Businesses that want to succeed in 2024 know they need to have a solid inbound marketing strategy to attract qualified leads and convert them into loyal customers. eCommerce has become increasingly competitive because the digital world has eliminated most geographical boundaries, allowing customers to buy from many businesses regardless of location. Retail brands also have to fight for people’s attention online.
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The Official Inbound Marketing for eCommerce Guide
Successful eCommerce inbound marketing should align with your store-specific goals, such as increasing the average order value (AOV), improving cart conversions, and reducing bounce rates.
To help you get started, we're sharing five tactics that will maximize your site's performance and improve its inbound marketing strategy.
Inbound Marketing Strategy Tips
Take these five steps to ensure you adopt a strategy that provides successful eCommerce inbound marketing for online stores:
- Have a plan
- Have patience
- Continuously test
- Use support tools
- Pay attention to detail
Have a Plan
Planning is the most crucial step in any inbound marketing campaign. First, set a clear goal that identifies what you'd like to accomplish with your campaign.
Are you trying to promote a certain product? Do you want to attract more email subscribers? Do you need to drive more repeat purchases? Whatever you may want to achieve, you must have a solid plan before reaching that goal.
When creating HubSpot workflows, you must plan your emails, lists, and goals ahead of time. The way you design email messages and workflows could make or break your campaign. Inbound marketing plans with features like seasonal promotions or product launches can make it significantly easier to achieve your goals.
Have Patience
One of the biggest issues we run into as marketers is the willingness to be patient. It’s important to remember that marketing isn’t a magic trick. We can’t just snap our fingers, create some links, and rank at the top of search engine results.
Although we wish it could happen so quickly, patience paired with well-written, optimized content will take your brand in the right direction and help you grow your online store. Successful campaigns balance short-term wins with long-term growth strategies. For example, you might pair a seasonal flash sale with quality evergreen content that helps attract first-time buyers. You could strive to retain new customers by maintaining high levels of engagement and providing quality customer service. This encourages repeat purchases and builds your brand’s reputation.
We recommend having a strong content marketing strategy in place. When developing your strategy, be sure to factor in these SEO insights and tips. They will help improve organic search rankings and optimize your store for success.
Continuously Test
If you're not testing your strategies, there's a chance that you're missing out on valuable revenue. All marketers should practice A/B testing in eCommerce and use it to optimize the entire sales funnel. Testing can help you enhance touchpoints ranging from homepage CTAs to product descriptions.
A/B testing in eCommerce is a great way to determine which marketing strategies produce the best results and find out what you may need to improve. As marketers, we need to keep up with industry trends and test new techniques to achieve the best results for our clients.
We like to A/B test as much as possible here at Groove Commerce. Regardless of whether we’re working on click-through rates or email open rates, there is always something that can be A/B tested. We work with clients to experiment with things like:
- Shipping promotions
- Personalized product recommendations
- Checkout layouts
When we test various changes in these areas, it gives us greater insight into what works well and what needs to be improved.
Use Support Tools
To run a successful inbound marketing campaign, you must have the right support in place. In addition to great teammates and co-workers, support tools and CRM systems (like HubSpot) are a good place to start. As you build your stack, ensure your options include things like email automation and on-site personalization software. Equipping your site with Google Analytics 4 or other analytics tools will also be essential.
One of our favorite HubSpot features is their support team. They're readily available to not only answer any questions we may have but also to walk us through specific tasks and provide solutions to problems.
Building a site with these tools on hand will help you track user activity so that you gain a more complete understanding of customer behavior and buyer journeys.
Pay Attention to Detail
As with everything else in life, the details are crucial. When you work on HubSpot workflows, be sure to pay attention to the details.
Selecting the wrong smart list, goal list, or if/then branch will cause your workflow to track the wrong information or completely stop working.
Keep your content marketing very detail-oriented. Your writing must have a purpose and be well-thought-out if you want it to rank highly and drive traffic to your site. It should be tailored specifically for an eCommerce audience, including information like:
- High-quality imagery
- Detailed product descriptions
- Customer reviews
As you build out this content, optimize all of your pages for mobile users. Visitors should be able to easily engage with your site regardless of what devices they use. It’s also best to have a seamless transition from your landing pages to the checkout system. Ensure that shoppers can easily see what they should click as they get closer and closer to checkout.
Content Marketing for eCommerce
Building your eCommerce content strategy involves thinking carefully about the types of material that buyers will want to see most. For example, you might create targeted content like:
- Product guides
- Comparison blog posts
- Videos
These types of content engage and attract users at different stages of the buying journey.
Carefully think about building and optimizing product pages in particular. Using engaging descriptions, FAQs, and user-generated content (UGC) can go a long way toward attracting your target audience and encouraging them to engage with your brand. For an example of a brand that successfully used content marketing to boost organic web traffic, see our case study on Cutter & Buck.
SEO Best Practices for eCommerce Inbound Marketing
As you build your eCommerce content strategy and inbound marketing plan, consider the value of SEO and how you can use it to attract more search traffic. If you want to incorporate successful SEO strategies into your overall inbound campaign, we recommend that you begin with a few key areas.
- Optimizing product pages: Know the terms people use to search for your products and ensure you use these key terms in every major element of the page, including the URL, content, and headlines.
- Building backlinks from high-quality blogs: Encourage bloggers who reference your content to link to your pages.
- Leverage long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords offer greater precision and help you attract the audience most relevant to your business.
Across the entire site, loading speeds and mobile optimization should be top priorities. Google monitors how well a website appears on mobile devices and how quickly it loads. It uses this information when ranking sites. People appreciate content that loads rapidly and looks great on any device, so it will also boost your conversions.
Building Customer Loyalty Through Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing for online stores can also help build customer loyalty by keeping people engaged. It works to continue conversations with leads so that they keep learning more about your business and developing relationships with your representatives.
Email plays an important role in building this loyalty. Sending personalized email messages and using post-purchase emails to upsell and cross-sell can go a long way. By offering exclusive content to returning customers, you let them know that you care about existing buyers and not just leads.
A reward program can also keep people interested. Rewards may give customers the final push they need to purchase from you instead of a competitor.
Conclusion: Improving Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
We hope you find this blog helpful and follow these five steps to develop a successful inbound marketing strategy. When your eCommerce brand aligns content, testing, and SEO for optimal results, you can reach your business goals.
Are you interested in learning how our team could help improve your inbound marketing strategy with search engine optimization and more? We can provide a free audit and work with you to develop customized strategies that help you scale your inbound efforts. Our agency serves online stores that use BigCommerce, Shopify, and other eCommerce platforms. Contact us today to get started.
