The Advantages of Content Marketing for eCommerce Retail Stores

Use a Content Marketing Strategy to Give Your eCommerce Store a Boost

How important do you think a content marketing strategy is to your eCommerce store? Do you think that your products do a good enough job of selling themselves? Or, could you do more to get your brand’s message out there?

A lot of eCommerce store owners shy away from content marketing. This is despite the fact that it works. An eCommerce store without a content marketing strategy achieves a 0.5% conversion rate, on average. A store with a strategy sees an almost six-fold improvement to 2.9%.

That should be reason enough to use content marketing for your eCommerce store. But we’re also going to list a few more benefits of content marketing for online retailers.

Benefit #1 – Building Brand Awareness

People can’t buy anything from your eCommerce store if they don’t know that it exists. Stores with content marketing strategies can build connections with their customers, which gives their users more reasons to engage.

Your users will remember you if you create great content. Furthermore, they’re going to want to share that content with other people. Your content marketing strategy may be your route to becoming an authority in your sector. Readers will rely on you for information, which means they’ll come back whenever they need to find something out. You build loyalty among your existing customers, while giving them a reason to show your content to others. All of this builds your brand, which leads to more sales.

Benefit #2 – Improving Your Search Rankings

What key terms do you think are the most relevant for your eCommerce website? Does your site actually appear near the top of search engine rankings when you type those terms in? If not, it’s probably because you don’t have a strong content marketing strategy in place. Search engines want to list sites that deliver fresh content regularly to users. Your product pages aren’t enough, even if you’re adding brand new products every week.

Even something as simple as a blog can help you to improve your search rankings. Blog posts offer you the opportunity to use more key terms, while providing information that your customers will find useful. If you provide valuable content, search engines will rank your eCommerce website highly. This leads to more people finding the site, which results in more sales.

Benefit #3 – Nurturing Your Leads

The benefits we’ve covered so far talk about how you can use content marketing to attract more eyes to your business. But it goes much further than that. Your content marketing strategy can also help you to turn existing leads into sales.

For example, you could send targeted emails to people who have engaged with your site in the past, but haven’t bought anything. These emails could inform the user about products or promote them directly. Alternatively, you could invite leads to take part in webinars that could solve whatever problems they may have. The point is that you can use your content marketing to nurture existing leads, as well as develop new ones.

Benefit #4 – Networking with Other Brands

A lot of people view their content marketing as a means to attract customers. That may be the primary benefit, but it isn’t the only one. Good content marketing can help you to build connections with other companies in your space.

There are several ways you can do this. For example, you could start a content exchange with another brand. You provide that brand with informative guest posts for their users, and they’ll do the same for you. In doing so, you create a strong connection with that brand, which may open up other opportunities in the future. Better yet, you build your exposure using the other brand’s platform, while providing more information to your customers using the other brand’s content.

Benefit #5 – Answering Your Customer’s Questions

The modern marketplace is much more interactive than it used to be. Social media offers your customers a direct line to your business, which you must take advantage of. People want to feel as though your eCommerce store cares about them as individuals. If they have questions, they want you to answer them. If you don’t, they’ll just move onto another company.

A good content marketing strategy takes this into account. In fact, you can use your customers’ questions to create great content. After all, if one person has asked a question, it’s likely that a few others have the same question in mind. Build answering your customer’s questions into your strategy. You’ll engage the asker, while providing authoritative information that keeps people engaged with your store.

Conclusion

Content marketing has many benefits for eCommerce stores. However, you have to put the time and effort into creating useful content.

Think about how you can adjust your strategy so you can enjoy some of the benefits we’ve spoken about today.