Those who don’t know how important eCommerce content marketing is, they’re missing the big part of the puzzle. Oftentimes people realize its value, they don’t spend the required amount of time to actually learn and execute it correctly.
They think, “Oh, I know what I have to do. Just post content and things will start happening.” And that’s precisely the type of thinking that brings trouble.
Today, I’ll be giving you all my knowledge regarding eCommerce content marketing, what are the things you absolutely need to do, how to do it correctly, and further tips on improving your current strategy.
So if you’re in for a ride, let’s get going!
Table of Contents
What Are the Different Types of eCommerce Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a term that encapsulates a lot of different types of media that are at your disposal for creating content. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular types of content you can create for your business.
Blogging
Blogging at first sight might either seem obvious to you or boring. Regardless of what you think of it, you should definitely have a blog tied to your brand and there are several reasons for that.
Firstly, blogs are a great way to drive traffic to your site by using SEO to do so. If done correctly, you can largely increase the amount of people that are aware of your company’s existence simply by writing great blog posts about the services or products that you offer.
Blogging is also a terrific way to show your “why” to potential customers – through your writing people can get a sense whether or not you’re passionate about what your brand is doing and they can also start understanding your reasoning for starting this business. This helps create a relationship between you and the customer, as it shows you’re transparent and trustworthy.
Email Marketing
E-mails are a great way to directly communicate with customers. Of course, there are things you must do per e-mail to ensure you give the impression of a real, legitimate business. Those include: sending order confirmations, informing customers when their package is due to arrive and sending the occasional newsletter that contains all of your sales or new product arrivals.
However, the key thing here is to stand out. Almost every company on earth nowadays uses emails as a way to communicate with customers. I’m sure that you also receive countless messages from different brands on your email on a daily basis, but you never even read them. And that’s something that you want to avoid.
In a sea of constant texting and pop-ups, when you start creating an email marketing campaign, you have to make sure that there’s something unique about what you do that will get people to not skip over your message.
Photography and Video Content
People are visual creatures, as our sight is one of the main senses through which we experience the outside world. It means that creating a memorable visual experience is a must-have for any business that sells products. Photographs and videos are a great way to make people want to own your product, as they showcase how it’s used or give an idea of how you might feel or who you might become once you get that item.
Let’s take one example here.
Let’s say, you have a company that sells purses and you want to appeal buyers. A great way to do that is by showing them a video of a young woman, in a big city, going on a shopping spree, getting coffee, while using your purse. That visual shows people who your product is made for, and if they like to imagine themselves in the scenario you just showed them, then they will be interested in your product.
Pro Tip: Refrain from using generic images and videos. People will surely recognize and this will diminish the trust of your brand and its uniqueness, making your company look like just an average one.
Sharing Customer Stories And Feedback
Having testimonials and customer feedback, especially if it has pictures to go with it, is a great way to create content that makes potential customers want to purchase your product as it increases the trust they have in the brand.
Seeing what other people have to say about your businesses gives customers perspective on what you really bring to the market and its one piece of content that’s made even more valuable, as people tend to believe it wasn’t written by you.
These types of content are best used in social media channels or directly on the website.
Social Media Marketing
Perhaps one of the most popular and most used forms of eCommerce content marketing is through social media. Whether you choose to use Instagram, Facebook or TikTok, the market offers plenty of different ways to use that type of content to advertise your brand and products.
It’s no wonder that social media marketing is so popular. Science has proven that as people we are becoming more and more unfocused and easily distracted. And social media gives an answer to all these questions .
You don’t need to really concentrate to consume content – videos are always no longer than 2 minutes long, posts are under 140 characters, and pictures are just that.
More than that, social media marketing often features the use of influencers and they can create extremely effective content that drives both traffic and more conversions.
How Should You Use eCommerce Content Marketing Being A Store Owner?
Now that you know all about the different types of content marketing, let’s take a look at how you can actually utilize them in real life.
Create A Blog
One of the best ways to promote your product without it looking like an advertisement is by using blog posts. They are a great type of what we call “inbound content”. People will likely find some of the articles on your blog organically while searching on Google and if the posts are well-written they will make sure to sway the customer towards your store or brand, without making it obvious.
Blog posts also stay on the internet forever, so unlike paid ads or social media posts, they stay relevant for longer and customers will get to them even if years have passed since the initial publication.
Get Your Company On Social Media
I know this is probably not breaking news, but you have to get your company on social media. For that, create an account on each of the popular platforms and make sure to choose one main one that you will mainly post on.
Right now, integration between Instagram and Facebook is great and content posted on one app can automatically get posted on the other, so you kill two birds with one stone.
If you’re a newcomer to the market, you should also look into using the trending social media of the moment – at the moment that’s TikTok, so get your company on there as well.
Start An Email Content Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is heavily utilized by most brands and most even overdo it to the point where people stop paying attention to the constant stream of messages they’re getting.
My advice is to not do that. Send emails sparingly, make them original and use them for a specific purpose.
Obviously, it wouldn’t be very time-effective to send individual emails to each person in your list. That’s where the email marketing tools come handy. They can help you optimize your email marketing, make things easier by using specific triggers and they are a must have, so you can start an email content marketing campaign.
