Mastering the Art of Content Strategy Is Naturally Going to Play an Integral Role for Marketers in 2018. MarTech Series Discusses Ten Content Marketing Ideas to Grow Your E-Commerce Brand

Today, the customer’s voice is believed to be the strongest in an online marketing world. Mastering the art of content strategy is naturally going to play an integral role for marketers in 2018.

As the world of E-commerce is constantly mushrooming, entrepreneurs/retailers are aiming to reach new heights of content creation. The expansion and success of your E-commerce brand lie in the visibility it harnesses on online platforms.

Restricting a brand to a meager Facebook page won’t create much of a dent since there are other E-commerce zones in the portal as well. The sphere of content marketing is constantly changing. In order for your brand to build awareness, creating content that generates traffic and increases sales is crucial.

The new era of content marketing calls for –

• Transparent content creation and sharing with the audience and building an authentic feed
• Creating content sources which encourage the audience to be proactive
• Focusing more on quality and value, in opposition to output and quantity
• Nurturing relationships with prospective customers by segmentation and personalizing content for a wider reach
• Focusing less on a product promotion but more on understanding the needs of a customer and creating content for the same
• Being extremely focused on measuring performance and success by tracking analytics and KPIs

Below are a few stats to understand why content marketing is such a hot topic today;

• Content marketing online costs 62% lesser than the traditional means of marketing
• The percentage of people who seek out a product after being online is 60%
• Content marketing generates 3 times the number of leads over traditional marketing

Despite the facts and figures, face it- content marketing is only going to help your E-commerce brand gain success if you do it right. The following are 10 rules that you should follow to make this work!

Also Read: Integrating AI with Social Media Marketing to Persuade Profitable Markets

Research and Solve

Researching about people who follow your brand and are keen for insights is staying a step ahead of your game. Creating a survey of short questions as to why a customer has abandoned their cart or how you can work towards improving their experience is a great start. At times, customers don’t have the will to cooperate, so being persistent in conducting your own research is particularly effective. Once you’ve done your research, address those problems and work towards resolving them.

If your customers would like better services, different pictures on products or more entertaining content, then work towards creating a blog for the same.

Create a Content Strategy Plan

Your content marketing strategy is a plan, and a plan is always integral to any business. According to the Content Marketing Institute, your content strategy must include;

A business case; reasons you need content marketing

A business plan; content goals

Buyer Personas; the target audience

Brand Story; messages and topics of deliverance

Channel Plan; the platforms required to distribute your content

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Focus on your Audience

Though business owners are important to the company, choosing sides won’t help you here since they’re not the ones who are going to buy your products.

Use your customer data to create content on customer interests and previous buys. Talk in their language and answer their questions by educating and entertaining them. People almost always buy emotions, so crafting your content to suit their desires is a crucial requirement.

Never forget the importance of SEO

Though the content strategy is designed to focus on assisting consumers, it does not focus on search engines. SEO focused content increases the chances of visibility and optimizes content to reach a definite mark.

SEO is a vital part of your content marketing strategy since quality content will help you move up steadily in the search results. Using keywords on site pages, titles and product descriptions helps in making your content efforts effective.

Once search engines identify your e-commerce brand as an online store selling products, half of those tasks are simplified.

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Concept of Micro-Content

The bombardment of information online is one of the huge problems faced by marketers.

Limited time and diminishing patience make customers disinterested in consuming large volumes of content. This is when micro-content steps in and bumping a brief 10-second video on any social media platform can significantly boost engagement.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and even Snapchat have a number of interactive ways that help in creating bite-sized content. With micro-content, GIFs have become another engaging format to indulge in.

Major brands such as Taco Bell, Doritos and even Lowe’s have incorporated micro-content into their strategies!

Use Social Reviews

Customer product reviews are good ways to build a sign of social proof on your product pages. This helps customers understand what they can expect while purchasing a product from you.

Yotpo is an excellent example of helping you leverage your brand’s customer reviews and photos through the customer buying journey. This increases a customer’s trust in your brand, generates value and increases sales.

Also Read: Integrating AI with Social Media Marketing to Persuade Profitable Markets

Soft selling is the key

Your content needs to be meaningful and interesting, not preachy and vehement. This is when the concept of soft selling gives you more depth on how to plan out your social media strategy.

Focus on ways of placing reviews on product pages, incorporating user-generated content on all social media platforms and also gently pitching points about your product on relatable content pages.

Content Syndication for your Ecommerce brand

Content syndication refers to getting your content published on a third-party site. This can be the entire length of content or snippets of relevant ones. Syndicating content increases exposure and causes a hike in the industry influence’s audience as well.

Content syndication is successful only when you have the right syndicate partner and permissions aligned for the same. The topic of your content needs to be relevant to their audience structure too.

Also Read: 5 Pinterest Hacks That Can Be Used For B2B Marketing

10x Content

Earlier, it was all about keywords and metadata. Today, search engines favor quality content and SEO links. In this booming world of E-commerce portals, experts have created the term ‘10x content’ which translates to curating content which is unique, empathetic and meaningful.

To produce this kind of content, you as a marketer, require immense patience and time. 10x content needs to brew from an angle that has never been done, showcase experience, have good style and is sharable thus inducing connection.

Different content types for 10x content include guides, long-form blogs, and Ebooks.

Content Promotion

Last, but not the least, if you create content which is not shareable—no brand or e-commerce business is going to be making it large.

Constantly updating your page with fresh content and having a social media presence will take your content marketing strategies a long way.

Having written and mixed types of e-commerce content like magazines, e-books, newspapers, research reports, product reviews, GIFs, video, podcasts, memes, and webinars are efficient mediums for creating beneficial content.

 Content marketing for e-commerce is a challenging job since it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to make it happen. Applying the above-mentioned strategies is bound to create a wave of content marketing expertise for your E-commerce brand, thus achieving targets effectively and efficiently.

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