Inbound marketing or content marketing is well known and applied with good results in companies of all sizes and business models, We've talked about this here in Blog. The inbound commerce is nothing more than a variation of this, but with methodology focused on electronic commerce.
In short, it means delivering relevant content and developing strategies for your customer or lead regardless of the conversion stage (time) they are in.
Therefore, Inbound Commerce is Inbound Marketing aimed at a very specific audience: people who buy online.
It is important to know where your potential customer looks for products, information, promotions, etc. It's on top of these data that you should work on.
See also:
- Learn what D2C is: the strategy that is redefining ecommerce
- Best practices for digital security on websites
- Does organic reach still make sense in digital marketing?
- Key tips to succeed in e-commerce in 2024
- What territorial marketing is and how to do
Be where your audience is!
Google, social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Youtube) and blogs are essential for creating an Inbound Commerce strategy.
It will be from these actions that you will raise the position of your e-commerce in the searchers (organicly or paid), increase your visitors, fans and followers on social networks and, consequently, make your name a reference in the area.
E-commerce continues to rise
E-commerce has fired in the last 12 months and with it, inbound marketing tactics from experienced e-commerce marketers have accelerated, competing to attract visitors, customers to the site or platform and achieve sales.
Although a healthy e-commerce marketing strategy always includes a mix of inbound marketing and offline actions, with demand and competition reaching peak in 2021, there is no doubt that this is the time to focus on your inbound commerce strategy focusing on increasing your ROI (return on investment).
Just to get an idea, the Brazilian e-commerce grew 72.2% in the first quarter of 2021. With R$ 35.2 billion in sales between January and March 2021, the country recorded an increase of 72.2% in comparison with 2020. Another interesting finding is that the average ticket of purchases increased 9.4% and reached R$ 447.90 in the period.
Thinking about it, I separated 5 tested and approved strategies that will boost your inbound commerce results so you can create a good inbound structure and increase your customers and revenues by 2021:
1. Instagram Shopping
In recent years Instagram has exploded as a social platform. You probably already use Instagram for marketing purposes or even to reach new customers.
Sell by Instagram It's a successful strategy already adopted by many people. With over a billion users worldwide, the network is the right place to be with your brand and achieve results.
Emphasis on clean and high-quality visuals makes Instagram ideal for displaying products and now also is the place for shopping.
With posts that can sell products or services directly through your business profile, you can increase the number of visitors to your Instagram store by means of a perfect user experience.
To use this feature, you must configure your product catalog on Facebook and connect to your Instagram business account. After that, you can mark any product in your posts that followers can buy.
Another way that e-commerce stores can exploit this feature is to combine it with influence marketing.
By creating more than 9 sales posts on Instagram, you will have a “Buy” tab on your Instagram profile, where followers can access your products and shop.
2. Personalized content is now king
With large companies like Amazon and Netflix leading the way, content customization is a trend that every e-commerce must adopt. Consider this, potential buyers will likely come to your store when you display relevant products to them.
In addition, 72% of consumers say they are now only involved with personalized marketing messages that are tailored to their interests. So if you have not done so yet, you should consider using content customization as one of your strongest e-commerce marketing tactics.
For effective content customization, you need to consider the following criteria:
- Previous interactions of the visitor on your site.
- Demographic data, such as location, sex, language, etc.
- Visiting time, like time of day, month or year.
- The visitor's declared interests.
Through customization of the site, each visitor sees a personalized page with the products they want to buy.
Amazon is a popular example of customization of content. From product recommendations to shipping information based on your location, each platform user sees an e-commerce store with their favorite products. That's personalization.
You don't know how to do it? Talk to me here.
3. Increased reality (HR)
With the augmented reality (HR) and virtual reality (VR), users have a better view than they are interested in before they complete the purchase.
AR allows potential buyers to add a product to the environment before buying. This shows how a product can adjust to an environment. In reality, elements of the digital world are inserted into the physical world through smartphones or some screen.
Imagine how a furniture would look in your house? That's possible now!
Ikea, a giant in the sector, has an app where you can simulate a sofa in your home, for example, before deciding to buy. Some known paint marks are also adopting the idea for customers to test the colors on their walls.
This is a great possibility to increase online sales with a differentiated experience. In addition, it is a way to reduce the customer's own dissatisfaction.
4. Turning visitors into leads
Most of the time the user does not make the purchase on the first visits to your e-commerce, but you do not need to lose the visitor: just turn it into a lead. One of the most common forms is use landing pages.
Your virtual store can direct the user to another page that offers for example a discount coupon or some reward for signing up for news. In return, the user leaves his contact details, which may be used for sending marketing emails or abandoned cart messages, among others.
Another option to capture leads is to use pop-ups or forms while the user browses. Make promotions using this possibility with exclusive discount or some offer.
5. Traffic Attraction
When you start applying the previous tips, it is crucial to focus on the attraction of traffic and also on content production and SEO related to it. The goal is to create optimized content.
Having a blog as a content channel is common in inbound commerce strategies to focus on specific actions to deliver information that is relevant to potential buyers. Ideally, creating content that is able to enrich your own virtual store.
Many e-commerce platforms have modules for creating and blogging, but wordpress platform can also be a good option.
A very punctual example is Magazine Luiza, which has a blog called “Lu Explains” with targeted categories focused on helping consumers with content that does not sell products directly, but directs them to specific interests.
To create an inbound commerce strategy that manages attraction, it is essential that the product page has the description worked out and enriched with key points, both in terms of keywords and in points of interest to the customer.
Therefore, it is necessary to produce a lot of useful content for the product pages rather than just making a technical sheet of that item. It is also important that the page has rich content to spread it on other channels, for example creating links through the blog in parallel and spreading it on social networks.
Conclusion
Nowadays everything has to be practical, easy and it is not helpful to want to apply inbound commerce strategies, if your virtual store platform does not offer many possibilities to create or expand the content to bring a better experience to the user.
We have talked about this before, suggesting which e-commerce platform is best suited for results.
To capture and generate leads you will surely need a management tool that offers templates for email marketing, landing pages and sending automation. There are many in the market, some free. The cool thing is that almost all offer a test drive to test for a period, before choosing to sign.
Implementing a strategy just because it is popular can lead to bad results for your e-commerce store. To avoid this, make sure you use marketing strategies effectively with your audience.
O Inbound commerce It is perfectly applicable, so put in your planning to make your virtual store grow.
Finally, always follow the performance metrics to know what is working and what points should be improved. That way, you can identify if you're getting the right people to your e-commerce.
