Content Marketing 101: Content Marketing for E-Commerce Retailers

If you run an  e-commerce site, you know that there’s nothing easy about it. You not only have to deal with seasoned competitors every day. You also have to fight off new ones that come out of the woodwork.

What’s also difficult is building links to your product pages. This is because almost no one wants to link to somebody else’s product page. Many owners of e-commerce sites find this asking task hard to do.

All of this is starting to change after Google enacted the nuclear option in 2012. While the change made e-commerce sites more aesthetically pleasing, e-commerce site owners also realized that they needed to engage with their customers in new and exciting ways. Nowadays, one of the best ways that e-commerce retailers can do this is through e-commerce content marketing.

E-Commerce Content Marketing: What Exactly Is It?

All e-commerce retailers want their customers to buy their stuff as often as they can. As a result, many e-commerce retailers focus a lot more on the product than they do on their content. But in the past few years, e-commerce sites began to shift to a content-heavy emphasis. By creating new and exciting content, they can build customer relationships with new and old customers. E-commerce retailers can do this through social media, paid search, blogging, and link building. Doing some or even all of these tasks can help you claim authority in your niche and build backlinks in a natural way.

As an e-commerce retailer, you don’t want to put your sole focus on getting potential customers to the checkout page. Instead, you want to concentrate on your ideal consumer and extending an invitation to the top of your sales funnel. This is a much easier task than trying to get every single visitor to purchase your products.

If you do it right, e-commerce content marketing can last a really long time. Use it to help you build backlinks, authority, and a brand new audience on your chosen social media channels. The great thing about e-commerce content marketing is that it doesn’t have to be costly or even complicated. All you have to do is follow a couple of rules and you can be on your way to creating wonderful pieces of content.

First Things First: Create An E-Commerce Content Marketing Plan

Most of us don’t plan out every aspect of our lives. While the “seat of your pants” approach may work for your social life, you’ll want to create an e-commerce content marketing strategy. The marketing experts at Content Refined say that the very first thing you should do as an e-commerce retailer is to come up with a workable plan.

Some of the information that you will need to create your e-commerce content marketing plan includes the following bits of data:

The Goals Of Your Content

What do you want from your content? Do you want shares, subscribers, followers, backlinks? You always want to know the end result that you want to get from your efforts.

Influencers

E-commerce retailers can’t be islands unto themselves. They need help from influencers like niche experts and up-and-coming bloggers. Make a list of them and set it aside for the time when you’re putting your plan into action.

Ideal Consumer

What is your ideal customer like? Create a persona for your ideal client so that you can better craft content that will get them to buy what you’re selling.

The Journey

This refers to the journey that your ideal consumer will take when deciding whether to buy your product.

PHASE 1: “I have a desire or need for a product or service”.

PHASE 2: “What options do I have?”

PHASE 3: “I’m going to buy a product or service”.

Where Will Your Content Go?

It’s easy to post content to your own website. But you’ll also have to create a plan to convince other websites to publish your posts. Think about querying some of the bigger authority sites in your niche.

Give Your Content New Life

Do you have old content that is languishing on a long-forgotten blog? Get a writer or marketing company to give it a makeover so that it can go viral in its new life.

SEO Optimization

Always optimize every piece of content before it goes live on your e-commerce site. Have a writer or marketing expert take care of this part.

What Type of Content Should I Create For My E-Commerce Site?

The Content Refined marketing experts say that the next part of your e-commerce marketing strategy is to start creating content! You can create some or all of the following types of content for your e-commerce site. Creating several types of content will give potential customers a more varied visitor experience:

• Buyers guides
• Case studies
• Comparison reviews
• Content created by customers
• Content for Backlinks
• “The Definitive Guide to…[your area of expertise]”
• “How-to” tutorials
• Industry recognition and awards
• Infographics
• Videos

What Type of Visuals Should I Create For My E-Commerce Site?

You and your marketing company worked together to create some awesome content. You might think your job is done. It isn’t. You need some pretty good visuals to go along with all that content. That’s because visuals are important if you want to make a big splash in social media. Almost 66 percent of social media posts have a visual element to them. So never think that you can get away with a wall of text on your Facebook page.

Adding visuals to your social media content can also improve your SEO. That’s because this kind of content spreads your budding authority across the Internet and increases the chance that you’ll get links in the future. You can also breathe new life into old content by pairing it with a new visual element.

Some of the ways that you can use visual elements to your advantage include the following methods:

• Audio
• Infographics
• PDFs
• Slides
• Videos

How Should I Publish My Content?

The first steps in the Content Refinedplan is to create a plan, then create content. The third and final step is to publish and promote what you and your marketing company created. Of course, you control your own channels such as your website, your social media accounts, and your email list. Work those channels as hard as you can.

Remember that list you made of the influencers in your niche? Follow all of them on their social media accounts. Comment on their posts and become a part of their online community. You don’t want to turn into a stalker. But if you make it your goal to get yourself in front of your niche influencers, soon you’ll find that they’re more than willing to support you and your content.

You can also use paid search methods to get your message out into the world. At this point, you’re targeting customers in the early part of the sales funnel. They’re in the second phase of the buyer’s journey (What options do I have?). Even if you’re not immediately asking anyone for money, there are plenty of ways that you can get potential customers onto your website.

When it comes to content marketing for e-commerce websites, you have plenty of options that you and your marketing company can choose. Whether you’re a connector type who doesn’t mind asking for the help of the biggest bloggers in your niche, or you want a marketing company to create an infographic that’s sure to go viral, you can go down several avenues to reach your sales goals.