Inbound Marketing For Ecommerce: The Definitive Guide

Inbound marketing is a smart strategy for growing your business by building a brand presence, generating leads, and creating revenue. 

It aids in fostering long-term customer relationships by attracting consumers to the brand through content marketing, SEO, video marketing, and social media strategies.

Inbound marketing for e-commerce entails attracting potential customers to your online store with engaging and relevant content in order to increase sales and conversions.

An inbound marketing strategy for e-commerce requires dedication, experience, and industry knowledge.

Below we have mentioned three things you must figure out for inbound marketing. You can figure them out all at once or in any order, but you must have a rough notion of your product offering, marketing personas, and revenue goals.

Product: What do you have to offer? What is your company’s brand? What do you have access to that is unique in some way?

Personas: Personas are the cornerstone of marketing. Persona development is the process of creating a composite of your ideal customer.

Revenue: Outline all of your product costs, profit margins, and what types of marketing spend to provide a favorable return.

What Is eCommerce Inbound Marketing?

When done in tandem, inbound marketing is more than simply a tool; it is a collection of ongoing operations that create a highly scalable revenue driver. 

Inbound marketing for e-commerce platforms is a collection of strategic marketing tactics focused on using relevant material to current and prospective buyers and luring the customers and prospects towards a firm and its products. 

It is a process of expanding the business, building relationships with clients, and drawing them to the services and products via the use of the best SEO, content marketing, social media, video marketing, and other techniques.

For a variety of reasons, the relevance of inbound marketing for e-commerce has been emphasized in the marketing world:

• Inbound marketing helps in converting prospects when executed properly.
• Inbound marketing generates a measurable and favorable return on investment.
• Inbound marketing generates more leads.
• Customers appreciate genuine brands.

Related: Most Useful Inbound Marketing Stats

What Is the Goal of Inbound Marketing?

The inbound lead creation method plays a crucial role in developing customers’ trust in the product.

You don’t have to go out and find new customers with inbound marketing for e-commerce since they will come to you organically. 

Before making a purchase, 80 percent of shoppers conduct online research. This saves you a lot of money and time because you don’t have to spend it tracking down buyers.

As a result, if you portray your brand as authoritative, users are more inclined to choose you over competitors.

The following are some of the most prevalent objectives for eCommerce inbound marketing:

• Increase Average Order Value
• Increase Lifetime Value
• Increase Visitors
• Increase Conversion Rate

Many inbound marketing strategies are targeted to drive potential buyers to your sites, so having a solid website is essential. Here are a few reasons why inbound marketing is effective for e-commerce enterprises.

• Can be personalized
• Helps to create a cohesive brand
• Allows customers to reach you on their terms
• Generates site traffic
• Produces qualified leads
• Strengthens your company’s reputation

Common Problems That Can Be Resolved By Inbound Marketing Strategy

Staff or Budget Problems

You can prevent wasting efforts if you have a clear plan in place that specifies important topics, content, and distribution. This is only achievable if you enhance your investment in inbound marketing strategies.

Enhancing Brand Choice

You develop trust and increase the likelihood that potential consumers will pick you when they are willing to buy by educating, entertaining, and engaging with them before they are considering making a purchase.

Related: Branding Cycle: Your Complete Guide

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

Inbound and outbound marketing are two distinct methods of marketing that are often characterized in opposition.

Outbound marketing, also known as interruption marketing or push marketing, is the use of traditional sales methods such as print ads, cold calls, email blasts, and other methods. 

The goal of these strategies is to reach as many individuals as possible to convert them into their customers.

Outbound marketing was the normal approach for firms long ago before the rise of inbound marketing.

Furthermore, outbound marketing is a one-way path. Push marketing a.k.a outbound marketing methods, rather than listening to consumers’ issues and meeting their needs, and merely talking about the product and the reasons to acquire it.

