
Content marketing for eCommerce businesses can be a powerful way to expand your reach, generate more revenue, and develop brand and customer loyalty.
For ecommerce businesses, content marketing is a must.
It builds trust and credibility, gives customers a reliable source of information when they need it most, and can help establish your brand as an authority in your industry.
And when the world sees you as an authority, they are more likely to buy from you.
But how do you get started?
Content marketing strategy can seem overwhelming, especially for new players.
So, I’ve created a step-by-step guide with 8 actionable strategies to help you get started with content marketing in 2022. No more excuses!
Let’s dive in.
Benefits of Content Marketing for eCommerce
First, let’s see why content marketing matters for your ecommerce business.
1. Increases Brand Awareness
When you are just starting out, one of the most important marketing strategies you can use is content marketing paired with a good SEO strategy.
SEO drives traffic to your website, which helps you build brand awareness.
Content marketing helps you get around the barriers of a young brand.
Learn what customers really want, and give them a reliable source of information that they can trust, which makes your business look trustworthy.
2. Boosts Brand Credibility
Another reason why content marketing is important for your ecommerce business is because you can use it to build credibility.
This is especially important when you don’t have a large budget.
When people seek out a reliable source of information and your content delivers value, they are more likely to trust that information and buy from you.
Since the information comes from your brand, the credibility is still there.
3. Builds Trust
Another benefit of content marketing for ecommerce is that it builds trust. If you’re reading this article, you probably know about content marketing.
But a customer who is searching for an answer to a question may have never heard of it before.
Content marketing gives customers in your target market the information they need regarding your products and services right when they need it.
It’s like having an expert at their fingertips, which builds trust between you and your customer.
4. Attracts Customers
When you start ranking on Google through your content marketing strategies, there’s no doubt about the fact that a small percentage of that traffic coming to your site will convert.
This type of traffic is what will bring you the best customers because they are the ones looking for you and your products online.
5. Boosts Traffic and Conversions
Content marketing also helps you attract new traffic as well as boost conversions.
When someone has purchased from you and is satisfied with your product, there’s a chance that this person will share on his/her social media (that’s the norm today) and as a result, you can get referral traffic from this person’s online testimonial.
Also, if you have a smart conversion funnel in place, you can boost conversions as well with upsells and cross-sells.
7. Increases Customer Lifetime Value
When a customer finds out that an ecommerce business or brand is not trustworthy, even if it has the best price and the best product offering, the person will never buy from them again.
But if your customers trust you and your brand, they are more likely to buy from you again. And with their repeat business and some strategy, you can easily increase Customer Lifetime Value.
8. Helps Reduce Customer Abandonment
Some new businesses don’t implement enough marketing strategies. This can cause customers to experience disappointments and abandon their purchases.
But when you build trust, you can reduce your customer abandonment rates.
As we’ve seen earlier, the easiest way to build trust is through content marketing.
Since your customers will be getting information from you, whether they’re looking for a solution or just curious about what products are out there, they will be more likely to purchase from you in the future.
9. Builds Your Community
When you’re building your brand, there’s a certain group of customers who will be interested and invested in your ecommerce business.
Your content marketing strategy can help you build an engaged community of loyal customers who want to learn about what your products can bring to them.
Additionally, when you create a community, you can see your customers’ feedback and how they interact with your brand.
This can be used to improve your customer experience and keep them coming back for more.
10. Helps Your Business Get Found in Search Results
Getting found in the search engine results pages means zero dollars spent on ads. What’s better than free/organic traffic guys?
When you get started with content marketing for your ecommerce business, one of the first things you want to focus on is creating content that has the potential to rank on Google.
It’s important to know what keywords are the best fit for your business. That’s where a content marketing plan comes into play.
11. Allows You to Scale Your Business
As an ecommerce business, it’s important to build a scalable business so that you can reach new customers and grow.
You should learn how to harness the power of content marketing so that you can scale your business.
How to Create an eCommerce Content Strategy in 8 Steps
Now that you know why it’s important for your ecommerce business, let’s go over the foundational steps involved in creating a content marketing strategy. These steps are outlined in detail below:
Define Your Business Goals
First, you need to define your goals for your content marketing strategy.
You want to make sure that it aligns with your overall business goals so that it is really worth the time, money, and effort spent on it.
You may be able to accomplish multiple goals by creating a content strategy, but you want to make sure that they are the right goals for your business.
Here are some common business goals you want to achieve through your content:
Once you figure out your business goals, you need to create a content marketing strategy that will help you achieve them.
2. Research Your Target Audience
After you figure out your goals, you need to research your target audience so that you can create the right content to attract them.
You can do this by understanding who they are as well as how and where they consume content online.
You can do this by creating a buyer persona. A buyer persona is basically a detailed audience profile or a good representation of your ideal customer.
By creating a buyer persona you can learn a lot of things that will guide your content marketing efforts.
It will help you tailor content to their needs.
