Soft selling: selling without seeming so

All of us, as online buyers, are subjected to an enormous amount of commercial stimuli.

For this reason, if you want your eCommerce to have greater chances of being profitable, or you do not want to spend too much, the most intelligent approach is not to go solely into openly battling other competitors who are completely focused on promotion and price.

What we propose in this post is that you use other techniques such as soft selling, which basically allow you to approach sales in a less invasive way, by providing added value through your sales channels.

Does it sound a bit complicated? You will see that it is simpler than it may seem at first glance.

Many people like to buy, but almost no one likes to be sold to. The final result is a transaction, agreed, but we start from two concepts that seem very similar, although they have nuances that make them radically different.

In marketing, two types of strategies are usually distinguished:

Obviously, if we talk about selling without selling, soft selling is a pull strategy, since it does not seek to “push” the sale, but rather to attract it voluntarily, identifying a need and offering a solution.

As we have said before, we are subjected to a large number of advertising impacts simply by having a phone in our hands or entering any media outlet. This has been generating advertising blindness which, little by little, can end up turning into rejection.

Implementing soft selling has many advantages for eCommerce:

And of course, I know that this can take time, but think that it does not have to imply working more; in fact, it is only a matter of working better.

It seems that when we talk about content, we immediately associate it with social networks, but is our own website not made up of content?

Product pages stopped being a transactional formality a long time ago. It has been proven that they are much more effective the more they contribute information about the product, its use, functionalities, key features… and also the brand values or the company’s purpose.

So much so that even Amazon has moved from schematic product pages to much more complete content, with long descriptions, customer reviews, multimedia elements…

Keep in mind that SEO has changed a great deal, and even in this regard, resolving customer doubts is a way to get closer to AI agents, thereby increasing our chances of appearing in their prompt responses.

To give an example that goes beyond the most recurring ones, I will share the case of Solo Stove, which manufactures outdoor fireplaces and fire pits (a fairly small niche). However, their product pages are so aspirational that you could almost consume them like a blog article and, immediately, they make you want to own one of those products.

I would highlight the aspirational aspect; they are not excessively technical pages, they simply aim to take us to a lifestyle that connects with leisure and nature while explaining the features of their fireplaces.

I do not know about you, but in my case it works very well.

And since soft selling and content go hand in hand, I could not miss the opportunity to mention Bark Box, a store selling products for animals, which has stood out for years for also maintaining a very comprehensive and well-documented blog.

The structure is organized based on categories such as food, health, fun, breeds… and products, but everything is so well thought out and balanced that the products are not the protagonists (for that they have the eCommerce, although obviously the blog articles link to specific products).

Regarding topics, for example, we find many posts with titles such as:

As you can see, all of this translates into potential traffic, with the advantage that the user who performs a search with these characteristics expects to find a page like this and not a store. It may seem that the conversion process is extended, but in reality it is not; we are simply addressing a user who is at another point in the customer journey, whether in consideration or discovery.

By the way, do not miss their social networks either, because they carry this philosophy of working with educational content as a brand hallmark.

I love their Instagram profile; always with a friendly tone, they present their products and solutions, in addition to providing educational content. As an example, take a look at this seasonal Christmas reel:

To conclude this overview, and since we have already explored the website and social networks, it is also worth taking a look at another major channel: email marketing.

It is interesting to see how new platforms and marketing strategies continue to emerge, but email marketing remains effective, reliable, and inexpensive. Evidently, with these characteristics, it is obvious that it should be included in our list of soft selling solutions.

Those customers who have already given us explicit permission to receive communications will greatly appreciate that not all of our relationship is directly transactional.

Put another way: promotional emails sell; informational or educational emails build loyalty, reduce the churn rate, and encourage opens or clicks.

The example that best fits what I am explaining is Huckberry, an eCommerce specialized in products for men with an adventurous spirit. Take a look at how they work with one of their newsletters.