An Inventory Synchronization App Gets the Point Across in One Sentence
Today I looked at the multichannel inventory synchronization app Trunk‘s content marketing strategy. Trunk is another fintech that makes accounting automation software. Its app gives online merchants a consolidated view of their inventory so the merchant knows how much inventory it has at all times. Trunk does this by using integrations with major marketplace platforms to record sales transactions, and it then uses these records to update stock levels in a central inventory database.
Automatically Updating Inventory Records
For example, an clothing store may have twenty T-shirts available in a specific design, also known as a stock-keeping unit (SKU). The store may sell these shirts on Amazon, Etsy, and Shopify. If a customer buys one of the T-shirts on Amazon, Trunk uses its integration with Amazon to automatically update the inventory records in its central database, so the database will show that the store now has 19 T-shirts.
If customers buy all twenty T-shirts, regardless of where the sales took place, the Trunk app will show the clothing store that this T-shirt is out of stock so the store can update the listing. Trunk tracks individual SKUs, so the platform can show the merchant specific inventory numbers for each T-shirt it sells. And the app tracks returns and refunds as well.
By doing this, the app saves the store owner time and gives them access to more customers. As Trunk explains on its website, many store owners would love to list their products on several online marketplaces. But if they do that, they have to check the listings frequently to make sure that they’re not selling a product that’s out of stock.
With this app, a store owner can sell their inventory on more platforms. So Trunk isn’t just reducing merchants’ costs by automating accounting, it’s helping them put their products in front of more customers and therefore increasing their revenue as well.
Trunk’s Goal for Content Marketing
Online stores are looking for an inventory synchronization app that has integrations with the platforms they use. For example, if a clothing store sells T-shirts on Amazon and eBay, then the app needs to support both Amazon and eBay. It’s also important for the app to support Quickbooks, an accounting software package that is widely used by small businesses.
Ideally, when the business sells a T-shirt on Amazon, for example, the platform would automatically add entries to the relevant ledger accounts in Quickbooks. So Trunk has a Quickbooks integration in addition to integrations with online marketplace platforms. It also has an integration with the payment processing app Square. So an effective content marketing strategy for promoting Trunk’s app would be to tell merchants about these integrations.
Landing Pages Demonstrate That Trunk Solves the Problem
When I looked up the keywords that brought traffic to Trunk’s website, many of them referenced inventory synchronization between specific online marketplace platforms. For example, a merchant might be looking up a keyword like Amazon and Shopify synchronization. So if Trunk explains that its software can synchronize inventory records for Amazon and Shopify, it’ll rank for that keyword. And if a customer wants to know if the software can synchronize inventory records between eBay and Square, the company has a page for that.
It’s very important for Trunk to mention the specific platforms that it supports because the app will be less convenient for a merchant who also uses unsupported platforms. If the merchant makes a sale on an unsupported platform, then the merchant will have to update the inventory records manually for that sale. And if another inventory synchronization app does support that platform, it has a strong argument to get the merchant to switch apps.
How This Content Marketing Strategy Could Be Improved
Trunk also has a page that explains that its app can synchronize inventory records between Etsy and Squarespace. Etsy is an online marketplace and Squarespace makes website design software that helps merchants set up their own online stores, so a merchant may have both an Etsy store and a Squarespace store with the same product listings.
Trunk can rank for this keyword and related keywords with one sentence explaining that its software can synchronize inventory records between the platforms because this feature is likely to solve the user’s problem. But Trunk doesn’t have the top ranking for this keyword. And that may be because the landing page doesn’t provide specific information about this topic.
The top page is Squarespace’s page that explains how to import product listings from Etsy to a Squarespace store. It would be hard to outrank Squarespace on this topic, even though Squarespace explains that its app doesn’t sync inventory records, it just imports product listings. The second-place page is Automate.io’s page about Squarespace and Etsy integrations.
It’s likely that Trunk could rank higher for this keyword by posting an article that’s specifically about synchronizing inventory records when a merchant has stores on both Squarespace and Etsy. If it did that, it might even get the top result. If the merchant wants to synchronize inventory records for these platforms, the Squarespace page on this topic doesn’t solve the merchant’s problem, but Trunk’s software does.
Conclusion
It’s obvious that solving a specific problem goes a long way toward ranking for a keyword. Trunk has created landing pages on multiple topics that contain the same information aside from a single sentence at the top. But when that sentence explains that its software can sync inventory records between two specific platforms that its customers are using, that’s still enough information to make the page very relevant for potential customers.