The first thing you need to do is figure out your target customer’s demographics.
This can include details about their age, gender, location, interests, and/or income level.
By understanding who they are as people, you can create more authentic content that will resonate with them.
Additionally, it’s important to understand how your customers consume content online, what channels they use, and what challenges they face.
This will help you determine the best type of content for them and for you, this means, real business.
Find Your Golden Keywords
Now that you know who your target audience is and what they are looking for, the next step is to find the right keywords that will help you reach them.
You want to make sure that you’re targeting a variety of different keywords in order to get as much traffic as possible.
If you’re just starting out, you may want to make a list of low competition and low difficulty keywords but with a decent amount of monthly searches.
It will be easier for you to rank for these types of keywords when your site has no authority in the eyes of Google.
As you grow in authority and you start ranking, you can then start going after more competitive keywords.
I recommend using a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to pull out tons of keywords in a matter of seconds.
Here’s some advice to remember when looking for your keywords:
4. Create an Editorial Calendar
When you have a content strategy, you need to know how often you’re going to publish new content and repurpose old content.
You don’t want to just publish content when you get the urge to or repurpose old content at random. You want to plan out a regular schedule and stick with it.
Keeping this type of schedule has many benefits such as saving time, staying consistent, and growing your audience by publishing and republishing content consistently on a regular schedule.
You can create an editorial calendar by using project management tools like Monday or ClickUp.
5. Outsourcing Content Production (Optional)
When you’re getting started with your ecommerce company, you may want to outsource content production for your blog because it can become very time-consuming.
If your business has various areas more important than content, it may be helpful to outsource many of the content creation tasks so that you can focus your energy on those areas.
If you want to hire a copywriter, make sure that they have the right experience and expertise in writing professional blog posts that will appeal to your target audience.
Make sure to make a list of things you need help with on your blog before you start outsourcing content production so that they won’t be surprised when they start working with you.
6. Choose Your Social Media Weapon
There’s no doubt that social media has the power to increase your bottom line. Take a look at the monthly active users on these social media networks:
I hope you can see that you should be using social media in your content marketing strategy.
You can create content for all of the major social media networks but it may not be the most effective use of your time.
Instead of focusing on multiple networks, I recommend that you focus on one or two depending on what your target audience prefers and takes action on.
With this in mind, you want to choose a social platform that you’ll be using along with your content marketing strategy.
The two most popular choices are Facebook and Instagram because they are mostly known for younger generations to consume content.
If you’re targeting millennials and Gen-Z, these might be the best choices for you. But it’s wise that you do your research first to know where your target audience spends their time.
After you made your choice, start crafting your profile following the best practices.
A good start for social media would be to write a great bio explaining what your profile is all about, how you plan to serve your audience etc…
Don’t forget to use your brand colors to keep your brand consistent across all platforms you’ll be using.
7. Identify Your Distribution Channels
Whether you’re creating written or video content, you’ll want to distribute your content across the internet so that it reaches as many people as possible.
You can do this by using the right distribution channels and networks. Here are some to start with:
Website Blog Section
Blogs are still the most popular place for businesses to publish content.
People read blogs in their spare time because they want to get information and make their own opinion about topics that interest them.
You can use your blog to write content and then you can use your RSS feed to be able to share that content with others.
YouTube
YouTube is the biggest video-sharing website and it’s very popular among millennials.
You can use this website to create and share videos for your business.
For some specific topics, people prefer to watch videos rather than read long articles. So, feel free to use videos as much as possible to get your message across.
Social Media
You can promote your content through social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok to expand your reach and increase your chances of making sales.
Forums
Forums are great places to find and connect with your target audience. These are usually communities of people who share similar interests, goals, and views.
Email Lists
Email marketing is still one of the best ways to get in contact with your audience and drive traffic to your website.
You can create an email list by offering something valuable in exchange for their email address such as a free PDF, a video, or some ebooks you created earlier on.
Paid Ads
If you have the budget to run paid ads, it can be one of the best ways to convert your traffic into buyers.
Google Ads & Facebook Ads are the two most powerful and ROI-friendly advertising platforms that you can use.
Press Releases and Media Distribution
Another powerful way to promote your content is by using a press release distribution service like Newswire, MarketWired, or PR Newswire.
You can send your press releases to major news outlets in order to build authority, generate leads, and increase sales.
Bookmarking Sites
Bookmarking sites such as Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg are other places where you can create content and drive traffic.
8. Track Your KPIs
One of the most important tasks in an ecommerce or any type of business is tracking the key performance indicators.
These are the numbers and metrics that you should be monitoring to determine if your business is moving in the right direction.
Failing to track your content marketing KPIs is like heading to an unknown destination without a GPS in your car.
You can’t be sure if you’ll get to the right destination or not. If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you plan the best route?
Having a set of KPIs to measure content marketing is vital, especially if you’re just getting started.
