In 2020, ecommerce sales amounted to 4.28 trillion US dollars. With online shopping proving to be one of the most popular digital activities, it’s easy to see why competition between retailers is fierce.
Whether you have a Shopify store, sell on Amazon, or your own ecommerce platform, you need to ramp up your marketing strategies to bring in leads and send customers through the sales funnel.
One way you can do this is with inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is cost effective and offers multiple avenues for ecommerce brands looking to connect with customers and improve retention.
These seven inbound marketing strategies are designed to attract customers and increase your conversion rates.
Table of Contents
- 1. Maximize your SEO
- 2. Offer a free tool or trial
- 3. Harness the power of video content
- 4. Capitalize on influencer and micro influencer partnerships
- 5. Create engaging guest posts
- 6. Design an email course or webinar
- 7. Master the “Double Survey Technique”
- Conclusion
1. Maximize your SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective ways to generate traffic onto your website or webpage. Organic search usage is rapidly increasing, with Google already having processed 360 billion searches this year, and counting.
By uploading original, relevant content to your site, you can attract as much as three times more traffic than you would via social media. SEO has no media cost and can typically offer an ROI that’s more substantial than what other channels can provide.
Search engines like Google tend to reward content that’s written for people rather than bots. With this in mind, you’ll want to generate content that is fresh, original, and above all, relevant to your target audience.
How tos, product unboxings and demonstrations, tips and tricks and any other brand-relevant content are just a few of the options that give your SEO rankings a boost.
2. Offer a free tool or trial
Everybody likes free goodies, and your audience is likely no exception. A free trial can act as an effective lure for attracting new customers. Plus, it often provides enough time to convince customers your product is worth investing real money in.
Free tools and trials may not cost your potential customers any money at first. But it is indicative of their willingness to pay using personal time and attention—which is valuable data that you can use to gain further understanding of a customer’s perception of your product or services.
A limited-capacity or limited-time trial with your product can greatly increase your company’s base of potential paying customers.
3. Harness the power of video content
Video content is continuing to grow in popularity and status across a wide variety of platforms. It’s fast becoming a crucial component for every brand looking to grow its reach.
Today, the average online consumer spends 100 minutes per day watching videos on the internet. This is 19% higher than the average daily viewing time of 2018. Clearly, this is an area where there is growing demand.
61% of marketers in 2021 say that videos are a “very important or extremely important” part of their marketing strategy, and 74% say that they see a higher ROI on video content as opposed to normal static imagery.
As the world continues to consume more and more online content, video is likely to remain at the epicenter of in-demand content types.
The best part about video content is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. You can create slick high production value videos, or you can opt for TikTok style short clips shot on a phone. Both are effective, and together they have even more power.
4. Capitalize on influencer and micro influencer partnerships
Social media platforms provide ample grounds for customer engagement. But if your own brand lacks the numbers needed for effective results, influencers can act as a powerful ambassador on your behalf. Other influencer benefits include:
- Reaching a broader audience
- Growing your own social media following
- Increased site traffic
- Building trust and familiarity with your audience
If a potential client sees your brand represented by someone they follow, it can allow them to see you in a more positive light, making them more likely to want to do business with you.
If partnering with popular influencers isn’t within your reach, micro influencers are an excellent alternative. Micro influencers have between 1,000 to 1,000,000 followers and are also experts in their niche. They tend to collaborate with smaller brands or brands targeting a specific geographic location that they’re highly active in. This allows them to reach a very specific audience.
Depending on your brand, collaborating with a few micro influencers is a good—or potentially even better—than aligning with one influencer with an enormous following.
5. Create engaging guest posts
According to a Social Marketing Writing survey, 62.96% of online readers consider blogs that have multiple authors as more credible.
This information suggests that your website posts and blogs should not only be engaging, but should also come from multiple sources too. Especially if you want your brand to be perceived with a high level of credibility.
While guest posts are not a shortcut to engagement with your site users (nothing is), incorporating it into your inbound marketing strategy could produce favorable results.
6. Design an email course or webinar
Courses and webinars may be relatively new to the scene when it comes to digital marketing. But the high conversion rates they have become associated with speak for themselves.
- Email conversion rate: 2-3%
- Social media conversion rate: 1%
- Webinar conversion rate: 30-40%
Even though there is still some skepticism around the effectiveness of an email course or webinar, studies tell us that web users have a strong appetite for informative, advice-based video content.
Your brand can satiate that appetite by creating video-based courses that focus on tutorial-style content. This content can educate the viewer on the various skills, history, and techniques relevant to your business.
7. Master the “Double Survey Technique”
The Double Survey Technique is a content marketing strategy developed in 2019 by Growth Badger. The blog website saw an 843% increase in site traffic after applying the technique to just one post.
There are three steps involved in the execution of the Double Survey Technique that any content marketing strategist can utilize for improved website traffic:
- Step 1: find a good topic for original research
- Step 2: run a survey or experiment to get data on it
- Step 3: ask experts for their opinions on the results
This simple three-step marketing technique has proven wildly successful. Growth Badger claims that even after the initial spike in site traffic, the total traffic rate remained two times higher than it was prior to the Double Survey Technique implementation.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing relies on organic leads, which can be much harder and more exhaustive than outbound (paid marketing or sponsorship marketing) methods.
However, it is by far the more budget-friendly marketing alternative for ecommerce stores of all sizes. When executed well it can produce truly impressive results.
The site traffic rates, sales drive, and customer engagement aspects of marketing have a higher potential for growth when funneled through an inbound marketing strategy. And this is what makes it such a worthwhile avenue to explore.
With the right strategies in place and a strong team of adaptive, open-minded marketing agents on board, the future of successful and sustainable ecommerce marketing is yours.
