I once saw someone calling inbound marketing “marketing on steroids” and I cannot stop thinking about it. Someone else compared inbound marketing to a layered cake whose individual layers (which represent the different components that make up inbound marketing) taste better when consumed in one go.
The point is that there are many creative narratives explaining inbound marketing, but what exactly is inbound marketing for eCommerce?
Defining Inbound Marketing
How can your eCommerce store stand out and develop a devoted and engaged audience today, when strategies like “free delivery” and “lowest pricing” have become the norm for online shopping?
The solution is inbound marketing. On a broad scale, the inbound marketing approach focuses on luring in customers who are actively looking for information about your field, which, in this case, is eCommerce.
Our inbound marketing process for eCommerce focuses on assisting customers in completing their buyer’s journey by assisting them in obtaining answers to questions they may have. Contrary to how we typically think of marketing, this inbound marketing does not include imposing ideas on people or interrupting them when they aren’t interested in the products and/or services you offer.
By targeting segmented audiences, eCommerce inbound marketing will enable you to reach people who actually find value in your products or services and thus gather qualified leads based on your buyer personas. This consequently makes it possible for you to focus your time, money, and effort on what matters instead of mass marketing to audiences who are unlikely to be interested in your brand.
To answer the burning question, is inbound marketing for eCommerce, yes!
What is Inbound Marketing for eCommerce?
eCommerce inbound marketing is a form of digital marketing that, as has already been established, relies on delivering quality content in a way that appeals to your audience and entices them to engage with your brand.
To get a better idea about how the aforementioned idea translates in real life,
Follow this train of thoughts for a second:
- You stumbled upon a new technology that blew your mind.
- You started researching its history and looking into how it can be incorporated into people’s daily lives.
- You bought the tech and found that it matches the hype around it.
- You thought that more people need to have access to this technology and got excited about opening an eCommerce store that sells this technology.
- You contacted a supplier of said tech and agreed to a set of terms thus allowing you to start selling the product.
- You created a website and social media accounts for your new store.
- You sold a couple items after launching paid ads, but found yourself stuck after a while.
Traditional marketing can only get you so far in today’s world. The truth is that internet users have grown bored of interruptive and disruptive advertisements and have gotten quite good at scrolling past or skipping ads. They most definitely very rarely engage with telemarketers’ phone calls too.
What’s the way out? Inbound marketing for eCommerce!
Still with me? The inbound marketing process for eCommerce will grant your store the opportunity to have a blog section in which you could talk about topics that make your product shine!
Inbound marketing content writing is centered on SEO-driven content, which means that the content you publish will most likely appear when people interested in what you offer – or things related to it – search for (what we refer to) as keywords!
eCommerce Inbound Marketing Means
Inbound marketing complements e-commerce online presences well, resulting in a highly effective strategy. Inbound marketing works by manipulating search results through effective methods of search engine optimization and keyword research.
With these inbound marketing tactics, a digital marketplace will find increased traffic to their page thanks to targeting specific keywords searched by the user. Not only would the user be searching for your product, but also your page would be at the top of the search results.
All these actions would be done after a thorough analysis of a client’s competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, improving strengths and exploiting shortcomings.
Solutions to Your Marketing Challenges
When outbound marketing isn’t providing the required results for your ecommerce business, inbound marketing would have the solution. Where outbound marketing relies on going out to potential customers and interrupting their activities, inbound marketing is more subtle and natural.
Inbound marketing tactics on having your ecommerce page on top, removing any interruptive advertising by being the alluring best result of the search. This makes it feel as though it was the potential customer’s decision to visit your page and look at your products, and with that level of trust. With a beginning of trust gained, the potential customer would look through the products with less skepticism.
On top of being effective in gaining customers for digital stores, inbound marketing is more cost effective when compared to traditional means of advertising. Outbound marketing relies on catchy songs and flashy visuals, which take time, money, and effort to perfect, whereas inbound marketing requires fewer resources.
