Content is at the heart of inbound marketing, regardless which industry is involved. Needless to say, though, that since inbound marketing is part of the world of digital marketing and since the world in which we live has become massively digitized, companies that lack an online presence cannot reap the benefits of inbound marketing – or, for that matter, eCommerce business content marketing. Here’s how our 9 powerful eCommerce content marketing strategies for 2022 will help your business grow.
eCommerce Business Content Marketing – Key Takeaways
One of the best methods for an eCommerce company to stand out from the tough competition is through content marketing. Brands would be able to cover each stage of the buyer’s journey with the help of eCommerce business content marketing. Online businesses will consequently create and foster genuine and lasting relationships with their clients when they use eCommerce content marketing.
eCommerce Business Content Marketing – What is it, Really?
A strategic marketing tactic known as “content marketing” comprises developing and disseminating a variety of content, most often online. By giving prospects useful, pertinent material, content marketers choose to attract, engage, close, and delight prospects. Additionally, effective content marketing enhances client retention and brand loyalty, thus rendering one-time customers into lifelong clients.
Why eCommerce Content Marketing Gives You a Strategic Advantage
Businesses of all sizes and in all industries could benefit from content marketing in a number of different ways, and some of the key advantages of eCommerce business content marketing are as follows:
Raises brand awareness and exposure (visibility)
The degree to which people are acquainted with your brand, products, or services is referred to as brand awareness. There are several levels of brand awareness, from just having used a product of a particular brand to recognizing and remembering its name. This is where eCommerce business content marketing comes into play.
Adopting a comprehensive eCommerce business content marketing strategy has the ability to boost search visibility and attract organic traffic to your online store. The more brand awareness you garner, the more frequently will users seek you and your offerings out.
To achieve brand visibility, there are several things you could do. These include, but are definitely not limited to:
- Conducting thorough keyword research
- Implementing strategic SEO tactics
- Investing in inbound marketing
- Being proactive on social media
- Promoting referral programs
- Collaborating with different companies on guest posts (blog, social media, or both)
Increases search engine rankings and brings in high-quality visitors to your website
This point is highly related to the one before it. This is because greater brand awareness, increased SERP visibility, and sturdy SEO are pillars of eCommerce business content marketing.
When consumers perceive your eCommerce business as a go-to source of information or for whatever it is you’re selling, so will search engines. After all, the primary purpose of search engines is giving the people what they want.
The best part about content marketing is that its specific and targeted nature paves the way for qualified leads. If, for example, your eCommerce business sells specific medical supplies, then your content will be related to the medical industry – you most probably won’t be publishing content about astronomy or literature (I hope).
Since this content is based on keyword research and is boosted by SEO, then your target audience will be the one seeing this content – it isn’t likely for people who have no need for such medical supplies to look for your services.
Content tailored to a specific audience → targeted reach → qualified leads
Helps establish your brand as trustworthy, a figure of authority in its industry, and a thought leader
It’s no secret that people today use the internet for almost all queries they have. The information accessibility on search engines has rendered them one of the most valuable – if not the most valuable – source of information.
However, with the ever-growing amount of digital content comes the question of credibility. Whom can you trust? Who are the industry leaders? To put this in context, when you think of inbound marketing, HubSpot comes to mind. When you think of SEO, SEMRush comes to mind.
Though true that these industry giants’ success is largely based on the tools they provide, they also are considered to be figures of authority and thought leaders. How? Content!
When it comes to the eCommerce industry, stores’ priorities usually are increasing sales. However, shoppers today need more than a stamp indicating that an eCommerce store is secure (for payments). To boost their credibility and trustworthiness, such stores have to become a relevant resources destination.
It can thus be deduced that eCommerce business content marketing provides the eCommerce industry with invaluable and priceless worth that dramatically boosts the industry’s stores’ authority scores and thus credibility.
eCommerce Content Marketing Strategies and Examples
Which eCommerce strategies for business marketing are the most worthwhile in terms of both time and money?
