The winning e-commerce content marketing strategies

How often do you find yourself late at night reading an intriguing story on Instagram, or watching a captivating video on YouTube? This is how quality content marketing works. E-commerce content marketing doesn’t have much difference. It’s not about selling products anymore – it’s about connecting with the audience and telling a story that resonates with them. 

What is the real benefit of content marketing in e-commerce? How does it work, and what tools do you need? In this post, we’ll dive into the world of content marketing for e-commerce and explore how you can use it to boost your sales.

? Five Key Elements:

Planning: Understanding who your ideal customer is (e.g., “Wendy,” a 35-year-old luxury traveler) and crafting content that resonates with her needs.

Content Creation: High-quality content, especially videos, builds trust and positions businesses as leaders. Avoid amateur content, as it damages credibility.

Ads vs. Organic Reach: Paid ads, when targeting the right people, can quickly boost visibility and sales. The right message and call-to-action are crucial.

Tracking with Pixels: Track who interacts with your content using tools like Facebook pixels, allowing for retargeting ads with irresistible offers.

Social Proof: Maintaining clean, professional social feeds is essential for building trust.

What Is Content Marketing for E-Commerce?

Content marketing for e-commerce is the process of creating, distributing, and promoting valuable, relevant, and consistent content. It is created specifically to attract, engage, and retain potential customers. However, the ultimate goal for e-commerce content is predictable — driving conversions. 

Content marketing strategy for e-commerce typically focuses on addressing customer pain points. It offers solutions to the problems of the targeted audience, highlighting product benefits and the best features, demonstrates success stories and testimonials, and provides valuable insights into industry trends and developments. 

It differs from other types of content marketing in the following ways:

• It uses visual content more than traditional formats.
• Very often its audience starts looking for the products on Amazon rather than on search engines such as Google. However, Google still plays a critical role.
• The most successful companies showcase personalities, especially via video, and establish authority through partnerships with experts and influencers.
• Traditional SEO and text-based formats (such as educational blog posts) sometimes remain overlooked, which provides opportunities for brands that seek to rank highly.
• It focuses on delivering valuable information that helps shoppers make informed decisions.

Understanding Your Target Audience

One of the foundational elements of a successful content marketing strategy is knowing your audience. Without a clear understanding of who your customers are, it is nearly impossible to create relevant content. You should gather as much information about your customers as possible:

• Demographics: Age, gender, income, education, and location.
• Behavior: Hobbies, weekend activities, social media habits, shopping preferences.

For example, a 35-year-old woman named Wendy, who enjoys luxury holidays and skincare, might be your ideal customer. By identifying her characteristics, you can create content that resonates with her and increases the chances of converting her into a loyal customer. Read more:

• How To Use Audience Segmentation To Set Up The Right Communication Channels
• What Is Behavioral Targeting – A Comprehensive Guide

The Types of Content Every eCommerce Brand Needs

Effective e-commerce content optimization involves the needs of your target audience — their biggest challenges, concerns, and questions. Your focus should be to satisfy their needs and provide solutions with compelling content (in formats they like and on media they use).

With that in mind, let’s explore some of the most effective content types that B2C marketers should use for effective eCommerce content marketing.

1. Make a content that converts

Your website or blog content needs to be entertaining enough and useful for your audiences and ultimately, lead to conversions. 

It would be best if you also had engaging product descriptions that highlight how your products are made, the technology and materials you use, customer success stories, FAQs, and videos.

2. Tell your story in captivating blog posts

Storytelling is a powerful content marketing strategy for e-commerce that can help you boost your sales. It engages the audience by giving them a deep understanding of the concept of your company.

So, tell the stories of your managers, achievements, values, and culture. It helps connect emotionally with your audience. You can also share customer stories that showcase their struggles or challenges, and how your products or service have helped them. 

3. Create valuable content for every step of the buyer journey

It’s about the content that educates audiences — guides on how to use your products, and other content about your niche. It creates a special image of your company. Your audience begins to perceive you as an expert, not merely a seller.

4. Provide social proof throughout your website

Testimonials and ratings from your current customer base are an important trust signal. The feedback of your clients on your product quality, delivery times, returns, refunds, etc. can add to the reliability of your website and products. So, include them using a tool like Yotpo or Loox on your product and category pages.

You can also use guest posting — work with influential guest bloggers in your niche and have them share authentic reviews about your products. Just make sure that the influencers you choose have a solid reputation for being genuine and unbiased.

5. Optimize your ecommerce content for organic search

On-page SEO is all about optimizing the content on your website. It means working with keyword research, and site speed by looking at Google’s Core Web Vitals, and doubling down on your top content. 

