Inbound marketing for eCommerce – Optimize and Make revenues

HubSpot claims that “Inbound marketing focuses on engaging clients by providing relevant and helpful content and offering value at each stage of the buying process.

Potential clients find you through inbound marketing platforms such as blogs, search engines, and social media.” At ArrowTheme, we have helped a number of eCommerce businesses generate five and six-figure monthly revenues.

By using inbound marketing, you also can attract more traffic, produce better quality leads, and increase your return on marketing expenditure. If you’re an e-commerce company, an inbound marketing plan is very important if you want to compete with Amazon and others.

Inbound marketing and e-commerce are two concepts that have been discussed extensively, but not in combination. So that’s the reason why we created this inbound marketing for ecommerce tutorial. Let’s start our journey.

What is inbound marketing for ecommerce?

“inbound marketing for ecommerce is the marketing strategy and approach focused on using content that is relevant to current and prospective buyers. So it will attract those consumers and prospects to a company and its products.” The important thing to remember is that inbound marketing for ecommerce isn’t just one tool, approach, or campaign. Besides that, it’s a collection of ongoing activities that, when combined, form a highly scalable revenue generator.

“Why do I need inbound marketing for ecommerce?” is a popular question we get. The solution for that question focuses on relevancy. So let’s take a look at the following changes in customer behavior:

• Shopping online is changing to mobile, with 35% of participants answering that their phone is the main online shopping tool. Therefore, mobile revenue likely reached $600 million in 2018.
• Voice-assisted purchases are becoming more popular among consumers, thanks to devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home. In fact, analysts expect that by 2020, voice or image searches will account for more than half of all product searches. 
• Purchases are made not only on eCommerce websites, but also on Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and a variety of other channels.

Have you noticed any trends? eCommerce is becoming faster, easier to use, and available on a larger range of platforms and devices. Inbound marketing for ecommerce is the only marketing strategy that allows firms to scale engagement with potential, current, and previous clients, according to most e-tailers. As a result, we usually set the following targets for inbound marketing for eCommerce:

• Increasing the number of visitors
• Conversion Rates Increasing
• The Average Order Value is Increasing
• Increasing the Value of Your Lifetime

Looking at inbound marketing strategies through the Ecommerce sales funnel.

Why do you need inbound marketing for ecommerce Store?

Besides the customer needs, you can consider recent developments in consumer behavior. Businesses could launch an ecommerce site, use paid marketing, and see the money flow in just five years ago. Although that technique isn’t completely obsolete, the landscape today is far more complex. By 2021, mobile is expected to account for 54% (or $659 billion) of all online sales.

These aren’t only purchases made on ecommerce sites. Moreover, in an omnichannel world, customers buy on platforms such as:

• Amazon.
• Facebook.
• Instagram.
• Pinterest.

Consumers are also increasingly using voice-activated gadgets such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home. Moreover, inbound marketing for ecommerce is the only marketing strategy that allows most online shops to scale engagement with potential, current, and previous consumers. Besides that, the important thing to remember is that inbound marketing isn’t just one tool, approach, or campaign. Because it will help your company build a scalable income engine.

How to get started with inbound marketing for ecommerce store?

Businesses that understand their clients are more likely to succeed in ecommerce. However, in our experience, it is usually rushed or missed during the planning stage. So, before we begin, I strongly advise you to spend time getting to know your customers and respecting the process. I am confident that your company will benefit. 

Create buyer personas.

Consider creating ideal buyer profiles to support buyer personas, Therefor,e this will help you better understand client demographics, as well as information about their habits, interests, hobbies, and lifestyles. The following is a sample list of information found in ideal buyer profiles:

• Gender.
• Age.
• Nationality.
• Geography.
• Salary.
• Education.
• Technical ability.

Next, answer these 3 main questions to define specific ecommerce behaviors:

• How new are buyers?
• How frequently do they buy?
• And how much money do they spend?

Furthermore, RFM is a method for identifying the worth of a customer. 

Buyer modalities, unlike ideal buyer profiles, evaluate customer intent in relation to your product or service. Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg first established the concept of “buyer modalities” in their book called “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark“. Therefore, customers can be divided into four main buying kinds, according to the Eisenbergs:

• Competitive.
• Spontaneous.
• Methodical.
• Humanistic.

