Over the holiday break I had the opportunity to read an interesting book called #Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso. Ms. Amoruso is the founder and CEO of Nasty Gal. In the past 8 years, she has built a $100 million fashion empire and online fashion retailer with more than 350 employees.

Inbound marketing isn’t actually mentioned anywhere in #GirlBoss. Though she doesn’t know it, she has applied every inbound marketing best practice to the success of her business!

For those of you who might not get a chance to read this, here are a few strategies and tactics detailed in her book that truly make her an inbound marketing maven.

ATTRACT

Social

Sophia started building her community before she had a business model by spending a tremendous amount of time on MySpace. At that time, MySpace was the perfect audience for vintage eBay sellers like her, aiming to promote their vintage stores to young girls.  She identified her target audience, friended those folks and used her growing MySpace presence to push back and forth with her eBay store.  She even used friend-adding software to significantly increase her MySpace to tens of thousands of friends.

Blog

The Nasty Gal CEO started a blog before it was even cool to blog. She wrote a MySpace bulletin and blog post for every single auction that went up on her eBay shop, Nasty Gal Vintage. She claims she didn’t even know what she was doing at this point, but she was applying two keys to running a successful business: knowing your customer and knowing how to get free marketing!  The Nasty Gal blog is a clear driver of activity to the site and provides incredibly interesting and useful content to its audience.

CONVERT

Personas

Sophia’s eBay shop, Nasty Gal Vintage, had a knack for finding customers though targeting of those who were an it girl’s friends, focusing on girls between certain ages in certain cities. They knew what magazines they liked to read. They followed the musicians they liked. They understood the brands that were embraced, and tens of thousands of friends became engaged in the social conversation – not only because they were connected, but also because the content was fresh and relevant, drawing them back in again and again. The content painted the picture for the next “it girl” outfit to wear to the New Year’s Eve bash and how to style new and vintage items that would help them to differentiate and stand out. This inbound strategy turned strangers into visitors, visitors into customers and customers into promoters.

Customer Service

Research was of the utmost importance. The Nasty Gal team was constantly monitoring social media in relation to what was hot and what was not, and responding back to every question and tweet – they now even use SnapChat to personally correspond with customers.  When the customer talks, Nasty Gal team listens.

DELIGHT

Product

In #GirlBoss, Sophia notes the important of delivery and presentation were to strengthening the brand. Turn-around time was of the essence from the beginning.   Packaging was paid incredible detail to, service and returns were top priorities. From the styled photo they saw online to the carefully packaged deliverable – Sophia wanted people to have a great experience with Nasty Gal products.

Lifestyle

NastyGal has become more than an online retailer and truly become a lifestyle.  The brand is consistently focused on providing useful and relevant content through photographs, blogs, videos, social sharing and advice.  From horoscopes to stylist advice Nasty Gal has nailed the concept of inbound marketing.

What can we learn from Sophia Amoruso and her concept at Nasty Gal?

Attract:

• Content is king – fresh, relevant content wins the battle of attention every day
• Be social – connecting with your target audience via social media is the most effective way to understand them

Convert:

• Customer service and engagement with the audience through understanding them, listening to them and responding to them will drive more loyalty and positive brand experience than any other endeavor.

Delight:

• Providing relevant information to each client, customer, student in the aspect of their life at this point in time is key!
• Ask yourself: what information do your prospective students need on a daily basis? What will help them to more effectively make the college choice process easier?

Sophia Amoruso started her company with no venture capital, no operating capital and no specific training. She applied the principles of inbound marketing and a lot of hard work to earn Nasty Gal the title of fastest growing retailer in 2012 by Inc. Magazine. All things are possible in 2015!

For more information on how to craft an inbound marketing strategy for your institution attend our upcoming inbound webinar.