With more businesses launching online every day, standing out amongst the sea of other eCommerce businesses can be challenging. You need to be strategic in your marketing approach to find customers and prospects for your business. Content marketing can be a great way to promote your business to your target audience.
First, let’s find out what content marketing is before going any further.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the process of creating valuable, relevant content to promote organisations, their products and their services. The content used for this type of marketing can include video, audio, text and more.
Content marketing includes not only the creation of content, but also the strategy regarding why it was created and how to distribute that content.
Why is content marketing important for eCommerce?
Content marketing is important for eCommerce businesses for many reasons. Some of the important reasons are that content marketing helps to:
- Improve brand awareness and recognition
- Drives traffic
- Improves SEO
- Positions the business and its employees as experts and thought leaders
- Increases conversion rates and revenue
What types of content can you use for eCommerce?
Several types of content apply to eCommerce marketing.
Product descriptions
People do not often mention product descriptions when talking about content marketing, but they are a type of content. Excellent product descriptions can be a brilliant tool for building brand awareness. Your audience may share unique, exciting product descriptions for their creativity.
Technical content
Technical content can also be a valuable type of content for your marketing. Types of technical content include product specifications, tutorials and troubleshooting pages. You can read more about technical content marketing here.
Articles
You can write articles for your website, as well as guest posting for external sites. You want to write interesting, engaging content, but if you aim to drive traffic from search engines, your content also needs to be optimised for relevant keywords.
Video
Video can be an excellent medium for content marketing. YouTube is one of the most popular websites globally, and if you have the resources, building a channel on this platform can be great for building your brand.
You can also use video for your social channels, whether that is posting long-form videos on platforms like Facebook and Instagram TV or short-form video in the form of Instagram Stories and TikToks.
Social posts
Standard text social posts are also a form of content. You can engage with your target audience just by sharing relevant posts on social sites. You need to identify which platforms are used most by your customers and build a following on those social sites. Various types of posts can work, from humour to tutorials to inspirational stories and quotes.
Reviews and testimonials
Reviews and testimonials are a form of user-generated content, and you can use them on your product pages. Not only can reviews and testimonials help to convert your visitors, but they can help to improve your SEO. Keyword-rich reviews increase the amount of relevant content on-page and may include long-tail phrases you have not already included in your product descriptions.
Some products have gained exposure due to their entertaining reviews. For example, this wolf t-shirt on Amazon has absolutely hilarious reviews. While you definitely should not be writing reviews for your own products and services, it is interesting to see that some reviews can help a product go viral.
Forums and Q&A sites
Though forums and Q&A sites, such a Quora, do not often come up when discussing content marketing, the answers you provide on these sites are content. If there are Q&A sites and other online communities that your audience go to for answers, consider signing up and being the industry expert. Answer your prospective customers’ questions and build your reputation. You will also find that answers to popular questions will receive a significant amount of organic search traffic.
How to amplify your content?
Once you have produced your content, it is then time to amplify your content’s reach. Here are some of the most popular ways to get your content out there.
Share on social media
If you have published content such as articles, videos or podcasts, then make sure to share them on social media platforms that your audience visits. You can chop your content up into microcontent and effectively share the same piece of content multiple times.
When sharing your content on social media, you do not just have to share on your personal profile or your organisation’s profile. You can share your content with relevant communities on those platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn Groups.
As well as organic social, you can also use paid social ads to promote your content. Paid social, such as Facebook Ads, can be relatively inexpensive and help place your content in front of prospects you would not have otherwise reached.
Content sharing sites
There are many sites, in addition to your typical social platforms, where you can directly share your content with relevant audiences. For example, Reddit has a subreddit for almost every topic, and sites like Growth Hackers allow you to share your content with a highly targeted audience. Not only do these sites provide awareness and traffic, but you can also acquire inbound links, which can benefit your SEO efforts.
If you have an email marketing list, you should be mailing your new content to your contacts through email newsletters. Of course, you want to make sure you do not overwhelm your contacts with too many emails. Ensure you are sharing your best, most helpful content. Also, make sure that you comply with GDPR and only send emails to people who have agreed to receive marketing communications from your business.
Republishing
You can also republish your content on sites such a Medium. You have to be careful republishing does not affect your SEO, as you will be publishing duplicate content on these sites. Medium allows you to set the original article on your website as the canonical source. Doing this tells Google that the content on your website is the original article, avoiding duplicate content issues.
Wrapping up
If you have any questions about content marketing for your eCommerce business, please post them in the comments below.
To find out more about our content marketing services, please email us hello@emiquent.com.