Therefore, you should ask questions like the following to get a better understanding of your customers’ motivations:

• How do you use the product?
• What are your plans for it?
• What are your objectives in using the product?

Competitive and spontaneous purchasers are examples of customers with short purchasing cycles. Competitive purchasers depend more on logic. Besides that, they also seek for social proof or prizes to ensure that they are selecting the “best” alternative available. On the other hand, spontaneous buyers rely on convenience and emotion to explain their choices.

Moreover, methodical and humanistic buyers are examples of customers having longer purchasing cycles. Methodical consumers perform extensive research and make decisions based on reasoning, whereas humanistic buyers make decisions based on their feelings.

Set business objectives and goals.

Although inbound and ecommerce have differences in its goals and key performance indicators, or KPIs. Besides that, compared to B2B inbound campaigns, ecommerce campaigns have a greater emphasis on financial growth and direct attribution. Moreover, the following are some examples of ecommerce KPIs:

• The number of people who visit your website.
• Conversion rate in ecommerce.
• Order value on average.
• Customer value over time.
• Revenue from the internet.

Using these KPIs to create a goal-based strategy will allow you to better link your clients’ individual tactics and objectives to their bottom lines.

Digital marketing tactics and strategies of inbound marketing for ecommerce

#1. Attracting

What attracts shoppers to a brand? Some may say that it’s the value which consumers get from that brand. However, we believe it is related to financial motivations.  Your marketing efforts must include content that is both valuable and relevant to your target clients, as well as exhibiting the soul of your company.

The strategies used in the first step of your sales funnel frequently cast the widest net. However, that doesn’t imply they’re not focused. The goal here is to focus on attracting new visitors to your website, regardless of their type or modality. This usually entails a mix of search engine optimization (SEO), original content, user-generated content, social media, and paid advertising. Let’s have a look at how each works:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Structured data was created to assist search engines in comprehending the context of your content. Structured data arranges information in a way which search engines can simply browse using basic algorithms by utilizing a common format. As a result, search engines like Google can show customized search results such as product names, bulleted lists, and customer reviews using structured data. There are various parts of a product listing or page’s information. Those are critical to its appearance in search engine results.

The right and sufficient use of keywords should be your main SEO priority. There are various places on your page that are just visible to search engines. But keep in mind that the rest of your content has to be readable by humans as well.  Here are a few examples where highly targeted keywords might help you improve your SEO.

URLs

Each product you offer should have its own page, with a URL that includes the keyword. Moreover, it is also longer than 125 characters. Consider the following example:

• Unoptimized URL: /product86389j4k6
• Optimized URL: /ipod-nano

Titles of Pages

This is the text that shows up in the tab of your web browser. Both humans and search engines read it. Therefore, you have to keep it short. Because search engines only read the first 50-60 characters.

• Buy <Product Name> | <Category Name> | XYZ.com

Descriptions in the meta tags

A brief explanation of the page’s content. It shouldn’t be more than 300 characters long. 

At XYZ.com, you can find discount <Product Name> and read <Product Name> reviews and other <Category/Brand Name> products

Tags in the Header

Each component of a page’s header should have the page’s keyword. However, it should also be marked as a header (H1, H2, etc.). This informs search engines that the information on the page is important.

Your H1 should represent the main focus of the website. Moreover, your H2s should have modifier terms like “buy,” “best,” “find,” and “reviews.”

Image Alt Text and Multimedia

Images are not only important for selling your products. However, they may also assist you to improve your SEO. Furthermore, the targeted keyword of your page should be included in the image’s “alt-tags,”. Furthermore, the image itself should be relevant.

Snippets of value

Consider them as additional data that search engines use to classify the information on each page. These are absolutely worth including in your templates!

• Organization
• Product
• Reviews
• Search Box
• Social Media

Canonical Tags

For huge eCommerce websites with a lot of duplicate information, these tags are a must-have. Moreover, search engines use canonical tags. It will determine whether content is “original,” while ignoring duplicate content. However, Google does not like it when websites use the same content several times. Thus not employing canonical tags might actually affect your search engine rankings.

