E-commerce is a challenging business, where you have to deal with problems, issues, sales, marketing and all in real time. You are in a crowd of biggies like eBay, Amazon and others, simultaneously with local and national competitors, where you are not able to find surface.
So, to stand out of the crowd, only web design and products won’t do, you need effective and innovative marketing strategy much like Inbound Marketing.
According to HubSpot, Inbound marketing is a way to convert strangers into customers, and then promoters. You have to create valuable, usable, entertaining and educating ‘content’ or ‘value’ (in shape of text, videos and images), which will attract people, and then you engage them and at the right time convert them, and keep them delighted throughout.
How you go about it?
For beginners, I have provided six ways to generate E-commerce sales with inbound marketing. It is widely known, inbound marketing is slow but it is highly effective, long-term and efficient.
Here they are, use them.
Blog Marketing
Blogging can be your starting point to start your Inbound Marketing. A blog fulfills two purposes, one it helps in search engine optimization and second it helps you to engage customer and interact directly.
Therefore, keeping both purposes in mind, try to accommodate relevant keywords, and create blogs that answers customer’s queries or surprise, engage or entertain them.
For example, if you are selling home décor items online, then you can develop a blog on “10 innovative gifting ideas on mother’s day”, and you may include your product that suit the occasion.
Use your blog not just for SEO, focus on delighting and entertaining your customers.
Social Media Marketing
Undoubtedly, social media marketing is one of the popular mediums to generate sales directly. Brands such as Threadless, Zara etc. are using social media to generate unprecedented sales.
It is important that you are available on major social media platforms, but it is equally important that you are also online on other niche social media platforms.
For example, if you are an Indian E-commerce website whose target audience is largely school and college goers, then you can reach them on PagalGuy, which is a platform for Indian students.
So, choose platform wisely, and before you head on develop your content strategy. Because here again, on different platforms you will deal with different kinds of environment. For example, if you are on Pinterest then you will need many original images to post, on YouTube you will need to develop videos.
Therefore, develop content strategy intelligently and separately for each platform.
Mobile Marketing
Smart devices are commonplace now, because of which, content consumption on these devices are incredibly high since last year. Moreover, many prefer to buy on the go on these devices, and looking for cheaper deals on these devices while doing window-shopping.
So, if you are looking for another medium that will boost your sales, then mobile is the medium.
However, for the mobile you will have to develop separate content strategy. You will need shorter content, with proper landing pages and clear call-to-actions. Suppose, if you embed a call-to-action button so small that user is not able to see and click.
Focus on, images and size. It should fit a 4-inch smartphone to 10-inch tablet. You can also embed one click shopping much like Amazon that has been successful.
Email Marketing
Email marketing helps you in follow-ups, brand engagement and brand loyalty. However, nowadays websites are only bombarding emails to fill up inboxes, and rarely are they opened. So, how you differentiate, and stand out of the crowd?
Inbound marketing definitely can help you. Instead of insisting, provide quality and value, again which is usable, entertaining and educating. Do not insist or force but attract and entice them to open your email.
Lastly do not forget to personalize. If you are SMB then you can easily personalize your emails in order to get better leads. It is simple, understand your customer, care and love them, and you will be able to sell more.
Special Occasions
On special occasions such as Christmas, New Year, Valentine, Easter etc. you can create content matching the occasion to attract greater traffic and sell more. Suppose, if you are selling apparels online then on Christmas you can develop an entertaining video with models wearing your apparels, and share them on social media platforms. Customers who love your videos will share it further, getting you more likes, traffic to site and eventually more sales.
Small or medium sized E-commerce website may use these inbound marketing tactics to help them generate sales online. It is recommended to develop strategy beforehand based on your target keywords, target audience and content strategy in order to succeed.a
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