Why and how to create an Inbound Content Canvas - Download Free Template

Inbound marketing is a way of reaching relevant audiences with the help of content. Inbound content – especially when coupled with tactical traffic driving paid marketing campaigns – is a powerful method for putting company’s information and insights in front of prospects or customers. Not only for impressions but more importantly, for different types and levels of conversions.

These conversions are often paramount in getting the first contact with the prospect, obtaining more information about the prospect in order to qualify them, turning the prospect into a paying customer, and finally, acknowledging the customer’s business and caring for them. Content in different formats pays a key role in all of this.

A company’s inbound strategy or digital content plan should aim for marketing and sales qualified leads as well as increased customer retention and loyalty. In order to reap these benefits and produce measurable results with content, this canvas gives you an understanding of the process, goals, channels, tracking, and resources. Ultimately, designing and delivering content to all stages of the purchase funnel is key for success.

Before getting started with mapping your inbound content, it’s essential to have a detailed understanding of your buyer personas as well as the customer journeys in the context of your business.

In other words, end-to-end content from awareness to advocacy should be tailored per customer segment or use case and the customer’s stage in the purchase funnel.

The Inbound Content Canvas enables an increasingly more customer-centric approach to a company’s content production and delivery. While it provides a foundation for designing tactical key activities around content, it also – and more importantly – introduces a holistic framework for content. Same canvas can be applied in both B2B and B2C fields and across different industries.

In order to get started with your first Inbound Content Canvas exercise, we have provided you with more guidance and an example case of a flowers-as-a-service business. In order to obtain the best value of the exercise, it’s recommended that you print out the canvas in A3 size, determine the buyer persona and stage of interest, and collaborate as a team in order to ideate and document the ideas onto the canvas.

You can download the flower business example and the editable Inbound Content Canvas template with short instructions from the button below.