Content

The more inventive you are here, and the more beneficial you are to your customers, the more likely you are to draw and convert them.

Blogging

Blogging for eCommerce can be a great strategy to get more visitors to your website. Successful blogs provide prospective customers with useful information and expertise. That content builds trust, strengthens brand loyalty, and encourages more purchases. 

So, why isn’t blogging part of every company’s eCommerce marketing strategy? Writing content takes time, but people always said and time is money. Unless it’s your primary role, generating content on a regular basis can be a difficult task. Fortunately, there are techniques to make blogging less time-consuming and easier. Always remember to give a clear path to buy in your blog by including photographs or direct links to the relevant product pages. More importantly, you can take a look at ArrowTheme blogs to get some ideas for your blogs.

Buyers and Guides for Gifts

This is especially crucial content around large shopping holidays. Because the people who are buying are unlikely to be your repeat customers. You should consider how you’ll direct visitors to specific pages on your website. Thanks to it, they may simply find what they’re looking for. Moreover, our client, who sells millions of dollars in lacrosse equipment, is a great example of this. The holiday season is a big selling season. However lacrosse players aren’t the ones who buy. But their parents or relatives aren’t as familiar with lacrosse as the player. Therefore, they categorized their gift guide by the gift recipient, like “For Him,” “For Her,” and “Youth,” rather than by product categories. They also included a link to their gift card page in the email.

Gift and buyer’s guides are also great blog content. Consider topics like “Stocking Stuffers,” “What to Buy for Your Husband/Wife/Child,” “This Year’s Top Men/Women Products,” and so on. These types of guides can help your organic SEO while also delivering useful, valuable, and shareable content.

Reviews & Ratings

You’ve probably noticed that Google likes reviews if you’ve ever googled a product or even a restaurant. This type of content is used by Google to determine how popular a product is, as well as to deliver a richer, more informative user experience. Including the opportunity to rate and review goods on your website has two advantages:

• It improves your natural search engine ranks. Take a look at the rich samples above…
• It attracts visitors to your website. It will allow them to learn more about the products you’re selling and potentially discover other items on your site.

Sharing on Social Media

Enticing your social media fans to share your content and updates is a wonderful method to grow your social media following. It all starts with strategically positioned worldwide social buttons in your site’s footer, header, and other content areas. Besides that, another strategy is to encourage customers to “friend purchase,”. They are rewarded for sharing your products with their friends via email and social media. 

Local Events/Trunk Shows

This is perfect for retailers with physical locations. Make a list of local clients who might be interested in your store. Use custom audiences to increase RSVPs to events and trunk shows. However, you should avoid burnout among your list members who may not live in the same geographic location. 

Paid Media

Paid media include items such as:

• Search engine optimization (paid placements in search engines)
• Advertisements that are displayed (banners on websites)
• Advertising on social media (ads on Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Search engine marketing is a great way to attract customers depending on what they’re looking for, which usually indicates that they’re ready to buy. The goal of display and social media advertising is usually to increase brand awareness.

Lookalike Audiences

These features allow you to target your ad spend more precisely and increase the return on investment of your Facebook campaigns. To entice these potential buyers, consider making a unique offer or providing a free trial. Furthermore, to improve the match rate, make sure you follow Facebook’s customer information preparation best practices.Therefore, this will assist you avoid paying for adverts to be seen to those who aren’t interested in your goods.

#2. Converting

Sending tailored, targeted, and well-timed emails to various consumer categories is a common activity in this stage. However, you have to develop this type of content and services that raise the value of your website, as well as the motivation to buy from it. Let’s look at a number of these main strategies in more detail.

Catalog Optimization

When you own an eCommerce site, you need to often evaluate your product offerings to see what’s selling, what’s not, and what can be improved. Based on views and conversions, we will divide products into four categories.

Low traffic to high traffic, low conversion to high conversion products should be categorised. Firstly, you have your best-selling items, which usually follow the 80/20 rule: high-traffic, high-conversion items that sell consistently. 

