Over the last few years, many eCommerce businesses have woken up to the potential of eCommerce content marketing for a successful online business. By utilizing eCommerce content marketing tactics, retail brands are attracting visitors and facilitating purchases more than ever before.
If you're yet to leverage eCommerce content marketing as a strategy to promote and grow your business, this guide will provide you with everything you need to know to get started. Keep reading!
What is eCommerce content marketing?
eCommerce content marketing is referred to the strategic creation, publishing, and circulation of insightful and helpful content for a targeted audience. The goals are to attract, engage, entertain, inform, convert and retain prospects by providing free, shareable information that's valuable.
Contrary to the notion that eCommerce content marketing is simply about driving people directly to a product page, it involves providing content users need, wherever they are in a buying funnel and ultimately leading them to a final purchase.
The valuable content comes in various forms, including articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, and all. When properly done, eCommerce content marketing can be a powerful strategy to manage and sustain brand loyalty. Users are likely to refer to your brand content as a source of information whenever they need answers to their queries.
Why is eCommerce content marketing important?
Content marketing for eCommerce businesses holds a lot of benefits. Here are a few reasons eCommerce content marketing is important.
1. Improve brand awareness and recognition:
A major reason many businesses struggle with sales is that their target audience simply isn't aware that they exist. Consistently publishing highly valuable content can help your business get noticed by people who need what you have to offer.
What's more, eCommerce content marketing helps you stand out from the competition, so your potential customers think of you first whenever they need products related to your industry.
2. Increase traffic and conversion rate:
A solid eCommerce content marketing strategy can help generate traffic and boost your conversion rate. The more you create targeted content, the more you will reach those that fit your buyers' personas who are willing and able to purchase your products.
In other words, you will be reaching the right people with the right message, thus increasing your chances of converting potential leads into paying, loyal customers.
3. Improves search engine visibility:
Consistently putting out fresh, useful content is one of the fastest ways to get noticed by Google to improve your search engine rankings. Search engines reward websites that provide relevant, high-quality content by prioritizing them in search engine results.
If you've been trying to elevate your SEO game, throwing eCommerce content marketing into the mix can help you achieve higher rankings, which in turn translates to more traffic.
4. Establish trust:
Another benefit of eCommerce content marketing is that it is a cost-effective way to establish customer trust.
By consistently creating content that provides solutions to the problems of your target audience, you're positioning your brand as a trusted source they can count on to meet their informational needs on a subject. When people trust your brand, it is easier for them to become repeat, loyal customers.
5. Build authority and credibility:
eCommerce content marketing can help you become an expert in your niche. If you continue to provide insightful content to your audience, people will perceive your brand as an authority leader.
As an authority leader, people will become comfortable buying from your business. They will also become more appreciative and receptive to your new products and straight advertising copy.
6. Accelerate the buying process:
Many times, customers are just not fully convinced about buying from you. eCommerce content marketing fixes this issue to accelerate the buying process by providing them with the helpful information they need to buy while also guiding shoppers at different stages on the path to purchase.
eCommerce content marketing ideas
When it comes to eCommerce content marketing, success means using different content ideas to get your desired results. Here are some ideas you can leverage for your brand.
1. Videos:
Videos have become the most consumed type of content in recent years. Many people would rather watch a video today than read a long text, which explains why it has an unrivaled reach.
Also, it's suitable for any marketing goals or industry, so you might want to incorporate it into your eCommerce content marketing strategies. You can use videos as a fun way to show your wares to your target audience.
2. Blog posts:
Blog posts and articles are like the gold standard for content. They've been around for decades and are an excellent way to demonstrate your brand's knowledge and expertise, which can help build your credibility.
It's important to ensure that your blog posts provide answers to questions customers may have. If you need any inspiration, try looking at trending searches.
3. Newsletters:
Newsletters are an avenue for direct communication with your customers, allowing you to promote new deals and run campaigns. It also affords you the opportunity to engage with customers in response to triggers like a purchase or an abandoned cart. You can also customize it for customers at different stages of the buying process.
4. Social media posts:
Social media platforms provide excellent opportunities to connect with customers. Well-crafted social media posts can help strengthen your brand's reputation, generate new leads, drive traffic to your website, and more.
Try to keep it short, simple, and interesting to get your audience's attention. It also helps to add a video or image to the social media posts to encourage engagement.
5. Tips (how-to-guides)
How-to-guides refer to the type of content that demonstrates ways to extract maximum benefits from a product. Since many people love to discover new, fun ways of doing things, you can use this type of content to drive quality traffic to your website, educate your customers, raise awareness and promote your products organically.
It's important to make your guides simple, concise, and easy to apply without patronizing your audience.
6. Image galleries:
You've probably heard the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words.' It still rings true today as good images are proven to boost engagement rates and endear your customers to you.
Creating image galleries can help your customers quickly make up their minds on purchasing. Try to make use of sharp, colorful images when building your galleries.
7. Reviews:
Posting customer reviews lend credibility to your brand. People trust the opinions and experiences of others about a business, which is why reviews can help persuade potential customers to buy.
Reviews and testimonials could come in different formats, such as texts and videos.
Conclusion
In today's highly competitive space, businesses that fail to invest in content marketing may find themselves left behind by their competitors.
As a retail brand, investing in eCommerce content marketing is a worthwhile investment that can help you stand out while growing your traffic and sales to achieve your business goals.
Now that you know what it is all about, you can get started right away!
