85% of marketers employ content marketing, per a Content Marketing Institute report. In addition, 60 % declare being “very” or “extremely” dedicated to this method.
But, despite widespread acceptance and plenty of praise from both companies and digital marketers, content Strategy is still quite a difficult task to grasp. Achieving success using content to benefit eCommerce businesses requires careful research and ongoing execution, which requires a lifetime commitment.
If you’re confused about what types of content to make and how to execute the best job, this guide for businesses selling on the internet can help you take the proper care of it.
Table of Content
How to Create a Content Strategy for Ecommerce Business
Step 1: Identify your potential Buyer Persona
You must know who your customer is to create content on your website specifically tailored to buyer requirements and preferences. Through the development of a persona or fictional model of the buyer that is based on actual information and market research, you can develop targeted content for the buyer and then refine it based on the part of the sales funnel you’re in and what segment of the journey that you are in search of.
For example, at the beginning of the funnel for sales, you’d provide content tailored to their needs but without a selling message. As you move down the funnel, you may begin offering options for solving customer problems and a more targeted sales pitch that will convert customers to paying business after you’ve won their trust.
Some of the items you may be interested in knowing for your buyer persona are:
Demographics These may include age, gender, geographical location, and any other specific identifying information.
Personality: If they’re super productive, lazy, optimistic, skeptical, or possess other characteristics, their personality profile can be used to determine how they shop.
Motivation Are they on your online store to learn more about your business and products? Are they looking to purchase or simply browse? Understanding your customers’ motivations lets you tailor content according to their preferences.
Pain point: What is it that your customers find frustrating? If you can identify this, you could offer an answer to their problems.
Content channels that are preferred Knowing your client’s preferred websites and social media channels and apps will tell you the best way to connect with them. For example, are they Snapchat-loving and young baby boomers recently joining Facebook, or is it something different?
Step 2. People
You should consider two primary types of people: the people driving your content and efforts and the intended customers and audience.
In smaller e-commerce businesses in smaller eCommerce operations, your managing editor and Content Director/ Content Marketing Manager may be one and the same. However, in larger companies, there is a greater likelihood of having each with its job.
Being a part of an effective team of content marketers requires a sharp eye for detail, exceptional editing, and copywriting skills, and a journalist’s ability to find, analyze, extract, and then summarize complex information and information.
The leaders of eCommerce content strategy must understand the idea of martech and know how it can and will assist you in meeting your e-commerce goals.
There is no need to locate someone who is already proficient in your company’s specific platform or stack. After all, it’s hundreds of martech tools available on the market. However, you require a manager who can quickly catch up on the latest technologies and tools you prefer.
Alongside this analytical thinking, Your ideal content marketing manager is a mix of creativity and communication abilities.
This person is responsible for not just communicating the successes of content marketing throughout the company but also for working with inside stakeholders to assure that the goals and needs of the operations as well as sales, product development, and various other functions are represented in the strategy for content.
You’re also seeking this person to inspire and oversee what could be a massive content team that is comprised of various analysts and creative types.
The ideal person for a leadership position in content marketing has extensive experience leading teams to produce certain business results.
Larger companies might choose to employ a Content Strategist. When you hire a strategist, find a professional who has a solid understanding of content but also comprehends the state of content discovery and search to a fundamental degree.
The person in charge is responsible for ensuring that your content strategies align with your business’s goals. They should have a solid understanding of your brand’s image and the requirements of your people who are part of your eCommerce field.
Step 3. Building Your Content Team
Who are you looking for to be part of your team? In addition, what essential accountability responsibilities must you ensure that you are adequately covered?
Based what the scope of the company, You could have one team member who covers several areas of responsibility – or you may have hundreds of team members working on one.
You could also opt to outsource certain responsibilities to freelancers or have an agency handle most of the content creation.
Whatever way you go, make sure these essential aspects of your content marketing strategy are taken care of:
Content creation, including writing, photography, graphic design, video editing, etc.
Editing with a specific focus on brand voice and content optimization to search engines and alignment with the customer journeys and formatting to suit specific channels.
Prioritization and management of projects.
Promotion of content, either via PR or paid channels.
Step 4. Use Technology
The emergence of new technologies, especially ones that incorporate AI (or machine-learning) components, has created a variety of interesting possibilities for companies that sell online, seeking to tailor content and engage with potential customers more effectively.
Here are some important things to consider when deciding on the right technology to drive your strategy for creating content.
B2C businesses use, on average, four digital tools for their marketing campaigns for content, including analytics tools and email marketing software leading the way.
We see a shift away from using only one tool to address a particular issue.
The effectiveness of AI can be better utilized when the data generated by one software tool can be applied to another. Marketing executives are recognizing that disparate data sets and manual methods of working around are ineffective and can hinder their performance in content marketing.
Companies are now able to use a complete suite of integrated tools. This could include a variety of functions within your marketing through content or could be just one aspect of a broader platform.
