As an e-commerce business, you might think that customers need nothing but a good product or service. Even though part of this is true, the e-commerce realm developed to prove that customers need more than just a good product.
Customers need content. Yes, you read this right; content.
On one side, customers value different content which provides them with precious information and is in different formats. Valuable content makes your customers more engaged with your brand and even trust it more.
On the other side, as an e-commerce business, content is your fuel. You need to make customers constantly engaged and interact with your brand. Accordingly, you will have to offer other things more than simply your products.
A little bit confused? Well, don't be, as we will take you through every step of formulating your e-commerce content strategy, why it is important, and some tactics.
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An E-commerce content strategy or content marketing strategy is a plan which involves creating content with valuable information in different formats and providing it to your customers throughout every step of your customer journey.
The content is of interest to your customer; hence, it entertains customers and informs them. Content strategy is regarded as an inbound marketing strategy, which means that as e-commerce, you provide content that makes customers look for your business instead of you seeking customers.
As an e-commerce business, content strategy is of vital importance to the growth of your business. Regardless of the product you are selling, you should take e-commerce content strategy into consideration.
So, you might ask, why are we stressing upon e-commerce content strategy to this extent? Keep on reading to understand its importance.
It is necessary to work on your e-commerce content strategy to enjoy the plenty of benefits accompanying it. 81% of the customers conduct extensive online research before purchasing any product (Intergrowth, 2022). Here comes the significance of e-commerce content strategy. Being part of such client research is definitely desirable. Let's give you a glimpse of the benefits of content strategy for your e-commerce.
As an e-commerce store, you certainly know that the competition is tough. Accordingly, building brand loyalty might not be an easy task. By offering customers beneficial information that they value (and free), you will ensure that your customers will return back to you; therefore, increasing brand loyalty.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is expanding your page visibility to be ranked higher on Google and other search engines; therefore, driving organic reach. The linkage between SEO and your content strategy will be evident by now.
When you constantly deliver valuable content to your customers, utilize certain keywords, and enhance your content, your rank on search engines gets higher. Accordingly, traffic is increased to your website leading to more sales and revenues. (The perfect mix for any e-commerce store)
A study showed that 53% of website traffic is generated from organic search through search engines (Bright Edge, 2019). To support the idea even more, 49% of marketers report that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel (Impact plus, 2022).
At this point, we want to prove one thing; you can't turn a blind eye to SEO and organic reach. You can attain them through an outstanding e-commerce strategy. Just think about it this way, when customers are asking questions about a certain product, you have to be there as one of the top options.
Talking about SEO and organic reach drives us to the next benefit: increased leads, conversion rate, and revenues (the favorite part for any e-commerce business).
Simply, when you provide helpful content to your customers that answers their questions, this will lead to more traffic and organic reach to your website. Accordingly, the chances that customers will make a purchase or do certain actions you desire will certainly increase.
A study found that businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads than businesses without blogs (CopySmiths, 2022). Similarly, 61% of Americans made an online purchase based on blog recommendations (CopySmiths, 2022).
The key to a successful e-commerce content strategy is to provide content at every stage of the consumer's journey. As a result, you will be able to accompany your customers at every stage until you can make them purchase your product. Also, talking about your brand and describing your products will give an idea to your customers that you know well what you are doing; leading customers to purchase your products.
After we discussed the benefits of e-commerce content strategy, it's time to know everything that needs to be done to carry out your e-commerce content strategy.
The key to a successful e-commerce content strategy is to identify your target audience. Well, that definitely makes sense as you need to understand your customers to realize the suitable content that you need to work on. In addition, you need to identify at which stage of the purchasing journey your client is.
There is different content that needs to be offered for each stage of the customer's journey. For instance, a customer at the awareness stage certainly needs content different from a customer who is ready to purchase.
One of the most important aspects that need to be considered while conducting your content strategy is understanding your customers' problems.
As an e-commerce business, you need to pinpoint your customers' problems in order to identify how your product will solve these problems and the best type of content to be utilized.
If it is possible, you can try to ask customers about the problems they are encountering; hence, giving you an advantage while creating your content.
Discover 8 Ways To Determine Ecommerce Target Audience For Your Store
Yes, of course, you need to understand your product. With the presence of several e-commerce businesses, no one has to know your products more than you.
You need to know the advantages of your product and its ability to solve customers' problems. Additionally, you need to identify the edge that your products have compared to your competitors. You should keep in mind that product benefits will be the primary focus of your content. We can say that your product features and benefits are your guidance through your journey of creating content.
Conducting small research on your competitors won't harm anyone, isn't it?
At this part of your content strategy, we encourage you to dig deep to understand your competitors. Understand the benefits of your competitors and if they have any leverage over your products.