It’s an important step for your company to build and launch an eCommerce website, but it’s equally important to have sound eCommerce strategies for business marketing in place. These include:
1- Know Your Audience
Before beginning any campaign, it is critical to collect data on the types of individuals we are marketing to and how the campaign will be carried out. This part of research will aid in narrowing down who is most likely to respond well to the campaign.
While the data collection would narrow down the customer base, it would also make it more effective as it monitors feedback and keeps an eye on any competitor. With this at their disposal, a marketing team can make changes to the content to keep the campaign running smoothly.
2- Website Development and Optimization
This is quite obvious since we are talking about eCommerce, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Almost every business today, whether small, medium, large, domestic, or multinational has a website, and this is referred to as eBusiness.
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For a shopping store to be labeled “eCommerce,” its website has to follow a few guidelines that simply cannot be dismissed, and this is what’s meant by website development and optimization
3- Targeting and Retargeting
Disclaimer: this is a page from outbound or traditional marketing’s playbook.
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“Targeting” in digital marketing describes the ability to select the individuals who see your advertisements. Targeting is predicated on behavioral and demographic information, such as age brackets or lifestyle factors. In other words, “targeting” is the successor of behavioral marketing segmentation.
Retargeting is a strategy that follows visitors to your website and delivers them content while they navigate the internet in an effort to entice them to return to your website. Consumers are significantly more inclined to make a purchase when they return to your eCommerce website.
4- eCommerce Business Content Marketing
To know how your eCommerce business content marketing initiatives are performing, we recommend you link your website to analytics tools such as VBOUT, Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics, and Salesforce. Tracking performance is vital to organic success, which is what inbound marketing is all about.
| RELATED: Inbound Marketing Tools
Here are the forms of content marketing that can be utilized for ecommerce:
Videos and Vlogs
Videos have been used in marketing since the invention of the camera and will be a valuable resource for ecommerce content marketers. Videos have grown in popularity in recent years, and their popularity has only grown since the pandemic.
Whether it’s on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or any other video-sharing application, videos have been trending and are being used by every marketing agency for their campaigns. Popular videos are readily available online, which makes content marketing for e-commerce ideal. Video marketing works best when demonstrating a product’s functionality as well as the benefits of a service to the customer.
What also helps is showing off your personality through vlogs, bite-sized videos that show a person as they are. Going out for coffee and chatting with the audience could be an example; simply demonstrating a person’s humanity can be likable and relatable.
Podcasts
A rising star in terms of online content are podcasts, an online discussion usually composed of two or more people. It can be either audio-only or include video, but the important aspect is that a discussion is being had to keep the audience captivated and listening. These can be done via YouTube, Soundcloud, or any podcast sharing platform.
Some of the most popular online creators have their own podcasts, with some reaching between hundreds of thousands and millions. ECommerce businesses can use podcasts to discuss their services or even show their brand’s value through a down-to-earth discussion.
With such examples for independent creators as the Joe Rogan Experience or Impaulsive, podcasts can reach anyone from around the world. Even brands have taken to conducting their own podcasts, such as The Secret to Victory by Gatorade and Why We Eat What We Eat by Blue Apron. A podcast can be done for any type of product.
Webinars
Webinars, a common online event hosted by companies or artists, can be compared to an online conference held by a creator with an online audience. These webinars are useful when announcing a new service or product, and can reach audiences from all around the world to one live event.
Since they are within their own industry and target an online audience with products they can buy online, these online presentations fit very nicely with ecommerce.
Social Media
With how active audiences are on social media, it makes a perfect platform to market your business and show your brand’s value by interacting with customers. A marketing department’s greatest tool is through social media. Regular updates and posts promote a brand, promote a good or service, and demonstrate the vitality of a company’s online presence.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many more are useful tools to reach an audience with customized content that fits with the brand’s image and values.
User-Generated Content
You can use material created by people outside of the business as part of your marketing strategy because it has a greater sense of authenticity for customers than content created by the brand.
User-generated content can come in different forms, such as posting a glowing review on social media and inspiring other followers to do the same in an effort to be highlighted. The company can create a special hashtag on any of its social media platforms, inviting followers to participate and thereby organically raising brand awareness.
