Inbound marketing is not a new concept; a quick search on Google Trends shows the first references to the term being used in 2005 so it's almost a decade old. The term was coined by Brian Halligan, HubSpot's CEO, after he worked in a venture capital firm and realised the old, "outbound" methods of marketing simply didn't work.
After ten years of businesses all over the world talking about how inbound marketing delivers great return on investment, you'd expect it would be a breeze finding companies embracing the fundamental principles of inbound marketing. Not so.
As the rest of the world still spends unnecessarily large sums of money on outbound marketing campaigns that fail to deliver demonstrable return-on-investment, these four companies continue to invest in the marketing asset that is high quality content.
http://www.norcorp.com/nameplate-blog/
These guys have done a great job with their blog by getting the basics right and keeping it regularly updated. One of the most common mistakes a company will make when getting started on inbound marketing is not keeping their content regularly updated. Northern Engraving have bucked that trend.
FireRock source authentic American-made or sourced building materials that have high-end quality and look fantastic. The same could be said of their blog which has a clean, high-quality design.
http://www.palomartechnologies.com/blog/
Writing interesting content for a niche audience around your product that is can be quite technical and, let's be honest, probably quite dry, can be a challenge. Palomar appear to have got the balance right by delivering technical content in a way that is useful and relevant to their audience.
http://blog.miragemachines.com
We might be biased here as Mirage are a client of ours but the results at least speak for themselves. The Mirage blog has been a great source of traffic and leads for Mirage with a good balance of industry news and important tips and advice for engineers who use their machines every day.
Even if you think the industry your business works in is dry and relatively boring, there is still going to be a range of content you can produce and a audience who wants to read it. Use keyword research to inspire blog topics and headlines and get writing. There's little more magic to it than that.