Digital Inbound Content as a Source of Value: The Application in a Start-up Company

Abstract

Digitalization has significantly impacted the interaction between companies and their customers. As a result, social media and Internet are becoming the main fields for communication in a business world. With these new communicational channels, modern marketing methodologies such us digital, inbound, and content marketing are on the rise, while traditional marketing technics such as cold calls, print advertising, and TV campaigns are less effective. Although the communication of customer value is the main objective in marketing and customer value is one of the most studied concepts in management, the research literature on its application in digital marketing as well as the research on digital marketing methodologies themselves, is scarce. Moreover, the communication of customer value with traditional marketing is a challenging process for a start-up company, due to start-ups limited amount of resources and small industrial network. The objective of this thesis is to introduce the concept of digital inbound content as a source of value and to explain how it can be used to communicate the value of a start-up company’s offering. The usage of digital inbound content is beneficial for a start-up due to cheaper distribution channels of digital marketing in comparison with traditional marketing. Furthermore, inbound marketing methodology is more customer-oriented and focused on building pleasant relationships with different stakeholders and therefore will benefit a start-up company in developing its social capital. The study shows that digital inbound content is an effective tool for showcasing the value of a start-up company’s offering through a start-up’s owned media. In addition, digital inbound content positively contributed to the process of constructing the value proposition and the development of start-up’s owned media, as well as improving the content creation overall and building start-up’s brand. Study has also shown that digital inbound content can be presented as the value itself, for example, in a case if a company creates educational material that is distributed for free. The developed theoretical framework of digital inbound content as a source of value is applicable as a guideline for the content creation and distribution of it in a start-up company’s owned media. Furthermore, study shows that more extensive research is needed in a field of digital marketing as literature does not provide comprehensive theoretical framework on it.