As a result, many customers avoid outbound marketing as much as possible. You can relate if you use an ad blocker on your computer browser, send marketing emails right to your junk box, fast skip through TV commercials, or drive by billboards without looking.

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, attracts customers like a magnet. It focuses on providing value to the target audience rather than converting them to customers and earning revenue.

Rather than being loud, demanding, or aggressive, this form of marketing is subtler but more effective. 

Effective inbound marketing establishes trust and gently guides people towards a product by responding to consumers’ needs, assisting them in solving a problem and teaching them something new.

Transforming Your Marketing from Outbound to Inbound

In Inbound Marketing, you become visible to those who are already interested in your business instead of marketing to a large number of individuals who are attempting to shut you out.

Most marketers today spend 90% of their time on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing, which needs to be altered.

To do this, you must configure your website as a “hub” for your industry. One that organically draws visitors via search engines, blogging, and social networking.

There is an “Attract, Engage, Delight” methodology to accomplish this.

• You need to build a powerful content strategy to Attract your target audience.
• You may Engage with the leads with email marketing, conversational chatbots, and automated workflows after they become visitors.
• The purpose of the Delight stage is to guarantee that your audience can easily contact your sales and support personnel and that their concerns are addressed fast.

Related: How To Improve Your Omnichannel Content Marketing Strategy

How To Apply Inbound Marketing Strategies?

Inbound marketing is done through:

• Blogs
• Social media efforts
• SEO
• Webinars
• Downloadable content

What Exactly Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing comprises the following:

• Social media
• Content marketing, including knowledge bases, white papers, buying guides, styling tips, lifestyle articles, lookbooks, recipes, tutorials, DIY how-tos, industry-related news, interactive tools and games, specialty classes, videos, and many more.

It’s basically any form that isn’t a product page and doesn’t hard-sell but instead establishes a relationship and delivers value for free. 

It must be informative, useful, real, objective, rich, and enthusiastic, while also being cool and in line with the brand. It should not be self-serving or promote your products.

The five principles of inbound marketing are:

• Standardize
• Contextualize
• Optimize
• Personalize
• Empathize.

What Are The Stages of Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing assists firms in improving their website content and attracting customers more quickly. It has four stages.

Attract

Attract is the initial stage of inbound e-commerce marketing. This step entails developing a plan for locating and attracting a suitable audience. Consider a few questions-

• Do you make use of specific hashtags?
• What do you do to make it easier for people to find your website?
• Do you integrate relevant keywords into all of your blog posts?

Answering the questions above will assist you in tailoring your content in order to rank higher in the search history and become more visible to your target audience.

Convert

The first thing that comes to mind when we think of marketing is attempting to convert users. After all, the ultimate goal is to acquire new users and eventually convert them.

So, how may inbound marketing aid in the conversion of those users?

• Registration forms
• Users are incentivized 
• Calls to action that are effective (CTAs)

Close

In many circumstances, converting users is more complicated than simply providing them with a sign-up form and hoping they join your group. 

Automation is one method for reaching the closing stage. 

One example is sending automated emails to users to remind them of their abandoned carts. This may entice busy customers to return to your website and complete the transaction.

Delight

The delight stage is the ultimate level in inbound marketing. This is the stage at which you would appreciate clients for purchasing from you. 

This could be sending a personalized email, a thank you letter, or offering discounts, among other things. You can also incorporate feedback forms and surveys at this stage to assist you to obtain insights and resolve issues early on.

Developing an eCommerce Inbound Marketing Approach

Formulating an eCommerce inbound marketing approach begins with a company’s understanding of its clients. 

Unfortunately, this is an area that is sometimes overlooked or rushed during the planning phase. 

To achieve better results, we strongly advise taking the time to truly understand your customers and respecting the process.

• Create Buyer Persona

A customer profile a.k.a avatar is a semi-fictional ideal customer portrayal that is built on real data and informed guesswork about customer behavior patterns, demographics, goals, and motives. 