Focus on creating content that solves customer concerns and answering questions that customers have doubts about. 

Off-page SEO involves content that is created on other websites to help you get brand awareness, and authority, and generate traffic to your website. This is done through link building, guest blogging, and affiliate marketing. 

Here are some quick tips to help you get your off-page SEO off the ground: 

• If you target a specific area you could use local SEO and get links from local directories
• Work together with blogs to create product guides and holiday shopping guides
• Use online media to write product reviews and promotional pieces of content about your products
• Hire influencers to create UGC and video content for your company (YouTube videos really help your Google rankings)
• See if there are popular bloggers among your existing loyal customers and create
• Start selling your products on Google Shopping to maximize your search visibility.
• Use SEO services like Ahrefs or Semrush to automatize both your on-page and off-page campaigns. 

6. Augmented Reality (AR) Experiences

Augmented reality is revolutionizing the way people shop online. AR technology allows customers to virtually try on clothing, test out furniture in their homes, or see how makeup cosmetics look on their skin. Incorporating AR into your content marketing for e-commerce strategy can provide an interactive and immersive shopping experience that builds trust and confidence in your brand.

7. Descriptions on Amazon

A lot of people who buy specific products begin by searching on Amazon—not search engines like Google, as they would if their query was more informational.

As a result, brands have to pay close attention to each piece of content that goes with their products on Amazon and ensure it aligns closely with their own website and their brand overall. If you miss this stage your prospects may choose to buy a competitor’s product instead.

Amazon has increased the content options available to brands beyond just the title, description, and images of their product to include:

• A+ content
• Amazon Posts

A+ is a premium content feature that allows sellers to improve the description and merchandising of their products by adding richer text and high-definition videos and images. 

Amazon Posts allows sellers to create social media-style feeds with lifestyle imagery, captions, and direct links to their product pages. 

How to Come Up with Content Ideas

So, what’s the secret behind creating compelling content that resonates with your target market and boosts your sales? Here are three ways that content marketers can create content that converts.

1. Research your competitors

What your competitors do can tell you a great deal about what’s working in the industry. You can peek at which topics are gaining maximum traction and which ones are being shared the most.

2. Look up top-performing content on search

Use a keyword search tool like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Chrome extensions to find more keywords and topics. Review the top-performing content to create a list of blog post ideas.

3. Ask your audience

What could be better than getting input directly from your customers? This will help you understand their doubts and aspirations first-hand — some of which may not have been explored even by your biggest competitors.

Services like SurveyMonkey or Typeform can help you create online surveys, which you can then send to your subscribers.

Social Proof and Professionalism

Social media plays a significant role in content marketing. Potential customers will often check your social feeds to verify your legitimacy before making a purchase. This is why it’s important to maintain professional, consistent social media profiles. Avoid posting irrelevant content that could harm your brand’s reputation. When a customer like Wendy sees a well-maintained social media presence, it builds trust and encourages her to buy.

Common E-commerce Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

1. Not Investing in Other Assets of Digital Marketing

Content marketing is a phenomenal long-term investment for e-commerce. However, content marketing should be just one part of your marketing strategy. Take also advantage of other marketing methods: e-mail marketing, SMS marketing, PPC (think Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.), social media, and cooperation with influencers.

2. Giving up on Content Marketing Too Early

One of the biggest mistakes e-commerce companies make is investing in content creation for three months, not seeing noticeable results, and deciding to stop future activities with content.

Content Promotion For eCommerce

Quick Summary

? Use of sidebar links: We suggest using sidebar links to promote your content, linking high-quality pieces to boost visibility and rank in Google over time.

? Leveraging social media: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are recommended for content promotion. Success stories like Grace & Lace show how social media and influencers can drive sales growth.

? Going live and using push notifications: We highlight the effectiveness of live videos to engage audiences and push notifications to retain customers and increase sales.

? Building backlinks for SEO: The importance of acquiring high-domain backlinks using tools like Ahrefs & PRNEWS.IO is underlined as a key to improving Google rankings.

Having great content is just the beginning. To truly drive traffic and boost sales, promoting your content effectively is crucial. With over a billion blogs online and increasing content saturation, simply creating content isn’t enough. Even the best content can get lost if not promoted. Content needs to be actively promoted to stand out among the overwhelming amount of information on the web.

Using Sidebar Links for Organic Traffic

One of the simplest yet powerful strategies is adding sidebar links on your website. These are internal links to your most valuable content placed prominently on your blog or product pages. For example, Neil Patel uses this technique, and he cites other sites like NerdWallet that have seen success with it. Over time, this method can help those pages dominate Google search results.

