E-Commerce Content Marketing: 7 Tips

While ecommerce continues to gain an ever-widening share of the consumer market, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to find success as an ecommerce brand. As the e-commerce market gets larger, there is more competition that requires commerce brands to innovate ways to attract and retain customers. Elements such as content creation and content strategy can drive a successful ecommerce content marketing campaign, but they have to be done well.

Why Invest in E-commerce Content Marketing

Effective content marketing for ecommerce sites provides your target audience with engaging and relevant information that subtly sells your products and services without reading like a sales pitch. Ecommerce content writers can help you to rank for keywords on search engines that your existing and prospective clients might type in to find the products and services you offer. By organically ranking for keywords, you can bypass the traditional advertising spending it takes to get the same results.

So not only can ecommerce content marketing help you gain recognition and branding, improve your ROI and exposure and help you better compete, it can also help educate, inform and engage your customers – creating more loyalty and repeat customers. It’s a win/win!

What are the Different Types of Content Marketing for E-Commerce?

Some common examples of content marketing for ecommerce may include the following:

• Social Media Marketing for Ecommerce
• Video Marketing for Ecommerce
• Ecommerce Description Optimization
• Content Creation for Ecommerce
• Online Review Optimization
• Influencer Marketing

You can run these elements of an ecommerce content strategy by yourself or hire reliable ecommerce content writers or a content creation company to help. Whichever path you take, you can greatly increase your chances of success in the ecommerce sector by understanding these key elements of successful content marketing.

Find out some great tips below on how to improve your ecommerce content marketing strategy:

Proven Ecommerce Content Marketing Strategies

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” With that definition in mind, consider how to incorporate these essential tips when developing the content marketing strategy for your ecommerce brand.

1. Work With Influencers in Your Niche

One content strategy for ecommerce that has been growing in popularity is the use of influencers. The concept of an “influencer” may immediately conjure images of celebrities or social media personalities with millions of followers. However, you don’t necessarily need to worry about committing all your resources to hire a celebrity to promote your brand.

In fact, choosing a micro-influencer who fits well with your brand will likely have better results than hiring a celebrity blogger – and it will be much cheaper, too. According to a study of 14,000 adults conducted by Collective Bias, 70 percent of millennials cited a preference for endorsements by peers rather than celebrities. When choosing a micro-influencer, keep these tips in mind:

• Start with your own followers: If you can find someone with a decent following who is already interested in your brand, it’s a good place to start.
• Stay in your niche: Choose an influencer who’s a good match for your products and services. Don’t branch out too far just to find someone who is “popular” or you may end up creating an awkward fit.
• Look for consistency and engagement: Focus on finding an influencer who posts on a regular basis. Then, see how much interaction his or her posts get. An influencer who consistently gets likes and comments on posts (and responds to them) will probably have success engaging your target audience.

Once you’ve found a potential influencer, it’s time to talk ecommerce content strategy details. Make sure everyone is clear on the content marketing for ecommerce goals, guidelines, brand voice, and payment terms.

2. Increase Trustworthiness Through Verified Google Reviews

Online reviews are ubiquitous nowadays, and they can have a significant influence on whether consumers make a purchase. For a while, some content creation for ecommerce strategies involved creating inauthentic reviews to boost search rankings and manipulate confidence in brands and products. However, this isn’t a viable option anymore. Most shoppers and search engines now look for verified reviews from real people. Google rewards ecommerce sites with credible reviews made through a Google Review Partner platform such as Trustpilot.

Developing and managing reviews is an extremely important part of a good ecommerce content marketing strategy. It can improve your visibility with search engines and your reputation with potential customers. Additionally, some programs make it easy to turn reviews into attractive ecommerce content that’s perfect for posting on social media and your website.

3. Make a Statement With Your Landing Page

Optimizing your site’s landing pages is an essential aspect of content marketing for ecommerce sites. After all, visitors who see landing pages are generally already interested in your brand and products to start out with. An attractive, well-designed landing page creates a positive interaction with your brand and provides a smooth user experience. High-quality landing pages can also show high conversion rates, so it’s worth the time to invest in high-quality content writing for ecommerce websites.

Here are some vital steps to improve your landing page:

• Direct traffic through organization: A landing page can work as an airport or train station. It’s the place visitors converge before moving to other areas of your site (e.g. product pages, FAQs, contact details). With smart organization and an intuitive layout of links, you can make it easy for visitors to travel through your site in ways that are most likely to lead to sales.
• Provide an overview of your brand: A customized landing page can include the elements you want. Adding ecommerce content writing such as testimonials, reviews, current promotions, and navigational links can give visitors a quick overview that showcases the best aspects of your brand.
• Develop outstanding ecommerce content: The content writing for ecommerce websites’ landing pages can have a significant impact on customers and search engine bots, so you may want to hire out content creation for ecommerce to develop copy that’s SEO-friendly and easy to read.

Ecommerce content marketing can be an extremely competitive arena, and many consumers make instant decisions about brands based on a quick overview of their websites. A high-quality landing page with outstanding ecommerce content can wow potential customers and provide reliable conversion rates.

4. Engage Your Audience Through Video

If you’ve spent any time researching content marketing for ecommerce sites, you know that the field has evolved through the years. Types of content creation for ecommerce and content marketing methods constantly adapt to meet new search engine algorithms, consumer behavior, and available technology. One of the largest changes has been the shift toward video content as more marketers understand the sheer power of this format.

