Creating helpful, engaging content to share online is what content marketing is all about. For ecommerce businesses, it’s especially vital for connecting with potential customers and standing out from the sea of sites all touting similar products.
Quality content educates people about your niche while establishing expertise and trust in your brand. It helps you get loyal followers who not only make that first purchase but come back again and again. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the compelling reasons ecommerce stores should make content marketing central to their strategy.
Why Content Marketing is Crucial for Ecommerce?
Making real connections through content has become massively important for product-driven online businesses looking to thrive in our digital world. Here are 4 convincing reasons to focus on producing great content:
Improved Customer Experience
Content like blog posts, videos, and social media allows you to highlight what makes your brand special ― be it company values, product quality and innovation, or stellar customer service. This provides the foundation for an outstanding end-to-end customer experience.
Helpful reviews, informational blog articles, an easy purchasing process, responsive support, and smooth delivery/returns logistics are all part of this equation. Compelling content also lets shoppers get to know the real people and story behind your business prior to buying. The result is increased trust and higher conversions.
Increased Brand Visibility
Distributing truly useful, engaging content through multiple channels exposes your ecommerce brand to many more potential customers. If the content resonates and provides unique value, it will be widely shared across social networks.
This viral effect equals huge brand visibility lifts. SEO also plays a role ― ranking highly in search engines for relevant keywords drives direct traffic to your site where shoppers can uncover your brand for the first time through your amazing content.
Improved Search Engine Rankings
Speaking of SEO, it basically means the strategy behind ranking better in search engines through organic means rather than paying for ads. The higher up and more frequently your online store appears when people search for related terms, the greater the traffic potential.
Search engines are in the business of providing the most relevant and valuable websites to searchers. So optimizing your content properly to target valuable keywords in your niche helps search algorithms understand your ecommerce site’s focus.
In turn, your domain authority improves. This leads to higher rankings. But none of this works if the content quality itself misses the mark, so they go hand in hand.
Big-Time Cost Efficiency
Here’s the reality ― traditional advertising through paid search, display ads, TV/radio spots, and print can be incredibly expensive. And returns are variable. Conversely, producing great SEO-optimized content has a low relative cost yet tremendous reach and engagement potential.
Unlike interruptive display ads, interested visitors seek out this content deliberately to fulfill their needs. That high degree of motivation and specificity from the visitor side translates into substantially higher conversion rates for your ecommerce store.
This makes content marketing extremely cost-efficient relative to other options. For startups and smaller e-retailers, focusing resources into perfecting your niche-specific content engine is wise.
5 Content Strategies for Ecommerce Brands
If you’re sold on the incredible power of content marketing for your online store, let’s explore proven formats and distribution channels to focus on:
Use Major Social Platforms
The top mainstream social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat have literally billions of regular visitors. This represents a massive opportunity for ecommerce content marketing, despite intense competition.
Creative social campaigns showcase your actual products in interesting lifestyle settings. But any entertaining or educational content works to raise brand visibility too ― from “behind the scenes” vlogs to customer reviews to infographics on using your products.
The key is participating consistently, not just blasting ads. Social platforms have particular nuances so learning best practices pays off.
Strategically Partner with Influencers
Influencers are essentially subject experts with engaged social media or blog audiences in your product niche. Micro-influencers are cheaper to work with and often drive great conversions on promos. Ask experts to honestly review products or incentivize affiliate sales.
Big names bring instant credibility so gifting merchandise or paying for dedicated branded content is worthwhile too, budget allowing. Take care to assess that an influencer’s audience aligns well with your target demographic before partnering up.
Develop Interesting Blog Content
Blogging essentially means regularly publishing free informational articles about your niche, be it fashion, food or technology. This positions your brand as a trusted industry thought leader. Useful “listicle” or “how-to” style posts that clearly solve reader problems/questions work particularly well for ecommerce.
Entertaining blogs are equally engaging ― perhaps a peek inside your company culture or a profile on the founders’ journey. Intentional keyword research and organic sharing on socials are musts. Consider guest posts too.
Ecommerce brands can utilize ai writing tools to effortlessly produce informative, engaging content that resonates with their target audience and helps achieve key marketing goals.
With artificial intelligence that generates human-like content on demand, brands can quickly amass blog posts, social captions, and product descriptions without any writing expertise or experience required. PopAi helps marketers to automatically create SEO-optimized content that educates and converts at scale.
Focus on SEO
Creating remarkable content is fruitless unless people actually find your ecommerce site. That’s where SEO optimization comes into play. Devise a list of the most highly searched terms and questions for which your store can provide answers. Then incorporate these exact phrases verbatim into relevant blogs, product descriptions, guides and so on.
Similarly, structure page URLs and HTML tags around keywords. These tactics help elevate your search engine rankings. But they only work when paired with awesome content that surpasses visitor expectations.
Sell on Leading Online Marketplaces
Major e-commerce platforms like Amazon and eBay attract massive buyer audiences, so opening an online store here makes good sense. Running sponsored product ads alongside marketplace listings also multiplies your reach.
However, to maximize long-term revenue avoiding platform fees, focus on driving traffic back to purchase directly from your independent store through sales exclusives, special deals or extra content.
Conclusion
Today’s ultra-competitive ecommerce realm demands a solid content marketing plan incorporating diverse formats tailored to reach target demographics across various platforms. For small startups and brands not ready to devote big bucks on conventional ads, content presents an achievable alternative to stand out from the e-commerce clutter.
Even a handful of the high-impact content marketing strategies and distribution channels covered here will pay dividends through greater visibility, lower cost-per-lead and direct sales lift thanks to a stellar customer experience.