Building trust and interaction with the company’s consumer base through this type of content is helpful. It increases brand recognition and builds a community of brand-loyal customers who are more likely to share similar content in the future.
5- Inbound Marketing
A valuable strategy for content marketing would be through an inbound marketing strategy. Instead of interruptive advertisements, inbound marketing draws users in with clever search engine optimization and keyword manipulation.
This is perfect for an e-commerce website because inbound marketing performs best when used in conjunction with online resources. This makes it easier for customers to find the ecommerce goods or brand because they are pulled to it naturally.
6- Social Media Marketing
eCommerce social media marketing is a really effective instrument. It enables you to interact personally and openly with your market, consumers, and industry. You may choose to use social media to increase website traffic, foster engagement and conversation, and build a larger client base.
Diversifying your skills and efforts by using several social media platforms for various objectives also gives your business a strong online presence. This will eventually assist you in meeting the needs of your clients in a way that strengthens your company over time.
Through social media, it’s crucial to keep your brand’s voice and personality consistent since this is how your audience will come to trust you.
7- Email Marketing
Email marketing for eCommerce businesses serves as one of the most valuable techniques for increasing sales and retaining customers. The most current figures show that 87% of marketers use email marketing to distribute content.
Furthermore, email gives you the chance to communicate ideas that social media posts might not always afford. However, the eCommerce network marketing business demands its own piece.
Sustainable marketing campaigns depend on email marketing for eCommerce businesses, which has been proven to be a preferred method of eCommerce strategies for business marketing. Thorough market research for your eCommerce business is the strongest process to determine what emails to send, when to send them, and to whom to send them to.
8- Adaptation
Data collection on strategy implementation is essential because it enables the marketing team to adapt and change as the campaign progresses. This enables you to anticipate flaws and make necessary changes, resulting in a smoother and more effective marketing strategy.
Should the results of the content marketing strategy fall short of or exceed expectations, the content plan can be adjusted for future projects. Calculating results is all part of the research process for any marketing plan, and it would be the job of the marketing team to keep track of the data and plan accordingly. Whether mid-campaign or after, all data will be helpful.
9- Interactive Online Events
An online marketing event is one of the many ways an ecommerce website can capitalize on its status as an online entity. It could come in the form of contests, puzzles, or a sort of scavenger hunt. Having the users interact with the brand through fun is a powerful strategy that would associate with the brand identity.
These interactive events can be as complex as a real life attempt to win a prize from the brand. An example would be by the Goldfish Crackers company, having followers hold as many as they could in hand on TikTok. Followers competed against professional basketball player Boban Marjanović’s 301 crackers; with the winner receiving a title.
The interactive event can be as simple as following the brand’s social media to enter a raffle to win a gift. The figurine company Funko had users follow their social media, with the winner receiving a popular character figure.
These online interactions and events are useful content marketing strategies, where the content is the competition itself. As a result, the user’s interaction with the brand becomes more personal, and user-generated awareness rises.
The ROI Of Content Marketing
The return of investment (ROI) is an important factor in content marketing planning. Before proceeding with a plan, the costs must be calculated in order to determine whether the results met the objectives and that the funds were used appropriately.
ROI can be analyzed such as calculating the costs compared to the increase in online traffic, sales, or user interaction among others. With this information collected, adjustments can be made to both funding and the type of content created.
Final Thoughts
We live in a world where succeeding gets more difficult with every passing day. Succeeding online, that is, whether on social media or in search engine directories. This warrants immediate action, especially if you’re part of the eCommerce industry.
Everyone wants to be number one, but the truth of the matter is that there can only be one. However, this doesn’t mean that your eCommerce store can’t be among the top competitors! How? Mostly through eCommerce business content marketing!
Keep in mind, though, that email marketing for eCommerce businesses and other eCommerce strategies for business marketing are equally important. The zone between doing too much and not doing enough is known as balance, and its influence on sustainability is not to be taken lightly.
We know that finding the perfect balance is no easy feat, which is why our inbound marketing agency is ready to find it for you! That’s not all we do, though – we see to it that this balance is maintained throughout your entire journey from birth to old age (metaphorically speaking).