Numerous studies confirm that video marketing can be extremely effective as a method of content creation for ecommerce. The key to getting it to work for your brand is choosing how to incorporate video into your overall ecommerce content marketing strategy. There are several available options:

• Adding a video to your website to showcase products or summarize your brand
• Offering a webinar to provide your audience with valuable and sincere advice
• Producing short marketing videos to debut new products
• Utilizing social media platforms (e.g. Facebook Live, Instagram Live) to engage your audience through live videos
• Creating an ongoing series of YouTube videos

It’s important to know what type of video has the most potential to reach your target audience. For example, younger viewers tend to prefer short videos whereas older viewers find longer videos more appealing. Develop video content as a part of your content marketing strategy for ecommerce that accurately reflects your brand and matches your target audience’s preference.

5. Strengthen Your E-A-T Score

Recent Google broad core algorithm updates continue the search engine’s trend toward rewarding high-quality, relevant ecommerce content writing with higher rankings. One important update increases the emphasis on E-A-T score for Google’s Search Quality Evaluators. This term incorporates the words Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. With the increased significance of the E-A-T score, it’s important to make sure you are doing what you can to improve your brand’s ecommerce content in these areas.

• Expertise: Show consumers and search engines that you are knowledgeable of your products and industry. Make sure editorial content, including blog posts, lists the author’s name and bio. If you utilize a service to help with content creation for ecommerce, make sure your content is coming from authors who can prove they are knowledgeable about the subject matter.
• Authority: In e-commerce terms, this area serves as proof of expertise. One way to boost your company’s authority is to move toward personal branding. This includes investing in your own brand as well as choosing influencers and senior executives who have solid, positive personal brands.
• Trustworthiness: Prioritize the technical security of your page. This means having a current SSL certificate and an “HTTP” address that automatically redirects to an “HTTPS” URL. Make sure your shopping cart and checkout systems are secure and have verifiable certifications and badges.

As you are developing your brand’s unique ecommerce content marketing strategy, make sure to keep the E-A-T concept at the forefront. Finding more ways to highlight your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness can improve your search ranking and solidify your reputation as an industry leader. This is one of the best ways to engage in content creation for ecommerce.

6. Be Helpful, Not Pushy

While you know the goal of your content is to attract people to your brand and make sales, that should never be obvious to your readers. Blog posts, social media updates, and videos are most effective as a form of content creation for ecommerce when viewers find them valuable and helpful. In contrast, many consumers immediately dismiss content they feel is manipulative, “sales-y,” or disingenuous. Follow these guidelines to make sure your content rings true to your audience:

• Make sure every story you tell casts your customer, not your brand, as the hero.
• Don’t jump on every trending topic; only engage when it makes sense for your brand.
• Provide helpful advice on using your products, such as how-to videos or tutorials.
• Engage in cause marketing very carefully: Ensure your campaign appears genuine and can realistically help your chosen cause.
• Regularly evaluate your content to assess its effectiveness, and then make necessary changes to any content that’s not working.

Whether you’re publishing blogs, creating live social media videos, or developing SEO content, make sure you always put the consumer first. Develop unique, valuable content — not polished sales pitches.

7. Update and Refresh Ecommerce Content Descriptions Regularly

Whether you’re a big ecommerce shop or a small one, one of the most overlooked parts of your site is your actual ecommerce product and category descriptions. When category and product descriptions get stale, no longer rank for keywords, or don’t offer valuable information to potential buyers then your content strategy for ecommerce is lacking. To avoid this, you need to update and refresh your ecommerce content descriptions regularly.

For big ecommerce sites, the problem lies in the sheer number of product SKUs that you have and the potential time and costs associated with updating and refreshing. How do you go about updating and rewriting 100,000 product SKUs?! For smaller ecommerce sites, it may just be a lack of bandwidth. You are so busy operating all of the other parts of your business that the actual content writing and content creation gets left on the backburner. Here is one way you can go about defeating these hurdles to updating ecommerce content descriptions.

Utilize Writing Services that Specialize in Content Creation for Ecommerce

Whether you have hundreds of thousands of SKUs or less than a hundred, you can utilize services that specialize in content writing for ecommerce websites. These content writing services for ecommerce typically have hundreds of writers that can help knock out thousands of descriptions in a fraction of the time it would have taken to have your team do it. Not only that, great ecommerce content writers are knowledgeable in SEO optimization and can utilize your keywords in headings, bullets and meta-text to help you get the best benefit from your content creation endeavors.

The first step is to do a content audit and see which of your product or category descriptions are performing, conduct keyword research so you know what keywords you want to be ranking for, then hire out a content writing service for ecommerce websites.

Ecommerce Content Marketing: Your Secret to Success

Having an effective ecommerce content marketing strategy dramatically increases your chances of rising to the top of the e-commerce world. For most brands, a successful content strategy for ecommerce will involve more than one type of content creation. Fortunately, you don’t have to create each piece yourself. You may want to hire a service to help with content creation for ecommerce or an SEO content writing agency.

When you’re working to implement content marketing for ecommerce sites, make sure your authors, influencers, web designers, and creators, strive to represent your brand clearly and accurately. Search engines reward high-quality content, and your potential customers will as well.