Everything seems to be going well on your ecommerce website but you are not totally happy.
There are new competitors springing up continuously and they are starting to make competitive bids for your favourite pay-per-click adwords. Your marketing budget is under threat and that is just to stand still. I actually want to grow at 15% this year.
What can I do?
The best option is content marketing
You don't have to look far to hear the buzz around content marketing (also known as inbound marketing). It is using marketing automation software to create content - blogs and emails - to attract visitors to your site, collect information about them and then nurture them into becoming customers.
Sounds easy but it is more difficult in practice to do this becuase it depends on creating a stream of content week after week that possible customers find interesting enough for them to read and return. Many current ecommerce site owners don't have the skills or the time to do this regularly.
Inbound marketing is an effective marketing strategy but it is one that works over time and isn't an instant fix. But it is cost effective if done well - in fact it will outperform PPC campaigns if done well.
What inbound marketing tools should I consider?
There are a number of content marketing / lead generation software tools out there. One of the best for SMEs (and the one we use) is HubSpot and we are a HubSpot e-commerce partner.
Should I consider using a content marketing agency?
This partially depends on the level of expertise within your organisation already. However, most SMEs will not have a content marketing expert on board already. It makes sense to look for an inbound marketing agency because there is a certain amount of discipline and consistency of approach needed.
But, if this is an approach that you are going to take and commit to over a significant period, then you should start to train someone up. There is online training that you can take and get certified. It means that you'll get the most out of the software and of the investment.
Will web analytics help too?
Most of the good inbound marketing systems will give you sufficient web analytics capability from within their systems. But you will still need SEO and web analytics on your ecommerce site to make sure its pages rank highly and you know what and who is viewing your pages. However, overall you should see an overall reduction in requirement.
One notable thing about HubSpot is the level of reporting that it shows. It will give customers an advantage to be able to see and track what channels are most productive and which are not delivering.
Nurturing contacts into customers
One of the most important techniques within inbound marketing is nurturing visitors into customers. This is done predominantly via email. Visitors can be send more material in which they've previously shown an interest and be slowly guided down the pipeline towards becoming a customer.
They might not want to be sold something straight away (partly becuase they're still doing research on what solution they think is correct) but they will recognise a supplier that is giving them valuable information to help them diagnose and then choose the best solution for them.
HubSpot for e-commerce
This is something more again. HubSpot actually integrates with one of the major e-commerce platforms, Magento. It will then give more functionality to your site in terms of customer segmentation, abandoned basket capability and in cross-selling / recommending products based on other customers purchasing patterns. It will be taking your site to the next level.
If you liked this blog then you might also like this previous blog too: http://inbound.itqsolutions.net/blog/3-tips-to-maximise-inbound-marketing-software