Collect as much client data as possible to generate precise profiles of your prospective purchasers to supplement your buyer persona.

• Establish Your Company’s Aims and Ambitions

Although eCommerce and inbound marketing use a similar process to attract customers, they differ in terms of goals and key performance indicators, or KPIs. 

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a quantitative metric for assessing a company’s, employees’, and others’ ability to accomplish performance targets and goals.

Once you’ve figured out who your clients are, the next step is to implement several inbound marketing methods.

Related: Small Business Ecommerce Trends

Inbound Marketing Tools

Inbound marketing strategies may be quite productive, inbound marketing tools to assist you to boost your marketing plan as you shift from outbound to inbound marketing.

1- Mailchimp

Mailchimp provides both free and premium email delivery services. You may change the look of your email, when it’s sent, what it contains, and more. 

Mailchimp also allows you to design personalized email campaigns for each category of subscribers.

Customizable tools like these can assist you in developing efficient email campaigns for obtaining, acquiring, and retaining leads.

Related: GetResponse vs. MailChimp

2- Buffer

Buffer allows you to plan social media posts so that they are published when your target audience is most engaged. As a result, no one needs to stay up late to submit material at strategic times.

This program also automates the majority of social media administration, saving you time and money. 

Buffer is a tool that can help you increase the efficacy of your social media marketing strategy as Inbound marketing relies heavily on social media management. 

3- Jotform

Tools like Jotform may assist you in creating visually appealing forms for newsletter sign-ups, e-book downloads, service subscriptions, and other inbound marketing activities.

It’s simple to set up, forms can be built and changed in minutes, and the results can be easily embedded in most content management systems.

Jotform is a free form builder with appealing templates and a plethora of useful features. 

Related: Best Tools To Measure Social Media Engagement

Some Inbound Marketing Strategies For eCommerce Marketers

Content Created by Users

When it comes to UGC, reviews and ratings are important. If you’ve ever looked for a product on the internet, you’ve most likely read reviews before making a buy. 

Adding reviews to a website has two significant advantages:

• Creating your organic search engine ranking
• Attracting visitors, and increasing buyer confidence

• Marketing via Email

Email marketing as an inbound marketing tactic is an excellent way to supplement your eCommerce sales funnel. 

You should schedule promotional emails in addition to automating the marketing process to promote product sales. An email has the highest conversion rate of any channel and provides a steady cash stream.

Always A/B test your email copy and templates when sending email campaigns to determine which options work best and bring in the most income.

Related: How to Write the Best SEO Content

Search Engine Optimization

Creating an SEO plan can be a huge challenge for marketers at times. However, even if you are a beginner, there are some simple things you can do to improve your SEO performance.

To improve organic visibility, both technical and non-technical measures must be used.

Each product you offer gets its own page on your website. An optimized URL must contain a unique target term or product name and be no more than 72 characters long. 

An unoptimized URL, for example, could be a string of numbers and letters.

Related: What is SEO? Complete Guide

Blogging

Blogging is an important component of a long-term content strategy. Prospects benefit from the knowledge and important information shared on blogs. 

This knowledge increases trust, strengthens brand loyalty, and encourages additional purchases.

Writing might be time-consuming, but dedicating a few hours each week can provide a significant return on investment. 

Always give a clear path to purchase when writing explicitly for eCommerce. You can accomplish this by using product links and photos that take the prospective customers directly to the relevant product pages.

Related: Top Benefits of Blogging

Cart Recovery

Abandoned carts arise when a visitor adds an item to their shopping cart but does not complete the transaction. Set up an abandoned cart email flow to address this. 

Re-engage users and attract them with special discounts and offers through an email-based workflow.

For most products, the first email should be sent one to two hours after the cart is abandoned. 

The second email should be sent between 12 and 24 hours following the trigger. The third email should be sent within 48 to 72 hours of the third email, and the fourth and final email should be sent three days following the third email.

