Whether you own an online shop for trendy clothes, handmade products, or anything, content marketing remains one of the most efficient lead generation methods online. Most successful eCommerce companies rely on it to increase brand recognition and impact the overall web presence.
According to Hubspot, 82% of online marketers invest in content marketing. 60% of them revealed that this method generates leads. 70% mentioned how it helps educate the audience, while 60% cited that it effectively builds customer loyalty. With these statistics, one cannot deny that it would be wise to invest in content marketing.
Most successful marketers put a lot of effort into their content strategies because it works. As a business owner, you must understand that valuable content engages customers, builds trust, and attracts new buyers. However, it would help if you noted that your competitors might also know about this.
They have their blogs, social media pages, and websites too. The competition in the online world is just as challenging as it is in the real world. It is a must then to step up your game. Instead of going through the motions, be better and find the best content marketing tips to differentiate your business from others, establish your brand as the leader in the industry, and drive up your sales.
This article will go over 10 content marketing strategies to help increase your revenue and drive online traffic to your website. But first, let us delve deeper and get to know what content marketing is and why it is essential to harness its power in growing your business.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a form of marketing where you create high-quality, unique content with the goal of attracting a target audience. Instead of hard-selling by sending spam emails, adding disruptive ads, and incessantly pitching products or services, it is a non-interruptive marketing form that uses practical content to engage the customers.
The context of these content marketing tips involves providing information that does not only inform but also entertains. This is to make the content more valuable to the reader.
The term “valuable” is what makes content marketing different from other types of advertising. This strategy is not directed toward achieving immediate sales. Instead, it aims to forge a strong relationship between the brand and its consumers.
5 Benefits of Content Marketing for Ecommerce
1. Improves Brand Awareness
Creating more content gives a lot of Visibility to your brand. It makes you look consistent in delivering your message. By being highly visible, your brand sticks in the minds of the consumers. This is most effective when you produce high-quality content that the customers find valuable.
It will help create an emotional connection that ensures positive experiences whenever they choose your brand. Doing this consistently will make loyal customers into brand advocates. They will help attract more customers as they talk and share about your brand.
2. Improves Visibility in the Search Engine
Most of the web traffic comes from ranking high on Google searches. Getting your website on the first page of the search results can be done using various SEO strategies. The most straightforward SEO strategy is to produce high-quality content with specific keywords that target specific markets.
Targeted content will let you precisely reach people who find value in your content. Remember that generating traffic through SEO and content marketing demands consistency. Produce valuable content regularly, and you will see improvement in your search engine ranking. Once you increase your rank, traffic also follows.
3. Educates Your Audience
Using content for marketing is a proactive approach to educating your audience. It is a way for you to offer detailed product pages, articles, videos, and other types of content that will keep the customers informed.
Having informational content will answer the most common questions frequently asked by customers. Your team can then afford to focus on directing customers to relevant posts and promoting your brand instead of spending all efforts on answering queries.
4. Generates More Site Traffic
Most marketers fail to recognize that high-quality content is the foundation of all successful inbound marketing strategies. If you want to increase traffic through content, prepare yourself as it is not a quick process.
All marketing efforts start with attracting the attention of target customers. Once you can do that, you need to engage their interest. This becomes an opportunity to make your product or service desirable.
To simply put it, you can use content to make your brand inviting. That will help you build an audience. Engaging, relevant, and innovative content makes people want to visit your site.
5. Increases Conversion Rate
According to a report by the Aberdeen Group, content drives conversions up to six times higher than brands not using any content marketing strategies.
Successfully enticing the audience through content is a stepping stone to earning their trust. Content that resonates not only generates traffic but also converts leads into customers. This would result in increased sales and revenues in the long run.
Content marketing for eCommerce, when correctly executed, is an efficient method to identify your brand as a frontrunner in the industry. As you strategize using content, the customers will take notice, boost traffic, generate leads, and eventually grow your business.
10 Content Marketing Tips for ECommerce Websites
Creating high-quality content is quite simple: choose a unique and valuable topic for the target audience and then deliver it well. Of course, this would also require plenty of research and creativity. More than building a library of share-worthy content, there are other ways that you can use the content for marketing.
Take a look at these content marketing tips to improve the performance of your site:
1. Draft a Plan
The front end of any marketing strategy significantly impacts its success in the future. This is why you need to plan your course of action carefully.
Do the research and identify your buyer persona. This includes knowing your target customer’s demographics, personality, pain points, and preferred content channels. By understanding your target customers inside out, you’ll be able to determine what type of content would be most suitable for them.
2. Create a Content Calendar
A content calendar is always included in most content marketing tips lists. All content marketers recognize it as a necessity if you want to succeed in executing your strategy.
The first advantage of having a content calendar is that it regularly reminds you to post according to schedule. It is a must to be consistent in your posting timetable because it will keep the momentum and interest of the audience. This would make your brand relevant and ensure visibility at all times.
A content calendar can also strategize the type of content to be posted throughout the year. You can plan and choose topics relevant to the season, campaigns, or promotions that you have. It can also cover content for natural issues, such as holidays, local community events, and national days/months.
With a content calendar, you can use time and resources well. You spend less time brainstorming now and then about what to post. More time is added to essential matters, such as product innovation or other marketing efforts.
As you can see, a content calendar helps you stay on track. You get to post regularly, save time deciding what to post, and enable you to support all marketing goals.