Put yourself in the customer's shoes. When customers are doing their research on a certain product, results will show your product VS that of your competitor. Therefore, you don't only need to understand your product but also understand your competitor so that the customer's choice will be on your side.
An additional benefit you can get from researching your competitor is identifying the type of content that worked with your competitor and those that didn't so you can avoid them. At the end of the day, you will lose nothing when you research your competitor before doing your content strategy.
In the process of conducting your content strategy, you have to identify your goals. What are the goals you want to reach from this content? Do you want to raise brand awareness, drive more traffic to your website, gather customers' email addresses, or increase sales? When you identify your goals, you will be able to create the best content strategy for your e-commerce.
By now, you have analyzed your customers, your competitors, and even your product. Therefore, it's time to identify the right channel for your content. When choosing the right channel for your content, you need to know the platform where your audiences spend their most time at.
For example, if you offer B2B products, your audience is mostly found on LinkedIn or on blogs. On the other side, most B2C products will have their audiences on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. Your choice of the right channel will reflect in the success of your e-commerce content strategy.
Now is the time to start executing your content strategy. Excited enough?!
Hold the excitement for a few minutes as we will take you through some steps and tactics for a booming e-commerce content strategy.
The first thing you can do as an e-commerce store is to create a content hub on your website. A content hub is like a platform created on your website which includes plenty of content organized based on topics relevant to your business.
Content hubs lead to educating customers about certain topics related to the product or service you are selling. Accordingly, you are not simply a seller who is pressing customers to make a purchase; you are also someone your customers learn from. Hence, it creates more trust in your brand.
An example of a brand creating a content hub is Casper; an e-commerce store specializing in selling mattresses. Casper decided to go the extra mile by creating an online magazine that shares sleep habits, lifestyle, health, and wellness with its customers.
While creating your website, you need to optimize it using SEO tactics. Simply, you have to put yourself in the position of the consumer looking for a certain product; what are the phrases they are going to use? You need to include certain keywords relevant to your product. In addition, headings should be clear for your content, and a Meta description should be provided. High-quality reference links and high-quality images cannot be neglected.
Creating your website with a valuable content hub while utilizing tactics to improve your ranking on search engines leads to plenty of benefits for your e-commerce store. It leads to driving more organic traffic to your website. In addition, it increases brand awareness and generates more leads.
Since you are selling products online, the only thing your customers can see before purchase is the pictures of your products. Therefore, you have to make sure that these pictures are appealing and engaging.
Also, while creating your content, make sure that your pictures are of high quality and include all of your product details. For instance, you can create image galleries on your website to show all of your products in an interesting manner.
Sephora is one of the brands that rely on visually appealing content on its website and on all of its social media platforms.
Providing customers with valuable, informative content and appealing pictures is the perfect combination for your content strategy.
Part of your e-commerce content strategy can be directed toward utilizing user-generated content (UGC). User-generated content is any post, video, review, or even photo created by the consumer. User-generated content might help generate valuable content for your customers, yet, the content is produced by the people. For instance, you can encourage customers to share their experiences with your product or service. In addition, customers might leave reviews about your products or even post content on how to use your product.
ASOS, an online fashion and cosmetic retailer, used the UGC by creating #As seen on me through which customers share their pictures wearing products from ASOS.
By relying on user-generated content, you can hit two birds with one stone. You are creating valuable content and increasing brand trust. Through UGC, customers will be more willing to buy your product as they gain societal confirmation which is known as social proof.
Read more: The 4 Best eCommerce Content Marketing Strategies to Boost ROI
Influencers are always here to the rescue (or some of them). To help deliver precious content to your customers, you can collaborate with influencers and experts to discuss your product, its benefits, and any relevant topics. This is a tactic that might lead to several desirable results for your content strategy.
There are several channels for your e-commerce content strategy to be utilized. Yet, your choice of the best channel is determined based on your customers and their most used platform.
For example, channels for your content strategy might be:
The choice of the best channel might be hard at first. However, you need to constantly evaluate your performance to determine the best channels for your content. As soon as you put your hands on the most successful channel, you need to increase your budget and efforts in such a channel because simply, it turned out to be extremely effective.
Final thoughts:
Congrats, you are now ready to get the ball rolling!!
Formulating a successful e-commerce content strategy is of vital importance to your business. It might be hard to do at the beginning. Yet, by following the previously mentioned tactics; you are certainly on the right track. But, our assistance won't stop at this point. We are going to make the process of formulating your content strategy much easier.
Check out Convertedin, an automation tool that will assist you in knowing your target audience by automatically segmenting your market. In addition, you will be able to offer customers relevant recommendations based on their purchase history.