When it comes to business, your marketing strategy can spell the success or failure of your company. Marketing strategies are crucial in drawing attention, increasing traffic, and generating leads. Through this will a company be able to find quality prospects that can later turn into actual sales. Taking this into consideration, it is safe to say that an ineffective marketing campaign can rid your company of an audience and sales.

Digital marketing teams have different strategies to achieve their goals. Whether it’s to draw traffic, gather leads, or boost presence and visibility. However, some marketing strategies are not as effective as others. 

Are traditional marketing techniques no longer work for your eCommerce business? Then maybe it’s time to look into the advantages of inbound marketing campaigns.

 

What is Inbound Marketing?

 

Inbound marketing is a newly developed approach to ecommerce and online transactions. It refers to the tedious methodology used by companies to build valuable and lasting relationships with their audience.

The principle of inbound marketing lies in the idea that a good customer experience leads to brand loyalty. Through this, it helps ensure sales as return customers or through referrals.  The primary goal is to offer the audience meaningful interactions and empower them to meet their needs and goals. 

Inbound marketing’s strategy is to provide consumers with content that they want. It aims to provide helpful information or offer support to solve problems or accomplish tasks. 

 

Inbound Marketing vs Traditional Marketing 

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The inbound marketing methodology is significantly different from traditional marketing techniques. But first, let’s define what is traditional marketing exactly.

Traditional marketing is also referred to as outbound marketing. This type of marketing strategy thrives through large-scale and broad campaigns. It pushes out massive marketing efforts through advertisements, push emails, and more. The goal of outbound marketing is to broadcast the business’s information, credentials, products, and services to the largest possible audience. Through this, outbound marketing believes that some would take an interest in what the company has to offer. Some examples of outbound marketing tools are:

 

  • Billboards.
  • Direct mail.
  • Newspaper ads.
  • TV commercials.
  • Magazine feature.

 

On the other hand, inbound marketing works the exact opposite of traditional marketing tactics. Instead of bombarding a general audience with marketing content, it offers a more targeted and tailored approach to a select group or market. 

First, inbound marketing determines who its target audience is. Then, it identifies quality leads among the group. When a prospect shows interest, inbound marketing proceeds to provide content that this individual may find valuable or helpful. By providing quality content, the prospect is more likely to progress with their customer journey and turn into an actual sale. Some examples of inbound marketing tools include:

 

  • Blogs.
  • How-to guides.
  • Buying guides.
  • Listicles.
  • Featured articles.
  • Webinars.

 

In comparison, outbound marketing uses a more aggressive wide-scale approach. On the other hand, inbound marketing is less invasive, more informative, and valuable for a specific group or target audience.

 

Inbound Marketing for Business Growth

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When it comes to trying new marketing strategies, many wonder how this can contribute to the business’s growth and success. In general, an effective marketing strategy can boost one’s reach, presence, visibility, and relevance. With these, a business is more likely to grow through an increase in audience, customers, and sales. However, inbound marketing offers more than just a different campaign style. It can also:

 

  • Support the sales team.
  • Provide in-depth analytics.
  • Create comprehensive customer data reports.
  • Generate and identify quality leads.
  • Offer additional marketing content resources.

 

3 Steps Involved in Inbound Marketing

 

Given that inbound marketing is a relatively new methodology, some marketers may still be unsure how to adopt such a strategy for an ecommerce business. For an inbound marketing campaign to be effective, it’s important to understand how the campaign works starting from one stage to the next. Taking this into consideration, an inbound marketing campaign typically occurs in 3 stages. 

 

Stage 1: Attracting

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The first phase revolves around attracting the right group or audience. This is achieved by utilizing a targeted marketing approach. This involves creating and publishing content related to your business’s niche. 

These can either be a general introductory blog or an in-depth explanation or guide. Having both types of content makes it that your website has valuable content to offer to novices as well as those knowledgeable and experienced. But to know what you’re community is looking for, it is crucial to utilize SEO extensively.

By doing so, you are directing your content to a market that already poses a sense of interest in your product or service. Aside from that, you slowly establish your company as a trusted brand with reliable content. 

 

Stage 2: Engaging

 

Let’s say that you’re able to build a relatively solid community for your ecommerce business. The next step is to continue engaging with these people in order to encourage them to continue supporting you. 

Inbound marketing relies heavily on long-lasting relationships between the company and its customers. This helps boost trust, increase ratings, and most importantly, ensure a relatively consistent flow of leads and sales.

However, it is important to understand the different tactics that help effectively engage your target audience. Aside from regularly posting blogs and articles on your website, it’s crucial to know when you should push out these contents to your audience.

Timing is also pivotal in the success of an inbound marketing campaign. In order to provide your audience with valuable information, marketers should know where the target group or audience is in their buyer’s journey. In addition to this, inbound marketing believes in the concept of solution-selling instead of simply product-selling.

Inbound marketing aims to tailor its content to people looking for a way to solve their problems or achieve goals. This is a form of targeted marketing strategy that identifies leads that are further in their buyer’s journey and are more likely to turn into an actual sale. 

 

Stage 3: Delighting

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The delighting phase of inbound marketing is a follow-up strategy that ensures customers are happy and satisfied with the transaction. It is an added layer to ensuring a good customer experience. 

To do this, digital marketers can offer customer service or technical support. Using an AI chatbot or hiring a virtual assistant can help ensure that there’s always someone ready to answer customer inquiries. Regardless of whether it’s before or after they purchase something from your ecommerce store. 

This stage in the inbound marketing methodology also emphasizes the importance of a good customer experience to earn positive testimonials. When a person feels valued as a customer, they are more likely to testify and refer the business to family and friends.

Customer referral is the cog that turns the wheel for inbound marketing to continuously have quality leads. The idea is that satisfied customers refer the business to people who are strangers to the product or service. Then, these strangers turn into prospects that would be guided all throughout their buyer’s journey in order to turn them into customers. The cycle continues as new customers continue to refer and promote the business to other people. 

 

If you want to know more about effective marketing strategies, Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up for our newsletter. We also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you prefer something more personal.

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