One key thing to remember is that email content marketing works best when there’s a specific thing you want to promote either new products or existing ones that are currently on sale.
3 Ways to Utilize eCommerce Content Marketing to Stand Out in the Market
Almost everyone utilizes content marketing nowadays and that means you should do the additional work, in order to be able to stand out amongst the competition.
Create A Story Around Your Brand
People are storytelling beings. We love a good story, as it makes us feel something and feelings work as great tools for remembering things you would otherwise forget. That’s why if you tie your brand or product to a good tale, audiences will remember it and are much more likely to trust it.
When creating content make sure it uses that story that’s unique for your company. It may be the reason you started or how you imagine people using the product, it just needs to be creative and it has to provoke a feeling within the reader.
Remember to be creative. Think about your favourite brands and what makes you like them. What stories do they tell..
Use High-Quality Original Imagery
I often see brands that use generic, free photos that they found on some website for stock pictures. And the moment I see that I just slap myself on the forehead.
Remember this, if you use generic photos you become a generic brand.
And that’s something you do not want.
In order to stand out in this sea of eCommerce business, you have to be original and creative. Nowadays getting high quality photos and videos isn’t hard.
Almost every smartphone on the market has a great camera that’s able to produce incredible pictures. Don’t be lazy. Shoot your products yourself, try to get better at photography and use your available tools to create memorable photos that really align with your brand’s message.
Post Trendy Content
Now don’t take this as a `’post only what’s currently popular” type of message, I don’t mean that. You should in any case post content that’s original and that aligns with your company’s image and target audience. However, if you see a trend that you can hop: always do it.
Let me demonstrate with an example!
Let’s say I have a company for athleisure wear and I have a new model of leggings that I really want to promote. My audience consists of women and girls between the ages of 15 – 35.
Knowing that, when I see a TikTok dance that’s becoming really popular, I will make sure to promote my product using it as these types of videos are mostly watched by girls and they try to imitate them. By placing my leggings in that concept, I’m indirectly sending a message that says, “Hey, buy my leggings, do that dance, and you can look just like the girl from that video.”
Although this is a great way to market products, don’t overdo it. Only use trends that already fit your style and that are popular with your target audiences. Otherwise, you might risk ruining your brand’s image.
5 Benefits Of Content Marketing for an eCommerce Business
After learning everything there is to learn about content marketing, let me give you the five biggest benefits that your business will get from utilizing eCommerce content marketing.
Bring Brand Awareness And Recognition
Using eCommerce content marketing can help introduce your company to a bunch of people who have never heard of it before.
By posting content consistently, you will increase your brand’s visibility, while building trust with customers at the same time as through posts people will see your company’s knowledge and interest in the industry. This means that people will more likely think of your brand, whenever they’re looking to buy a product related to your industry.
Furthermore, content marketing allows you to tell your company’s story and thus show your brand’s voice, values and personality.
Generate traffic, leads and sales
Once more people become aware of your company and what it does, the traffic to your website will organically increase. By posting content on blogs and social media and linking it to your store, you will manage to bring in potential customers from different sources.
Studies show that businesses who regularly publish blog posts get 55% more traffic than ones who don’t. That means that consistency is the key to using content marketing for getting more leads.
In order to get more than just simple traffic, ensure your content is a bit more sales minded. That can be key in turning your marketing strategy into something that helps generate even more revenue.
Higher Visibility On Search Engines
The more posts you make, especially on your blog, the more pages you add for Google to index. Now sheer volume won’t get your website more traffic, however if you write more quality posts and they get indexed that can get you higher ranking on the search engine.
Furthermore, if you take a moment to learn more about SEO and then use the knowledge when writing blog posts, you will most certainly see increased traffic to the website and a better ranking on the search engines.
Remember, SEO is one of the most important things when it comes to digital marketing and you should certainly look to expand your knowledge on it, as it can help turn your company into a successful one.
Saving Money Spend On Marketing
Content Marketing is proven to be the most cost-effective marketing strategy out there. Now initially, the costs of creating a blog and hiring writers for it may seem a lot.
Creation can cost up to $200 and a writer can go up to $3000, but when you compare it to the amounts you’d have to spend on Google and Facebook Ads, Influencers, video ads and so on, it’s definitely quite a bit less.
Drive More Conversions
Maybe the biggest benefit of using eCommerce content marketing is getting more conversions. Whichever way you slice it, the end goal of every business is getting more sales and earning more money and almost everything is done, so that these goals can be achieved.
Research shows that companies who utilize content marketing consistently over time get a lot more sales than ones who don’t. And the conversion rates they experience can be almost 6 times higher than the ones of businesses that don’t.
Is eCommerce Content Marketing Worth it?
eCommerce content Marketing is a terrific way to achieve multiple end goals for businesses. By utilizing it, you can improve brand awareness, get more sales, more traffic, and build a loyal customer base that really trusts and loves your company.
In this article, I made a summary of all the key elements of eCommerce content marketing. However, content marketing is a wide topic. My suggestion for you is to make additional research on the parts you found most useful or most interesting.
There are a million ways to use eCommerce content marketing and it’s hard to fit all of them into 2457 words. So be curious and creative, I’m sure you will see the benefits your business can get from these strategies.
