Do I need a Content Marketing Strategy for my Ecommerce Business?

If you’ve only got time to skim read this post, let me answer this question for you straight up:

Yes. You do need a Content Marketing Strategy for your Ecommerce Business.

If your next question is, what is a content marketing strategy, read on. In this post I’ll be explaining what content and a content marketing strategy is, giving you tips on how to create your own content marketing strategy and sharing examples of clever content marketing.

What is Content and What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

Content is information and experiences directed toward an end-user or audience. Content can be communicated verbally, in writing or visually.

Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract the end-user audience by creating and sharing relevant content that appeals to their interests and addresses their pain points. Your content strategy includes where you share and promote your content.

Content can be shared across all types of media:

• Blogs
• YouTube Channel
• Podcasts
• Social Media
• Pinterest
• Downloads and more

Benefits of Implementing a Content Marketing Strategy

Digital Marketing Expert Neil Patel says; “when it comes to ecommerce, content marketing can increase your conversion rate by almost six times! The average conversion rate with content marketing is 2.9%, compared to only 0.5% for sites not using it.”

Along with better conversion rates, online businesses with a well defined content marketing strategy experience benefits such as:

• Increased organic search traffic.
• Better brand awareness.
• Increased social media engagement.
• Access to a broader audience.

These are all compelling reasons for you to implement a Content Marketing Strategy for your online store in 2022. But what does a good content marketing strategy look like?

Content Marketing Strategy – Start with Your Business Goals

A good content marketing strategy starts with your business goals, and then uses content to help you achieve those goals.

These goals will be specific to each ecommerce business but broadly could include:

• Increasing brand awareness.
• Fostering trust in your brand.
• Driving new traffic to your website/store.
• Growing your revenue.

According to BigCommerce; “If you can introduce your prospects to free content that immediately helps to solve some of their problems, you’ll give them a hell of a lot more confidence in choosing you when it’s time for them to invest in a paid tool, solution, or resource on the subject at hand.”

What’s important to note here is that the name of the game is not to just create content.

A blog post stuffed with keywords won’t cut it. There is so much content out there already – which means any content strategy has to be based around creating quality content that adds value to your ideal customer’s world. And that makes strategy even more important. You need the strategy piece of the puzzle to ensure you’re putting helpful and inspiring content in front of people who are likely to buy from you.

Here’s another example from Lucky Pet. In this Instagram post Lucky Pet are establishing their authority by sharing a helpful tip for how to care for your dog.

Creating Your Strategy

The idea of creating a strategy for your content marketing can be overwhelming (especially when that’s just the beginning  – you still need to create the content after that).

But getting started doesn’t need to be hard work. Answering the following questions will help you to develop a content strategy that’s targeted to your audience.

1. Who’s the target audience for your content?
If you’re already an established ecommerce business and even if you’re not, consider your ideal client. If you have more than one – you may need different content for each of those audiences or different channels to publish it on, depending on where your ideal client spends their time – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, listening to Podcasts or somewhere else?

2. What’s the problem your product/s solves?
Answering this question will help you to create content that targets your audience and their pain points. But it does something else too. Once you have customers sharing their reviews and experiences with you, you can use their story to demonstrate to others how your product has solved a problem.

3. What makes you different from your competitors?
Content is a great way to distinguish yourself from other ecommerce businesses that sell the same product or product ranges that you do. You have a unique way of serving your customers – content is how you differentiate yourself in the marketplace.

4. What content will you create?
There are a lot of different options when it comes to the types of content you create – video, infographics, blog posts, product guides are just some of them. Consider your audience.  What types of content are they more likely to consume. If you’re not sure you can survey them or test different forms of content and analyse the results carefully so you can tweak your strategy.

5. Where should you share your content?
Answering this question requires a similar approach to the last. Where does your audience hang out? Are they more likely to come directly to your website to find answers to their questions about your products? Or are they on Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or somewhere else?

6. Who will create, publish and monitor your content?
Not having a plan in place for consistently creating, publishing and analysing content is one of the main reasons content strategies fail. Your content strategy should consider who will take responsibility for creating content, scheduling it and then monitoring it. This is something you can do yourself with careful planning or you can outsource the work to a specialist content creator. The benefit of working with an expert is that they can also help you to create and then monitor your overall content strategy to ensure you’re maximising your return on investment in content creation for your ecommerce business.

Now that you understand what content is and the benefits of implementing a content strategy it’s time to get to work – which means creating content. Let’s get your content planning on track and your marketing looking hot to trot! We’ve done the leg work and put together a complete calendar of all the days and dates you could possibly use to give your content marketing that extra boost.

Download your 2022 Marketing Calendar and delight your customers with fresh ideas, every week, all year long.