Introduction
Content, when done right, can be the lifeblood of your business. In this article, we’ll look at the different ways you can implement content marketing for your business.
The strategic advantage of content marketing for e-commerce
Corporate brands and online stores are investing in digital marketing and prioritizing paid advertising campaigns and social media.
But the actual metrics that determine ROI all come from content marketing.
Content may include information bulletins, webinars, podcasts, templates, white papers, case studies and more. You can also convert interviews or Zoom meetings in webinars.
Content marketing pays rich SEO dividends
Content marketing for ecommerce sites has a huge SEO advantage.
When you create and optimize quality content for relevant keywords, when you optimize the speed of your website, you start attracting organic traffic that you would otherwise have to attract with PPC. Always use a ranking tracker to find out which key terms you are ranking for.
A well-executed SEO strategy increases your organic traffic over time. This translates into new customers and more revenue for you. In the case of paid media, traffic drops to zero as soon as you stop spending money on advertising.
Content marketing facilitates the customer journey
Content marketing should address all the different points in the customer journey, from customer awareness of the problem, to retention, to the purchase decision. Content marketing can guide your prospects through the different stages of sales channels and facilitate the purchasing process.
Creating valuable content that solves a specific problem educates the prospect and offers valuable insights that your brand can use to educate the customer at every stage of that journey.
If your content is simply limited to product pages, as many ecommerce retailers do, then most of your customer touchpoints will be limited to the later stages of the customer journey.
This leaves significant gaps in the funnel that competitors can take advantage of.
Differentiate your brand with content marketing
Unless you are selling a unique product, the brand differentiation it can be of real help.
Content strategy helps you showcase your brand’s personality and attract customers who might not otherwise be interested.
Red Bull doesn’t make a great tasting energy drink. Most people often laugh at their bad taste. But with great content, they have a giant moat around their brand.
Ecommerce marketing optimizes the conversion funnel
E-commerce brands are not required to separate their content from that of the parent brand.
The best ecommerce marketing strategies work seamlessly with customers and nurture them until they’re ready to buy.
Not all site visitors want to make a purchase.
So it’s important to strengthen your brand at every touchpoint.
You can ask them to download product guides or join webinars. Microconversions move them up the buying funnel.
Include CTAs to entice them to buy. This way, you can get more engagement and encourage more purchases.
Content marketing improves brand loyalty
Consumers today have so many choices. This is good for customers, but makes it harder for marketers to keep them. However, a study shows that more than half of customers switched brands after having a better experience with another brand.
Content marketing is a great way to improve your relationship with your audience. It broadens and deepens the relationship you share. By creating valuable content that educates and entertains them, you build a connection with customers.
Now let’s talk about content marketing strategies for e-commerce.
Develop a content hub
Content hubs are a powerful ecommerce strategy.
Content hubs are a central point on your site that brings together content around a specific topic. These can be blog posts, videos or social media content, all related to the same topic. A content hub refers to content in and around a central topic.
If you’re selling NFT art, the content can be about NFTs, blockchains, and cryptocurrencies.
Content hubs are invaluable to both you and your customers.
The advantages are:
- Increased search traffic
- Greater audience engagement
- More social shares
- More thought leadership
Content hubs provide customers with a superior user experience on your website. They take your best information about an important topic and make it easily digestible. Always start by performing a web audit to identify the topics you should create content hubs around.
Create topic groups for SEO
Topic groups are a great way to increase organic traffic and subsequent conversions.
A topic group can be thought of as a model of content organized around a central theme. Its anchor is a pillar page, a long-form post that acts as a hub, and the clusters are smaller blog posts that act as shelves.
The pillar post covers all topics in the high-level group and links to supporting posts within a topic group. Also includes internal links.
Blogging helps you dominate entire verticals of keyword groups. Furthermore, thematic groups offer you an ideal structure to increase your online rankings. They will help you get backlinks and transfer value to other pages in the group. You can also jumpstart your external backlinking by reaching out to Linkflow for help (https://linkflow.ai/link-building-services/).
This helps these pages rank better. It’s a virtuous circle.
Then use a marketing automation software to send part of the content as electronic newsletters to your subscribers and get even more engagement.
Create user-generated content
Another content marketing strategy for ecommerce, user-generated content is very effective because it shows people actually using your products. It acts as a word of mouth for your brand and generates marketing and social proof for your business.
People don’t always believe what you say about your products, but they are more likely to believe statements and images spread by real customers and their colleagues.
To encourage user-generated content, here’s what to do:
- Host a contest where customers submit original content such as videos and photos.
- Encourage people to leave feedback after their purchase.
- Create a social media hashtag around your brand or specific products and encourage customers to use this hashtag and submit their photos with your product.
- Post UGC content in social media feeds
Lush Cosmetics is a good example of a brand that regularly posts UGC content. This brand isn’t wasting its marketing dollars entirely on advertising. They focus on building user engagement. Lush encourages its customers, nicknamed Lushies, to share their experiences with the brand.
User-generated content is a great way to produce seemingly endless amounts of content that performs well and garners strong engagement from the community as a whole. It is important to listen to customers’ needs and provide them with what they want.
Content marketing is great for educating customers
If you want to inform potential customers about the features and benefits of your product, publishing content is the first strategy to implement.
Informative and helpful content makes it easy for potential customers to click the buy button when they’re ready for you.
You can use different types of content to educate customers about your brand and products.
Here’s what you can post:
- Educational videos
- Case studies
- Ebooks
- White papers
- Checklists
- Blog content
- And more
Textual content is great for grabbing audience attention. But also be sure to add helpful images.
Canva is a great tool that can help you with this process. Just access the platform and from the dashboard choose between different templates to start the design work.
Create new brand awareness
Creating a content strategy and being consistent with the sample helps you develop a positive connection with customers.
If you sell a gadget, you can write content that teaches customers how to maintain that gadget or how to clean it.
You can add information about the maintenance and other aspects of the gadget that will be very useful for the customers, making it the go-to company for laptops.
The guide can include call-to-action buttons to sell the product or to sell the accessories with the product. You can establish your brand as an authority in your niche and also sell products.
Position your pages in search engines
One of the biggest benefits of content marketing is the SEO value it brings.
When you create SEO optimized content for search engine pages, you can get your pages to the top of search engine results.
To figure out which keywords you should be using, use tools like UberSuggest to get you loads of low-competition keywords.
You can find more keyword suggestions with search volumes and PPC competition.
This brings you additional traffic which can potentially lead to more sales.
Create a keyword glossary
If your products feature terms that aren’t immediately familiar to your audience, a glossary can be an effective way to bridge the gap. A glossary gives users a central place where they can learn more about your products and the language associated with them.
Content marketing best practices
Now that you know the many benefits of content marketing, you can give this service a try for yourself. However, the content is much more complex than typing a few sentences online. It requires thought and preparation.
Set your goals
Do you want to increase your sales or improve your brand awareness? Want to convert more visitors into buyers? Knowing your goals helps you drive content creation and be successful through content.
Talk to your audience
When building a store, you need to target your target demographics from the start. Find what they want. Marketing strategies must avoid the assumption that all people tend to think alike.
Conclusion
What do you think of our article on content marketing for ecommerce? Have you jumped on the content bandwagon yet?