Smart manipulation of keyphrases, a well-designed page, and a catchy headline are among the greatest tools in an inbound marketer’s arsenal. With these in mind, inbound marketing is more efficient and effective than outbound marketing.
Is Your eCommerce or Retail Business Competing Online?
With online retailers on the rise to keep up with the increase in demand for convenient digital stores, competitors are becoming more prevalent in the business. From online food delivery to online electronic stores, every place of business will have to have an online presence to keep up with the times.
What ecommerce store you may have, there may be others doing the same. Then what’s the best course of action to compete? Marketing your online store and business will keep you ahead of your competitors, but the type of marketing is crucial. Digital marketing has become the new norm, with specialized tactics and methods to stand above the rest.
Inbound marketing is one of the specialized methods to market services and businesses through naturally grown interest. This makes inbound marketing effective in an online environment where people go to search for anything and everything. You want your store to be the first thing customers see? LetsMarket.it’s inbound marketing team is for you.
eCommerce Inbound Marketing in a Competitive Environment
Digital marketing has increased with the rise of digital stores, which means more interruptive online advertisements, increasing skepticism of the potential customer. Inbound marketing does not require these methods and, even in a digital world flooded with online advertisements, can keep your digital store ahead of the competition.
As part of our inbound marketing strategy, LetsMarket.it does a competitor analysis and judges how to proceed. We assess our clients’ competitors’ shortcomings and how to exploit them, as well as their strengths and how to emulate them, all for the benefit of our clients. Every step of a marketing campaign is thoroughly analyzed to form an effective inbound marketing strategy.
Part of LetsMarket.it’s inbound marketing strategy would also strengthen any shortcomings our client may have, to have a solid base to work on against rivals. Whether to redesign the website, alter the logo or even a complete rebranding, a strong inbound marketing strategy would be done to keep your business stand above the rest.
Inbound Marketing Content in a Competitive Environment
With the design of your ecommerce business website in mind, it’s also important to expand on the content, social media presence, and brand’s value. An effective inbound marketing strategy would be to keep your online presence alive, either through social media or website content. An active social media presence and consistent content updates on the site are all components of an inbound marketing strategy.
Even if your competitors are active on social media, having a distinct perspective and presence on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or any other social media platform can set you apart from the others. This also ties with your brand’s image and brand’s value, which is worth taking care of to earn respect from your customers.
Importance of Brand Value in a Competitive Environment
If there is one thing that will set you apart from competitors, it is the value of your brand. When you treat your brand and customers with respect, they will respond in kind, adding to the brand’s value and increasing brand loyalty. How that value is perceived can set your company apart from others in the same field, whether it is known for higher quality products or faster delivery; being known for either will stick in the minds of customers
An inbound marketing strategy will also use a brand’s value as part of the campaign, making it easier for the team to expand the client’s customer base. All these factors would be put into play to make a far more effective inbound marketing campaign.
eCommerce Inbound Marketing Example
We have worked with a medical eCommerce company whose team kept wondering if inbound marketing for eCommerce actually works. Though they were a little reluctant to collaborate at first because of their previous negative experiences with marketing agencies, the end results left them wanting more!
Global Bases Medical Supplies is a Saudi Arabian medical eCommerce store that adopted a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy to increase demand generation. They provide hospitals, clinics, medical centers, and healthcare institutions in Saudi Arabia with high-quality medical equipment.
Even though it sounds like they were faring well, analytics showed that after the implementation of our inbound marketing process for eCommerce, the company witnessed a 255% increase in page views and a 57% increase in organic search engagement rate! This directly translated to a boost in the number of leads, sales, and ROI.
However, the inbound marketing process for eCommerce is a tedious one. The first thing we did en route to implementing the eCommerce inbound marketing strategy for our client was revamping their website. We created a new website, fitted it with an eCommerce store plugin, service-specific product-related web pages, and a blog section, to name a few things.
The blog section included pieces of content that fit the different stages of the buyer’s journey and marketing funnel, ranging from informative and commercial to navigational and transactional intents. This means blogs about why the products they offer are important (linked to the medical conditions they work on improving), topics related to the health categories they target, and the like.