Without a proper plan, it’s difficult to tell if your content marketing strategy is working and if it’s worth the effort that you’re devoting to it.
Keeping track of things like specific processes that generate the most leads, most influential blog posts, and the top-performing social media channels where your content is being shared and connected with your target audience should be one of your business’ priorities.
Read: Content Marketing KPIs Worth Tracking
How to Generate eCommerce Content Marketing Ideas
Unless you have your ecommerce content marketing ideas in place, you’ll struggle to create great content for your business.
If you don’t have a thought-out plan and a clear picture of your audience and content marketing strategy, you’ll have a hard time developing great content that your audience will love.
You’ll also have difficulty growing your business because you won’t know what type of content is performing well and which offers the best return on investment.
One of the best and original ways to find topic ideas to write about is Google itself.
But you need more than just keywords to kick off your ecommerce content marketing strategy.
You need to know the keyword difficulty of your keywords, how many people are searching for these keywords every month, the CPC of those keywords (if you ever plan to do Paid Advertising), and other metrics that can guide your content writing process.
Why spend a lot of time and money producing content if you won’t have the chance to rank on Google?
Keep in mind that when putting out content on Google, you’re competing with the big whales like Amazon, eBay, and other lesser-known but still authoritative ecommerce stores.
They’re spending millions on their content marketing strategy and they’re able to rank high because they have the budget and authority to succeed.
So you’ll need to be careful when choosing the right keywords and content topic ideas that can yield results.
Thankfully, there are tools out there that can help you find the right keywords and topic ideas for your ecommerce content marketing goals.
So how do you come up with amazing content ideas for your ecommerce brand? For this purpose, I’ll use my favorite tool; Ahrefs.
In fact, there are endless ways to find topic ideas to write about but I’m going to show you the two easiest ways if you’re a beginner.
Method 1: Type in your seed keyword and set a filter so that you a get a list of low KD (Keyword Difficulty) keywords that have decent search volume.
Method 2: Type in your competitor’s URL in the Site Explorer tool inside of Ahrefs and grab their low KD keywords.
With these two methods alone you can generate a report of thousands of good keywords in just a few minutes.
After you’ve exported your list of keywords, you’ll want to sift through them and pick the ones that you think can work as your brand’s topic ideas.
Even if you get thousands of keywords doesn’t mean you have to write about them all, decide on an achievable list of 100 keywords and start doing some deeper research.
You can then plan your editorial calendar accordingly.
Remember you should always focus on quality over quantity when planning your content marketing strategy. So this step is vital.
Best Types of Content for eCommerce
Nowadays, there are countless types of content you can create for your ecommerce business. I recommend starting with a few of them to start and then you can expand as you need.
Here are the best types of content that you can use for your ecommerce brand:
1. Blog Posts/Articles
Blog posts are good because they offer a lot of exposure to your business and can drive a lot of traffic back to your website.
If you’re able to rank them well on Google, you’ll gain exposure that can bring in new prospective clients.
Writing blog posts also allows you to showcase your expertise in the ecommerce space and it’s a great way for people to get to know, like, and trust your brand.
2. Buyer Guides/Product Reviews
Buying guides are the perfect type of content for an eCommerce business because when someone is looking for a buying guide, this means they are in a purchasing mindset.
Buyer guides can be split in three types:
This section of your website will consist mainly of your commercial/money keywords. Make sure to include the best content and the best call-to-actions to convert your visitors into buyers.
You can use product reviews to showcase your expertise in the ecommerce scene and to show how much you know about the products you sell.
This type of content is great for lead generation because it promotes a sense of trust, authority, and credibility for your brand.
You want to go beyond a typical product review by including relevant customer testimonials and case studies from other buyers who have used your product.
4. Video Content
Video content can be a game-changer for your brand. If you have the resources and budget to produce video content, make sure you do it.
In fact, video content is becoming more and more popular on search engines besides YouTube.
For physical product reviews, people prefer to see the product in action rather than just reading about it, so why not create video content for your product and have it transcribed on your blog.
5. Infographics
An infographic allows you to present a lot of useful information in an easy-to-read graphic format.
You can use an infographic to highlight the best features of a certain product and its performance.
Depending on your audience, you can decide to center around the product’s performance or its feature set.
An infographic is a good way to visualize your products so that people can understand how it works and how they will benefit from them.
6. Social Media Content
You will find that most eCommerce companies are very active on social media platforms and for good reason
Giving a visual representation of your products via the visual medium of Instagram or Pinterest can help users to visualize your products better.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing for eCommerce is a tricky thing to do. But if you can keep your target audience in mind and understand their pain points, what makes them tick and the problems they want to solve, you stand a better chance of creating content that speaks to your target audience.
Keep in mind that content and traffic won’t give you any sales if people don’t interact with it and convert
But once you’ve got some momentum going for your ecommerce business then things will start snowballing. The sky’s the limit from there!
Follow these simple techniques and SEO best practices to create content that your target audience needs and wants.