how to create inbound ecommerce marketing strategy

It's no secret that the online market is highly competitive and overcrowded. E-commerce businesses have it quite difficult when it comes to attracting and encouraging consumers to make purchases at their store. To consumers, every e-commerce store looks pretty much the same, so they search for those that have something unique to offer.

What's more, consumers get bombarded by outbound marketing offers and promotions all the time. That's why they prefer businesses that can get their attention without being too pushy about it. That's why e-commerce stores, especially new ones, must create an inbound marketing strategy. But what does inbound marketing really mean?

Setting Up Your Inbound Marketing Strategy for E-Commerce

Simply put, inbound marketing strategies help your business position itself where the customers are in order to attract them to your products or services in an organic and natural way. Opposed to inbound is outbound marketing, where you attempt to get customers interested by cold pitching your offers to them directly. That being said, here are a few ways to create an inbound marketing strategy for your e-commerce store.

Research your customers

When it comes to inbound marketing, the whole purpose is to attract customer attention the natural way. That means appealing to their preferences and meeting their expectations, as well as their needs. Unfortunately, you cannot develop the right approach unless you research your customers well.

For example, you need to focus on who your potential customers are and take a closer look at their demographics. Here are a few things you should discover.

● Age
● Gender
● Location
● Income
● Education
● Nationality, etc.

What's more, you need to identify their needs, expectations and demands. You can achieve that by monitoring their behavior and analyzing their purchasing decisions. For instance:

● Are they new buyers?
● How often do they make purchases?
● How much do they spend on average?
● How do they interact with other business?

This information will help you develop customer personas that will further help you design an inbound approach.
In addition, you should determine the common pain points and issues your customers often experience. That way you can attempt to address those issues with your products or services.

Develop a brand

Branding is a marketing strategy that can easily elevate your e-commerce store from others on the market and help it differentiate itself even from other competitor brands. The main reason branding is important is that it allows you to get closer to your customers naturally.

Consumers prefer to do business with brands because brands have something unique to offer. That's why developing a unique selling proposition is a vital element of your branding strategy. In addition, when developing a brand, it's important to create a brand identity that will appeal to customers.

That includes developing a company's mission, a brand promise and portraying your core values to your audience. This identity will attract customers who can relate to your brand. In other words, you promote who you are instead of what you sell and customers will flock toward your brand organically.

Leverage social media

Social media platforms are ideal for inbound marketing. The main reason is that you can interact with your customers on social networks and establish a meaningful relationship with them.

You can generate qualified leads through conversations and relevant content without having to rely on a sales pitch. Moreover, social media platforms enable you to create various other inbound strategies.

As an example, you can leverage influencer marketing and get an influencer to endorse your product.

Also, you can ask your employees to be your brand ambassadors.

In addition, you can create contests and reward your audience with meaningful rewards, such as a prepaid Visa card or some other valuable gift.

Last but not least, you can leverage word-of-mouth marketing where your existing customers who are satisfied with your brand, recommend you to their friends and family on social media.

Leverage SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is yet another inbound marketing activity that can get you your customers in an organic and natural way. The purpose of this marketing strategy is to build your e-commerce store's visibility, awareness, credibility and exposure organically so that you'll generate natural web traffic. There are three SEO activities that can boost your rankings and help your customers to find you more easily online. Those activities are technical, on-site, and off-site SEO. Here are a few examples of each one.

Technical SEO

● Improve website speed
● Implement a responsive design
● User-friendliness
● Security
● Seamless navigation

On-site SEO

● Optimize web pages
● Add title tags
● Optimize meta descriptions
● Implement friendly URLs
● Remove duplicate content and missing pages
● Fix 404 errors and redirects

Off-site SEO

● Blogging
● Link building
● Guest posting
● Content marketing

The purpose of SEO is organic visibility and ranking for relevant keywords your customers commonly use when searching online. That way you position your business and your website so that customers can find you naturally.

Final Thoughts on Inbound Marketing for E-Commerce

Inbound marketing is not simple in any way. You have to ensure that customers can see you, as well as become interested in your business without pushing them with sales and custom offers. Establishing a presence online is the first step toward inbound marketing, which will ensure organic traffic and qualified leads for your e-commerce store.

Our guest author Raul Harman is editor-in-chief at Technivorz blog.