People are talking about content marketing and how it’s necessary to increase rankings, but only a few marketers will go in depth to explain other ways content marketing can help a business grow. Yes, it helps with SEO, but content can do so much more than that. It can help bring your brand to life, help you engage with your customers, increase conversion rates, and more.
And I’m not only talking about articles. Content can be created and distributed in a variety of forms, including video, which is one of the top forms of content being consumed at the moment. We know that 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it. The video is also proving to be king on social media, where thousands of videos are being watched and shared on a daily basis.
Distribution and planning are key components in your strategy regardless of the type of content you produce. Careful planning will allow you to deliver targeted content to readers according to their stage in the buying process and proper distribution or promotion will allow your content to be found. There is such a vast amount of content being released online that distribution becomes a must-have to gain exposure. Now, let’s dive into how content marketing can help your eCommerce business grow.
Increase Organic Rankings
As I mentioned before, content marketing has a good impact on organic listings, but let’s go a little deeper to discover how it helps exactly. Google uses a smart algorithm to decide how to answer search queries and choose which listings come out on top. The system is simply looking for the best and most useful answer to the user’s query. Although the exact combination of factors is unknown, we know that factors such as domain authority, time on site, and bounce rate play an important role in ranking.
Good, engaging content can help you increase your domain authority and bring more traffic to your site which, in turn, helps your rankings and increases conversion rates. Also, make sure your content relates to the products you are selling or identifies with the interests of people within your target market. By doing this, you’ll increase your chances of making a sale and you’ll be identified as a go-to source in your field.
For example, if you sell firefighter t-shirts, write about topics related to the firefighter industry. This will enable you to engage with your target market.
Attract the Right Type of Customers Before They Are Ready to Buy
Content is not only useful to attract potential customers, but it can also help nurture leads and help turn customers into loyal fans. Envisioning your content strategy in this funnel type of way will allow you to make more engaging and relevant content for readers in different stages in the buying process.
For example, to attract potential customers in the discovery stage when the reader doesn’t know about your brand and is not ready to buy yet, you may want to write about topics related to the research phase of the buying process.
If you sell wedding dresses, the article may be about “how to find the perfect dress” or “what to look for in a wedding dress.” People searching for this type of content most probably have the intent of doing research before buying.
Search intent and target reader are key to creating any useful content. For example, if you have data that the parents of the bride are actually the ones buying wedding dresses, you would change the focus of the article topic to something like “How to pick the perfect wedding dress for your daughter.” Then, you would be talking to the right potential customer.
Remember that the person using or wearing your product may not be your actual customer. This is often the case with products related to children, where the parents are the buyers and kids are the users. Once the reader stumbles upon your article, you can capture their email to nurture them as a lead and convert them into paying customers.
Increase Your Reach with Content Shares
There’s nothing like the power of sharing to increase exposure and foment growth for a business. Good content encourages readers to share content on platforms like social media. In turn, this content can be shared by their friends, and the friends of their friends, resulting in a nice domino effect. We’ve seen this happen with viral videos about challenges or news on Facebook.
Not all your content, if any, will become viral, but there is still a chance it will become popular and share-worthy. Experiment with different topics, formats, and promoting tactics while having your target reader in mind.
As we’ve discovered above, content marketing is a key component in the growth of any eCommerce business. It allows the business to be found, nurtures leads, and keeps the customer loyal to the brand. It also helps increase the authority of the brand when you become the go-to source in the field. When planning your next content calendar, just remember to keep your target customers in mind. Not all buyers are users of the products.