Leverage Social Media for Exposure

Social media platforms are one of the most powerful channels for promoting eCommerce content. For instance, Instagram is particularly effective for eCommerce businesses due to its visual nature. Brands like American Eagle use multiple social media platforms to build a loyal audience and increase brand visibility.

Nice case study: Grace & Lace, a company that appeared on Shark Tank. Through strategic use of influencers on Instagram and Pinterest, they grew from $800,000 in sales to $20 million in just a few years. This illustrates the significant impact that influencer marketing can have on eCommerce businesses.

The Power of Going Live and Push Notifications

Another crucial method is live streaming. By going live on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, businesses can directly engage with their audience and drive real-time sales.

In addition to live streaming, push notifications are an effective tool for retaining customers and encouraging repeat visits. Using tools like Subscribers, eCommerce sites can send push notifications to users, keeping them engaged and driving them back to their site.

Building Backlinks for SEO

Backlinks from authoritative sites help improve your site’s ranking on Google. Simple yet effective outreach strategy: reaching out to bloggers or site owners linking to your competitors and suggesting they link to your superior content.

Influencers: Micro vs. Macro

When considering influencer marketing, we advise not to always aim for the biggest influencers. While large influencers have a wide reach, smaller “micro-influencers” are often more cost-effective and can deliver a better return on investment, especially when their niche aligns with your product. Engaging several smaller influencers can often outperform one large influencer, while also being more affordable.

The Power of Paid Ads

Organic growth is slow, especially for new businesses. Paid ads are essential for getting your products or services in front of the right people quickly. When running ads, it’s important to:

• Target the right audience: Use the information about your ideal customer to guide who sees your ads.
• Craft compelling ad copy: Ensure your ad has a strong headline, a clear message about the product’s benefits, and a powerful call-to-action (CTA).
• Track performance: Facebook pixels or other tracking tools allow you to see who interacts with your ads and retarget them if necessary.

Measuring the Success of Your Content Marketing Efforts

Measuring the success of your content marketing efforts is essential to understanding the impact of your strategy and making informed decisions about future content creation.

Here are some key metrics to keep in mind when assessing the success of your content marketing efforts:

Traffic

Traffic shows you the number of visitors to your website or blog. This is a good parameter of the reach of your content and the size of your audience.

Engagement

Engagement means how actively your audience interacts with your content. You may count comments, likes, shares, and click-throughs.

Lead generation

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers to your business. Content marketing can play a big role in this by increasing the traffic to your website, building the authority of your brand, and nurturing leads until they are ready to make a purchase.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate showcases the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. This is an important metric to measure because it measures the effectiveness of your content marketing in achieving your ultimate goal: driving sales.

ROI

ROI is tracking the profitability of your content marketing efforts. It takes the costs of creating and distributing your content and compares them to the revenue received from your content marketing campaigns.

Brand awareness

Brand awareness refers to the extent to which people are familiar with and recognize your company. Content marketing can help build brand awareness by demonstrating your products, values, and brand personality.

By tracking these metrics, you can estimate the success of your content marketing strategy, and make informed decisions about what changes to make to improve your results. Additionally, it’s important to regularly review and analyze your metrics to make sure you’re on track to achieve your goals and maximize the return on your investment in content marketing.

E-commerce Content Marketing Examples

GoPro

GoPro achieved good results using user-generated content. They encourage its community of adventurers and athletes to share their videos.

In addition, GoPro frequently launches contests and features user videos on their social media accounts and website. By reposting and recognizing their content, you not only enhance a sense of community but also generate a constant flow of user-generated content.

Beardbrand

Beardbrand sells quality beard products and excels a lot using content marketing. Their unique insights about growing a beard on their blog, YouTube channel, and Tumblr made them authorities in the eyes of the customers and brought them good marketing results. 

Glossier

Glossier is a beauty brand that has effectively taken advantage of Instagram Shopping to increase its sales directly from social media posts. They often feature influencers and customers using their products, providing direct links to purchase.

By using Instagram’s shop features, Glossier makes it easy for followers to buy products without leaving the app, enhancing the convenience and immediacy of shopping.

Summing Up

The world of e-commerce content marketing is set to be more dynamic and competitive than ever. To remain successful and stay ahead of the curve, e-commerce businesses must adapt their strategies to the latest trends. From brand narratives to social commerce integration, user-generated content, influencer marketing collaborations, and content localization, e-commerce brands have an array of tools at their disposal.

Incorporating these top e-commerce content marketing strategies will help your business drive traffic, engage customers, and boost conversions. Embrace these tactics, and watch your online business thrive in the competitive world of e-commerce.