Secondly, there are the products that must be promoted. These are things with a low number of visitors but a high conversion rate. Is there any way to increase traffic to those pages? The more traffic you attract, the higher the conversion rate of those products will be.

Thirdly, some products have a high number of visitors but a low conversion rate. Because you’re losing a lot of potential purchases, this kind of goods usually requires extensive testing with a range of conversion and closing approaches. You want to get more of these items into the cart and through the checkout process.

Finally, products that do not generate traffic or conversions should be eliminated entirely from your website. These items are simply taking up space on your site (and maybe in your warehouse) and lowering the overall quality of your site. Consider getting rid of them completely (perhaps at a loss) or holding a fire sale. Therefore, you’ll be much better off if you can get them off your site as quickly as possible.

Welcome Offers

Have welcoming pop-ups ever annoyed you? Offering a discount on their first order in exchange for their email address is one strategy. This allows you to begin gathering information on them early in the purchasing process. You’ll be able to communicate with them in a meaningful way faster if you can collect their email address and connect it with a cookie on their browser. When shops use this strategy, their email list population appears to be on an exponential growth curve.

Questions about the product

Why not include a HubSpot form on your product description page. Therefore, visitors can ask questions about specific products while also generating leads? You can construct hidden fields for data such as product name, SKU, and URL, then send these values dynamically using your platform’s variables.

Bots and live chat

Customer service is an important aspect of converting visitors. Moreover, it is a key differentiator. Many businesses nowadays have a live chat option on their website. This will link visitors to a live customer service representative who can answer any queries they may have. Many companies have turned to chatbots, automated question-and-answer systems. Besides that, these use artificial intelligence to simulate human contact, to reduce the load of resources required to staff customer support departments. They can handle front-line customer support queries and, if necessary, transfer a potential consumer to a live person. Companies frequently request an email address in order to interact with a chatbot or live chat agent. This allows them to collect that contact for future marketing purposes. In addition, it also gives a higher level of service. Thanks to it, you can gain the potential customer’s loyalty.

#3. Closing 

Now that you have attracted people to visit your site and engaged them with your content, goods, social networks, and email. So now it’s time to get them to buy.

Site Search

Visitors can use the site search feature to look for information. This is o ne of the most important tools for closing deals. Furthermore, site search users are more likely to purchase more items, with an average order value. It is 25-50% higher than that of other customers. So, how do you use site search to increase revenue?

Firstly, you must track a variety of data, such as what visitors search for or what they click, which product combos are seen and sold, which products are placed to the cart, and which products are eventually purchased. 

Besides that, you can also use this data to offer customers with more relevant product recommendations and more extensive information like ratings and reviews, comparisons, and fast views. The filters based on unique product characteristics in search results on sites with hundreds or thousands of products can be really useful. All of the information about your products—sizes, colors, different manufacturers, models, and years—can be used to build filters. This will make search results more useful. The easier to find goods, the more sales you can gain.

Free Shipping and No Friction Checkout

There are several merchandising opportunities during the checkout. Moreover, free shipping is still the most reliable promotion in eCommerce. When clients enable free shipping over a specific threshold, there is an increase in conversion rates and average order values. For example, you could provide free shipping on orders over $50. This would be advertised on each product page and during the checkout process.

In addition, you can include a “countdown” message into the checkout process. Because it will drive them to spend a little more to earn free shipping. 

Checkout Cross-Sales

Dealerships make millions of dollars by persuading customers to spend a little more money before they close the deal. The checkout process on your website can reach the same goal. For example, Domino’s Pizza’s popup. This pop up offers the buyer the option of making a $1 gift to a worthy cause while also marketing their chocolate lava cake. Many of us may not order the dessert every time. However, it’s likely appealing enough to convince people to add the cake to their order at least 10% to 20% of the time. This helps effectively to increase their average order value.

Abandoned Carts

Maintaining abandoned cart rates low is one of the most difficult issues in any ecommerce company. Cart abandonment is when  a visitor adds an item or products to their shopping cart but never completes the transaction. They may have become distracted by any issues, changed their minds, or just desire to make the purchase at a later time or on a competitor’s website. However, setting up an abandoned cart automated workflow in HubSpot will have significant impacts on your abandoned cart rate. Furthermore, you can send emails to anyone who has given you their email address but has not made a transaction.

