsing this page versus others. 
 
Constructible content hub

Destinations that drive lead generation

On top of ensuring you’re providing the best possible contextual experience for visitors, you’ll also want to ensure your content hub is optimized to capture and convert leads. You’ll notice in the example above that Trimble has an email subscribe tile embedded right into their content hub. If people like what they see, they can subscribe to receive more content in their inbox later, without leaving the experience they’re already in. 

On top of that, when it makes sense to put a gate on a piece of content (like a webinar recording or an ebook), do it! Our customer data has revealed that Uberflip’s Overlay CTAs have 7x the conversion rate of traditional forms on landing pages, making gated content an easy way to generate leads. 

Stantec content hub

Types of inbound content experiences

You’ve seen what it takes to create a content hub that drives engagement and conversions. Now it’s time to take a look at some examples to inspire your own inbound content experiences. 

Resource center  

A great example of a resource center is Lytx’s. Their navigation bar allows you to browse by topic, industry, role, and resource type. When you click into a piece of content, they have related content and next-article buttons to encourage visitors to binge Netflix-style. 

Lytx content hub

Thought leadership 

Another great way to use a content hub for inbound marketing is to build a thought leadership library. Our friends at Stantec have an Ideas Hub that includes blog posts, flipbooks, podcasts, and more that cover everything from cities adapting to change, to cool technology and research.

Stantec thought leadership content hub

Newsroom

Another way you can use a content hub for inbound marketing is to centralize all your press releases and media mentions. Whenever we publish a press release on the wire, we also publish a copy in our newsroom so that it can easily be found by our hub visitors. Believe it or not, it’s one of our top viewed hub pages—so if you don’t have one, this might be something your audience is looking for.  

Uberflip's newsroom stream in their content hub

Take control of the buyer journey  

When you put a little extra thought into how you’re organizing your content for inbound marketing, you can take more control over how visitors are engaging with and navigating through your content and embarking on their path to purchase. 

You’ll find that having all of your content centralized in one place makes it significantly easier to map out the buyer journey, create recommendation paths, and generate more engagement from your customers and prospects.

Personalized content is key to driving conversions. Download this guide to learn how to leverage AI and real-time data to deliver more relevant content, product, and service information to each user.