3. Repurpose Popular Content
Reviewing site analytics will help you identify what content is popular with your audience. Instead of just letting it get buried by new content, you can repurpose it to keep it fresh and relevant.
Update the information you cited to draw Google’s attention. You may revise the posts and share them on other channels. By redistributing content, you will reach new audiences and gain new leads.
4. Create In-Depth Content
A thoroughly-researched article grabs the attention of Google. This means that you need to cover all aspects of a topic by creating long-form pieces.
There are many ways to do this, like adding relevant statistics, incorporating different forms of media, and backing the information with well-researched data. Factual and lengthy content is valuable information that will improve your Google stats and increase your conversion rate by up to 30%.
5. Harness the Power of Social Media
Social media has become an integral avenue for promoting and distributing content. It offers an opportunity to reach a humungous target audience and can help grow your business.
Because social media platforms do not work the same way, find out first which platforms your target customers use, then start planning. Social media content marketing is about reaching and engaging people. Knowing how to use it will maximize your reach, like using hashtags on Instagram and Twitter to distribute content further.
The Groups feature on Facebook and LinkedIn, on the other hand, lets you join groups that are related to your brand. You can then share your content with these groups as they can be relevant to the topics discussed by their members.
As mentioned several times in these content marketing tips, it can only be effective when you produce high-quality content. The same rule applies when using social media. Your content will soar if it is valuable enough to the users that they want to share it with others.
6. Collaborate with Influencers
Influencer marketing is a great way to create hype for your brand. Before executing your marketing campaign, you can collaborate with influencers and bloggers who are relevant to your industry. Their followers could be potential customers for your business. It’s also a great way to build social proof.
You can work with influencers for product mentions or endorsements. You can also ask them to promote your content by running a giveaway campaign. Some influencers may also agree to add your products to their aesthetics. What’s most important with influencer marketing is to choose an influencer who is already talking about your industry.
Also, look into the details of the compensation. Will you be paying with cash or giving products and other incentives? Is the influencer working independently or represented by an agency? Is there a need to set aside a budget for video or photo production?
The terms vary in influencer marketing, so you need to see if they will work. It would help to think about your expected ROI for this type of campaign. Try to determine what contributions it would give your overall marketing campaign so that you can decide whether it is actually worth it.
7. Email Marketing
Sending direct emails to distribute content enhances a brand’s relationship with customers. The emails must be filled with quality, relevant, unique, and exciting content to be effective.
Because the receiver has the option to ignore marketing emails, it is a must to be clever in this strategy. The best way is to create visually appealing content aside from being informative.
There are a lot of methods to make emails stunning, like using photo editing tools to enhance or remove bg of product photos. Once you get the customer to read your email, only then that it becomes an influential segment of your marketing strategy.
8. Create Product Guides
The problem with online shopping is that many customers struggle to understand the product features independently. It can be a challenge to ask real-time questions when all they have is the product information provided on the packaging or the website. The lack of data will not help encourage the customers to buy and will even drive them away.
One of the best content to add to your site are product guides. They will be great at explaining different features and other important information about using your products. By providing an answer even without anyone asking, the customers will find it easier to decide on making a purchase.
9. Add Plenty of Infographics and Visuals
Most people who shop online do it for convenience. Another factor that encourages them to purchase from eCommerce sites is that it affords them to shop even on their busy schedules. This is where imagery becomes a crucial factor in your content marketing strategy.
Most tips for content marketing from seasoned marketers always encourage the use of images. This is because visual information is more straightforward and much faster to digest. Aesthetic visuals that are informative hit two birds with one stone.
It captivates the audience while providing crucial information. Infographics are the perfect examples as you can use multiple colors to make them extra attractive. Using them will make complex information understandable in seconds.
Consumers only have a few moments to spare to look at products and read information. The tactic here is to strike fast by providing captivating visuals. This helps convey the message effectively, thus prodding the customers to take action by making a purchase.
10. Storytelling
Sharing your journey when building your brand is an effective way to connect and create a meaningful relationship with an audience. Aside from your brand’s message, tell stories about the values and beliefs that your audience has (based on your buyer persona) and how they inspire you to create products and services that would fit them. You can even highlight various products and services in your stories.
Make sure to add an emotional element to the stories to make them great content. Encourage the customers also to share their own experiences. Get them to share their insights to increase engagement.
For these content marketing tips to work, you need to be consistent and transparent with your brand voice. The audience has to connect with your brand personality and identify it through your content.
Also make sure to use the same branding elements in all your content across all platforms. You can start by establishing your brand tone of voice, colors, logos, icons, and other visual assets. Even without repeatedly mentioning it in your content, these elements will subtly remind the audience about your brand.
Conclusion
You can see how content marketing is not a one-time strategy but rather an ongoing cycle. You need to consider a lot of elements to make it work. While it can be a bit overwhelming to think about, knowing what to do and being guided with your goals will help you develop a strategic plan that will optimize your campaign.
This guideline aims to help you implement the best strategy to boost traffic, create more leads, improve conversions, and increase sales. More than these benefits, they will also contribute to establishing brand authority and maximizing your reach, which is among the ultimate goals of building a successful eCommerce business.
Make it a priority to audit your content routinely. You will only see the actual value of your content if it brings you closer to the goals you are trying to accomplish. If it fails to bring up your numbers, it is just money down the drain.