The emails will remind them of the things in their cart. Besides that, it also persuades them to complete the purchase with special offers and discounts. We’ve discovered a formula to gather sales from an abandoned cart email based on our research and testing. The first email is sent 1–2 hours after abandonment. Besides that, the second email is sent 12–24 hours after abandonment. Moreover, the third email is sent 48–72 hours after abandonment. And the final email is sent 3 days after the third email is sent.

Custom Audiences

This is a type of advertising. It allows you to target leads and customers you already know. You just need to upload a list of emails to Facebook. In case, Facebook can identify them, it will serve ads to that specific list. Furthermore, you can rapidly and easily sync customer data to Facebook’s custom audiences. In addition, you also can segment them based on their shopping history or other online auctions. And then you can target ads with messaging tailored to each audience section using HubSpot’s smart list features. When handled correctly, ads sent to Custom Audiences can be a huge revenue generator. The following are four examples:

Abandoned Cart Recovery

You may target visitors who have abandoned their carts with the HubShop.ly Abandoned Cart smart list. To acquire traction, you’ll need at least 100 people on this list.

Win Back Campaigns

Customers that haven’t made the purchases in the last 180-364 days, or for more than 365 days, can be segmented into customized audiences. Then, using Facebook, make offers for those individuals.

Welcome Series

You can create a “Welcome Popup” with a HubSpot form and an offer. Besides that, you also create a smart list and use the same offer to target advertising on Facebook. Set up rules when the lead makes their first purchase, they are removed from the list and no longer receive offers.

Promotion Non-Openers

Make a smart list for everybody who doesn’t open your marketing emails. Thus, you are able to quickly target folks who do not open emails through a different channel with the same offers.

Retargeting

This is the technique of setting a cookie on a visitor’s computer browser and then purchasing dynamically displayed advertisements across other websites to persuade the user to complete their purchase. This can be very helpful in converting visitors who are only browsing your site or who have abandoned their shopping carts.

#4. Delighting

One motivation is to persuade the customer to buy more of your products in the future. Another motivation is to persuade that customer to tell their friends about your business and encourage them to buy from you. Let’s take a look at some strategies to drive your consumers and keep them coming back.

Fulfillment & Shipping

Fulfillment is the first step for customer satisfaction. This might also add gift wrapping and gift messages for those who buy something for someone else on your site. Because the goal is to make your brand stand out through its packaging. More and more merchants are giving their packaging a little more TLC. Shinola. For example, they spend a lot of time and money on their packaging, which includes adjusting the watch for the buyer’s time zone. When the package is opened, the product is shown and ready to use.

Follow-up After the Purchase

If you don’t use post-purchase email automation as part of your inbound marketing plan, you can lose money. Follow up with the consumer by asking for a product review, providing them a notification after their items have been delivered, making recommendations for similar products, or even offering special deals. This will help you build their loyalty and encourage them to return.

Birthdays & Special Occasions

On your birthday, certain restaurants will provide you with a complimentary dessert. Some stores will give you a free item or a special discount if you ask nicely. Requesting this information can provide you with yet another opportunity to reach out to a consumer and surprise them with a pleasant surprise.

You should do something similar for almost every holiday like Valentine, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and so on. However, there are other “special anniversaries” you can remember with a purchase incentive, such as a customer’s first purchase anniversary.

Conclusion

Over the last 10-20 years, inbound marketing for ecommerce has become the most important collection of marketing tools for businesses. The days of selling directly through direct mail or television advertisements are long gone. However, methods are always changing and evolving, and you must stay on top of them or risk losing market share. However, that risk is also an opportunity. Because one of the best things about inbound marketing works even if you don’t have the kind of budget that larger organizations do.

More importantly, in case you have any troubles in your ecommerce business, you can CONTACT US. Experts of ArrowTheme will bring the best answer to you. Besides that, to gain a successful business, you should use our Ecommerce Solutions. With experiences in the ecommerce business, we are fully confident to help you take to the new level.