Search a Website

Few things are more frustrating than not being able to find the product you require when shopping on the internet. To address this, consider adding a website search to your eCommerce store. 

Consider the following for clients who use site search optimization:

• Combinations of products viewed and bought
• Products purchased
• Products users look for as compared to products they click
• Products added to the cart from the website search

Social Media

This inbound marketing method is important to any eCommerce company’s inbound strategy. 

In addition to having worldwide social buttons on a website and offering social share incentives, consider developing adaptable content rules to guarantee that your brand is appropriately portrayed, regardless of the channel.

Related: Top Benefits of Social Media Marketing For Your Business

Paid Advertising

Paid media methods include display advertising and paid search advertising. These ads are an excellent technique to attract new clients because individuals who click on paid advertising typically have a strong buying intent. 

Paid search and display advertising, in general, are more focused on broadening your brand’s reach.

If you haven’t already, HubSpot’s free Ads tool is an excellent place to start. The tool works directly with Google and Facebook to create a list of users to target. 

You may also use Facebook lookalike audiences to locate users who are similar to your current clients.

Steps Involved In Inbound Marketing Programme

When it comes to inbound marketing, the more money you invest, the more money you make.

1- Define Your Company’s Objectives And Buyer Personas

Determine your target audience and learn everything you can about them. You can’t produce content to engage your clients until you first understand who they are.

2- At Each Stage, Provide Information.

Inbound marketing makes use of useful info to attract and keep clients throughout their whole lifecycle, not only before they become a customer, but also after they become a customer. 

Furthermore, transformative inbound marketing emphasizes personalization and relevance.

3- Choose Your Delivery Platforms Wisely.

Determine the best approach to contact them, whether it’s via Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, your blog, or another channel. 

The more useful the material you provide for your audience, the more probable it is that you will convert them into customers.

4- Plan And Implement Your Content Calendar.

Maintaining a steady flow of content that tackles your clients’ problems, issues, and pain points will help you stay relevant and grow your brand as a recognized thought leader.

5- Analyze The Effectiveness And Increase The Inbound Marketing Strategy.

This stage will assist you in determining the effectiveness of your inbound marketing activities and how they may be modified.

Whether you want to look at SEO rankings, inbound links, or the number of articles produced, these tools can provide you with useful information about how your efforts are doing.

When it comes to assessing the performance of your inbound marketing activities, you have a number of indicators to choose from.

How to Get Traffic With Inbound Marketing Strategies?

Increasing traffic is the most critical factor if you want to improve your revenue, but it also takes time. 

Not all marketing channels move at the same rate. Direct outreach and sponsored traffic with Adwords are the most successful approaches to obtaining traffic at the start of your inbound marketing plan.

Direct outreach entails emailing and messaging people who have a high likelihood of converting. You can direct them to your landing pages to sign up for an email list or purchase your products/services. 

On the other side, if you invest money in Adwords, you can acquire a lot of visitors and data. When you get new Adwords traffic, you can perform the following to understand how your campaigns are performing:

• Look at what landing pages are driving sales
• Find the right messaging
• Optimize your landing pages
• Improve your ad campaigns
• Create lead nurturing campaigns

Related: Top Ways To Drive Traffic To A New Website

Conclusion

Inbound marketing is not simple in any way. You have to ensure that customers can see you, as well as become interested in your business without pushing them with sales and custom offers. 

Establishing a presence online is the first step toward inbound marketing, which will ensure organic traffic and qualified leads for your e-commerce store.

Inbound marketing means having an interactive website. If you’re launching a startup, you should implement some of the inbound marketing strategies discussed above, including email marketing, SEO, user-generated content, blogging, paid media, social media, and so on. 

By now, you already have an idea that inbound marketing is the future of marketing and is one of the most effective ways of increasing leads and converting them into your loyal customers.

Attracting customers requires an understanding of their deepest needs, struggles, and aspirations. With that data, you can create content that attracts prospective customers like a magnet and produce a measurable ROI.