Inbound marketing, according to Wikipedia, is: “…a style of marketing that essentially focuses on getting found by customers.”  If you are in any field of the e-commerce industry, you realize that is exactly what you need to succeed.

The idea behind inbound marketing is to have other online users find your content and then share that content with other users.  In today’s world, Google rules — and to satisfy the Google machine, you must show that others approve of you.  To accomplish this task, you need to have remarkable content.  This is the essence of inbound marketing and will be discussed in great detail on this blog.

So how do you get started?  I recommend using one of the most popular and time-tested methods for improving processes in the world today, the 6 Sigma Process.  According to Wikipedia, “Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.”

DMAIC – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.

1.  DEFINE – First you need to define your top performing keywords based on analytic tools such as Google Analytics or Coremetrics.   You need to prime yourself for keyword optimization by defining a list of 10-30 primary keywords to start.  Once you have your core list of keywords, try utilizing tools such as Google Wonder Wheel in order to create a long-tail list of keywords which should consist of 100 – 10,000 possible keywords that others may type in to find your site or products.  Do not spend too much time on the long-tail right now, focus on narrowing down your top performing keywords and develop the long-tail as you go.  Check back to my blog for future articles about developing the long-tail process.

2.  MEASURE – Once you have your optimized keyword list, you need to start measuring your performance.  If you are just starting, and do not have analytic tools in place, go ahead and install Google Analytics immediately!  It is free and easy to get started.  If you already have your tools in place, go ahead and create a report of the current performance of your optimized keyword list.  You now need to create some customized reports revolving your keywords.  Click HERE to watch the video of how easy it is to create your customized reports using Google Analytics.  Another of the great tools you can use in Google Analytics is the Benchmarking Feature.  You need to set benchmarks so you can see how well your campaign will be performing against your competitors, so go ahead and start as soon as possible.  Using customized reports and benchmarking tools, you will begin to see trends of which keywords others type in to find you the most, and which keywords convert into the most sales!

3.  ANALYZE – Lets say you sell mens suits and one of your keywords is “black pinned stripped suits”.  You will want to first create a landing page for your email, banner and affiliate campaigns based on this keyword.  Make sure that your category page for black pinned stripped suits is stocked full of remarkable content focused around black pinned stripped suits.  Watch your customized analytic tools data carefully for what pages others click on after visiting your landing or category page for “black pinned stripped suits.”  Do they add products to their cart?  Do they click to blue ties?  Do they leave your site immediately?  If so, why?  You can find these answers by analyzing your keyword performance!  For every visitor, you need the ability to graph their click process.  This is absolutely available and easy to setup using the vast array of free analytic tools such in programs such as Google Analytics.

4.  IMPROVE – By now you should know your top performing keywords, have measured their performance, and analyzed your customers behavior.  The next step is in improving your keywords, landing pages, customer experiences and amount of remarkable content on your e-commerce site.  The decision on what to improve is sometimes greatly influenced by personal opinions or biasis.  Lets stick with the mens clothing example and say that one of your favorite suits is a “black pinned stripped suit”.  You feel that, of all your products a customer should want, it should be your favorite black pinned stripped suit.  But after a careful analysis of your keywords performance, you notice that “casual black suit jackets” is your top performer.  You notice that most customers who visit the category page for “casual black suit jackets” not only purchase a jacket, but also purchase a pair of casual slacks too.  To improve your e-commerce performance, make sure that “casual slacks” are very prominent on “black casual suits” item pages.  Make sure that you mention casual slacks in your email, banner and affiliate campaigns.  Instead of assaulting customers with your favorite suit, bring your top performing casual suit jackets to the front and center of your internet marketing campaigns.  Do not go against what the customer wants, you will never win!

5.  CONTROL - You have spent a good amount of time preparing your e-commerce site for inbound marketing optimization using the 6 Sigma Process, and you can’t stop here!  Now is the time to control what you have built with a healthy schedule.  You should review your keyword performance, inbound links, landing pages, and customer behavior on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.  Be careful to not be too hasty!  You do not want to change your strategy every day, you only need to change your site based on the data of the sites usage.  Determine for yourself how long you want that to be.  Some professionals change their e-commerce site homepage on a weekly basis, while others on a monthly or quarterly basis.  If you are in an industry where a daily change is necessary, make sure you have lots of remarkable content ready to go daily!  Develop your plan of control attack utilizing a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly to-do list.  I suggest using a free calendar such as Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook with To-Do Lists to remind yourself of what you need to do every morning to ensure your e-commerce site is ready for the traffic you are about to receive through your inbound marketing campaign.  Make sure you setup alarms to keep you in control!

Follow these 5 steps and you will have a rock solid e-commerce site optimized for your inbound marketing campaign!  My next article will discuss another important element of Inbound Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce Optimization — Developing the Long Tail For E-Commerce Inbound Marketing Success.

Still not sure about the importance of inbound marketing and why you should follow my guide of the Getting Started with the 6 Sigma Process? Read these amazing resources of what the industry experts have to say about it:

• Hubspot – Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
• Inbound Marketing:  Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Darhmesh Shah
• The Inbound Marketing Blog