When eCommerce business leaders think about effective ways to boost sales and get their brand noticed in a sea of similar online stores, content marketing tends to be one of the last solutions they bring to the table. Why? Partly because of the lack of information pertaining to the benefits of content marketing for the E-commerce industry, and partly because the fast-paced eCommerce world demands of entrepreneurs and managers to focus on product innovation, inventory management, PPC, promotions, customer service, and other “more pressing” challenges. You might be surprised how much content marketing can help you grow your eCommerce store.
While that is completely understandable, it’s also imperative that you recognize the power and potential of content creation to completely revolutionize your business, propel it up the SERPs, build brand awareness and trust, and boost sales. Here’s how you can grow your eCommerce store with the power of content marketing.
Determine Goals And Establish KPIs
First things first, in order for your content strategy to deliver the results you seek, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve in the first place. Which is to grow your eCommerce store. Don’t be fooled into thinking that content marketing serves a single purpose, as there are many different goals and milestones you can achieve by tailoring your approach to content creation and measuring performance on a regular basis. The goals you can shoot for include:
- Raising brand awareness through blogging, guest-posting on authority websites, and dissemination on social media
- Growing your email subscription list.
- Giving a backstory to your products to make them more appealing to your audience.
- Boosting social media traffic to your website.
- Improve sales lead generation.
- Elevate customer retention and satisfaction.
- Minimize the bounce rate on your site.
- Improve your site’s standing in the SERPs.
- Boost conversion across the board.
- And much, much more.
Some of these goals will require short-term investments, while others will require you to invest time, talent, and money into long-term projects – which is why you need to know exactly what you’re trying to achieve, and how to measure progress. Establish your goals, and don’t forget about your KPIs.
Capitalize On Various Content Forms
Next, it’s time to brainstorm the most lucrative content forms and types for your brand. Content marketing might seem like it’s all about the written content, but in reality, it encompasses a number of effective solutions that can help your brand stand out, engage with audiences and customers, and elevate its standing in the industry. With that in mind, you’ll need to explore forms other than articles and blog posts.
Consider how videos, images, infographics, podcasts, tailored and personalized emails, product descriptions, user-generated content, and brand messages can help you achieve these goals. For example, video is rapidly becoming one of the most popular content forms in the E-commerce world nowadays, because it gives audiences the ability to see the product “in action” while gathering the information necessary to make the decision to buy. That said, you will need to seamlessly integrate all of these content types into your website for maximum user experience.
Integrate Content Into Your E-commerce Website
There is a lot of planning and strategizing that goes into effective content delivery on an eCommerce website, as the structure of your site is quite unique when compared to, say, just a blog. People come to your site to see the products and check out the prices, so if you don’t inspire them to check out your amazing content as well, then all of that creation would have been for naught. To prevent this, you’ll need to talk with your developers in order to come up with a site structure that shifts some of the focus on your content strategy.
Seamless content integration has become one of the key pillars of an effective E-commerce content strategy for this very reason, as every experienced digital creative agency will tell you that customer experience depends on your ability to optimize UX across your website. With that in mind, make sure that you scatter CTAs throughout your site to attract visitors to your blog, organize different blog types into sections, and don’t forget to make all content easily-viewable on all devices for maximum engagement.
Craft A Strict And Effective Content Calendar
Content marketing is a science and an art form, so there is a need to balance creativity with a strict posting schedule in order to maximize the potential of every piece of content you make. To that end, be sure to research customer tendencies in your niche, how, when, and where they consume content the most, and then create a tailored content calendar that will get people to like, share, and comment on your posts. Be sure to include guest-posting in this calendar as well, as you need quality backlinks to boost your SEO game.
Disseminate Your Content On Every Platform
And finally, be sure to use this content calendar to effectively disseminate your content on social media. The social media realm is expanding at a rapid rate these days, and the sheer number of people present on the most popular platforms begs the need for E-commerce brands to take their social media management strategies seriously. When you do publish your articles, videos, images, and infographics on your SM accounts don’t just forget about them but take the time to engage with your audience in the comment section in order to inspire likes, shares, and boost traffic to your site.
Consider This Resource On How To Make An Infographic
In Closing
At first glance, it might seem like content marketing is not something an eCommerce business leader should focus on, as there are far more pressing matters to tend to that can affect the future of your brand. While that might be true, it’s important to keep in mind that content marketing might very well be the only thing that will set your brand apart from every other online store in your niche and help you grow your eCommerce store.