Step 5. Publish Content Based on Where It Makes Sense in the Buyer’s Journey
In its most basic form, the sales funnel is divided into three parts comprising the top, middle and bottom. They correspond to various stages in the journey of the purchaser.
At the top of the funnel is the discovery or awareness stage, in which you show that you understand their issues. Your content in this stage is easily accessible and then consumed.
It could be through blogging or social media marketing, search engine marketing, or any other method that provides solutions to problems without particular selling or promotion of products or services.
The middle part of the funnel is the review stage, where you are more in-depth with prospective customers, building trust. You’ve proven that you know the issues they face, and you can now begin to offer solutions that will benefit them. While you used to help customers understand their needs and educate them, you’re now helping them find the most effective solutions. Yours hopefully.
Here compare guidelines, studies, and even free samples might be among the items you provide. The customers at this point tend to conduct extensive studies on the subject to determine if your solution is the most suitable for them.
The final stage in the sales funnels is the buying stage when people place their money on the spot where they’re most interested. This is the time to show that your unique value is too significant to be overlooked. At this purchase stage, you might use live chat, a chatbot, or emails to customers at the point of buying or retargeting/remarketing to keep your message in front of someone at the tipping point.
What is a Content Strategy?
When we know the concept of content and what it is, we can begin to know what it is to have a content strategy.
The content strategy refers to the continuous process of translating objectives and goals into a strategy that uses content as the main method to achieve the objectives.
Each other aspect of the content strategy begins at this point. So, for example, it’s not necessary to talk about an audit of content management of the content strategy, content production plan, an editorial calendar, etc., until you have a concept of the business goals to which you can assign the content.
When you’re working as a content strategist, you must understand the goals you’re contributing towards and why. Content that is designed isn’t going to result in consistent results.
Content strategy isn’t something that exists in the absence. It’s more than just creating the editorial calendar and publishing content. It does not just have an online blog, even if it’s packed with great content. It’s not just putting out an individual piece of content now and then in response to requests from sales or teams of product demands.
Best Content Strategy Podcast: https://www.contentstrategy.com/
The benefits of developing an eCommerce Content strategy
- A content strategy will ensure that your content is in line with your business’s larger goals (raise your brand’s profile, create a community of followers, etc.)
- Content strategy improves ROI. A lack of an organized, well-thought-out plan is a cause of poorer marketing outcomes. It’s enough to say that a good strategy improves content’s effectiveness, consequently increasing ROI.
- Content strategy is based on conducting research. This helps to determine the types of content and subjects your prospective customers may be particularly attracted to (product evaluations, tips and tricks guides, video tutorials, product reviews, and comparison articles, for example.)
- Content strategy helps improve the consistency of content production and helps keep everyone on marketing teams on the same level. Google favors websites with original and relevant regular content, so regularly publishing content can improve SEO. It’s also known that consistent brands will earn twenty percent higher than sites that do not have consistent messaging.
Mistakes to Avoid
Marketing and content production are complex processes, meaning there are plenty of errors to avoid. To avoid the most frequent mistakes made by eCommerce companies, I’ve put together this list, which includes a brief explanation of each of the mistakes.
- The creation of content just to make it. The creation of content to get higher rankings or to be a place for research into products must be motivated by the desire to help the people you want to reach. If you create articles or other content solely for the sake of doing it, it is likely to have very little or no value for users, which means Google will not pay much attention to it.
- Poor product visuals. In addition to top-quality images of the product, you need to display them in a manner that is awe-inspiring to the viewer, e.g., the way a product will be utilized in real-world situations (if relevant, obviously)
- Not collecting customer emails. Creating an email database of leads is a key aim of any eCommerce company; therefore, your website and blog should use opt-in forms such as Mailmunch to ensure that your lead generation efforts are going well. Nearly every major eCommerce site utilizes these tools to gather the most emails from its visitors and take advantage of email marketing.
- Insufficient research on the customer’s issues. Most of the content you’ll create is focused on the customer; however, if it doesn’t reach the goal, people will likely continue their research and not return to your site. It’s why you should be patient and get to the point of having knowledge of your customers’ issues and pain points before creating content to assist in solving their problems.
- Not assessing the effectiveness of strategies for content. You should always focus on performance metrics and indicators that add to your company’s bottom line, e.g., Lead generation, conversion rates, content views/reads, readers’ comments, email opening or click-through rates, and overall statistics on customer acquisition etc.
Conclusion
The strategies for eCommerce content discussed previously are viable and waiting for their implementation on your site. There are certain adjustments that will require to be made to realize these objectives (i.e., recruiting the right talent or hiring an agency such as Inflow to aid). However, there is nothing that is truly “great” that happens without effort and changes. If the definition of insane includes “doing the same things but expecting different results,” then the only chance that you face is becoming a shadow.
Get Unlimited Graphic and Video Design Services on RemotePik, book your Free Trial
To keep yourself updated with the latest eCommerce and Amazon news, subscribe to our newsletter at www.cruxfinder.com