To relate this to the example mentioned above about the tech eCommerce store, the blog posts could, for example, explain what the technology will resolve, how it is used, why it is the better alternative to other similar technologies, and any other relevant type of content.
It’s important to keep in mind that any and all blog posts (much like the website’s pages) must be based on specific keywords that can be found on SEO tools like SEMRush and Google’s Keyword Planner. Even if your website is the most content-rich one in your industry, ignoring SEO or not giving it enough importance will work in favor of your competitors, not your own brand.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing for eCommerce
If you’re still asking yourself, “is inbound marketing for eCommerce?”, you might want to stick around for this section.
Utilizing cutting-edge strategies like SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing that resonate with modern audiences is the core of inbound marketing. While there’s no doubt that traditional techniques of marketing are still effective, to a certain extent, the advent of the Digital Age has made it possible for inbound marketing to advance much more quickly.
For instance, one of the conventional marketing strategies that has died out is cold calling. Did you know that a whopping 250 million Americans (as of September 2022) have listed their phone numbers on the “Do Not Call” registry maintained by the Federal Trade Commission? That represents almost 71% of the nation’s total population!
This, when added to the fact that people today have become really good at scrolling past or skipping ads on social media, muting their TVs during televised ads, and turning a blind eye to public billboards, how are stores supposed to market their products?
Again, the answer lies in inbound marketing for eCommerce, and here are 5 reasons why:
Inbound marketing for eCommerce increases brand visibility
Since inbound marketing has SEO at its very heart, which means that no piece of content, whether an informative web page, blog article, or social media post, is left to the Gods. Inbound marketing’s virtuous content writing and marketing is specifically manipulated to fit into the target audience’s needs and search engine queries. Up go visibility, ranking, and brand awareness!
Inbound marketing for eCommerce generates more qualified leads
With eCommerce inbound marketing, you will connect with consumers who are more inclined to engage with your products or services. When you develop content with your target audience in mind, such as how-to guides and blog pieces on trends in the industry, you will automatically attract the people interested in such topics and thus your offerings and brand.
Inbound marketing for eCommerce drives leads down the sales funnel
Creating and disseminating insightful and interesting content that guides prospects down the marketing funnel and converts them from strangers into brand ambassadors is the foundation of eCommerce inbound marketing. This is done through content tailored to the buyer’s journey’s different phases.
Inbound marketing for eCommerce cuts down recurring costs
eCommerce inbound marketing concentrates on assets that the company already possesses, as opposed to traditional, or outbound marketing, which is focused on purchasing media in the form of advertisements and other off-site promos. Businesses generally have websites and social media accounts, making them great real estate for inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing for eCommerce fosters customer retention
As per eCommerce inbound marketing, a client’s involvement with a business does not end with the transaction. In order to achieve its goal of boosting brand loyalty, the delight stage will continue to offer consumers more relevant and timely content well beyond their purchase. By delighting clients, inbound marketing fosters trust and loyalty, thus boosting an eCommerce store’s client retention rates.
Final Thoughts
Modern organizations now recognize the benefits of inbound marketing strategies for eCommerce companies since, when used effectively, they will dramatically increase a company’s worth.
Consider inbound marketing to be the marketing world’s coveted holy grail. The brilliant idea of inbound marketing for eCommerce was created by practical geniuses who saw that conventional means of marketing weren’t working as effectively as they once did.
Because inbound marketing tactics interweave the content that your target audience seeks in a way that pulls them to you instead of imposing yourself onto them, they are less invasive and have a more organic flow and feel.
As an eCommerce inbound marketing agency for eCommerce businesses, we cooperate with you to put in place a thorough yet gradually-evolving digital marketing strategy that won’t pressure your company to exceed its marketing budget.
We implement a customer-centric inbound marketing process for eCommerce that will help your company not only gain significant benefits but also forge enduring relationships with your clients. So, is inbound marketing for eCommerce? The answer is a strong, unwavering yes!
