Providing relevant and relatable content for your customers (or prospective customers) is not only a great way to engage with them, but also to build trust and establish your brand as a knowledgeable, authoritative, and charismatic presence on the Internet.
Content marketing for eCommerce sites can seem like a daunting task; after all, we assume e-stores have one primary purpose: move units. Capturing user attention in a social manner that doesn’t come across as blatant marketing can be tricky, but provides measurable ROI with streams of benefits running through community development, branding, engagement, and sales. Here are some content strategies to help you get started.
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Website design is crucial to conversion rate. This eBook gives you some insights on product grouping, website focus, customer expectations, and live chat measurement.
Download NowWe’ll discuss video content shortly. For now, let’s focus on still images. Any successful eCommerce site will have invested in high-quality photographic content with a number of applications, not the least of which is creating beautiful product pages. You don’t need to look any further than the official Apple online store to see what’s possible with some great product shots.
Another way to really leverage image-heavy content is to get your brand on sites like Instagram and Pinterest, where you can really show off the details and features of your products. Pinterest in particular has proven to be an excellent way for companies to get the word out about their products; in fact, customers redirected to a brand’s website from Pinterest are 10% more likely to make a purchase than those who were not. Sony Electronics, for example, has a Pinterest board called “I can haz gadgets?” which features animals with technology.
Memes have been around as long as the Internet has existed; some of us still remember the whirlwind of hilarity and outrage that surrounded the infamous Bonsai Kitten website, arguably one of the earliest examples of the Internet meme.
The good news is that you don’t have to open yourself up to angry letters from PETA to put memes to work for you. Plenty of companies have already realized the power of the meme in eCommerce. Memes have a tendency to light up social media sites; they’re good for a chuckle and, if executed well, won’t be obvious as an advertising medium. Because of their popularity and inherent share-ability, memes can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Memes are generally used on the internet to describe the most popular manifestations, such as Success Kid or Bad Luck Brian; images renowned for a thematic joke expressed with bold text along the top and bottom of the image. However, memes do not have to fit the popularized build and some of the most successful memes are unique, such as the Mac vs. PC commercial.
This generated some of their largest social engagement per post and with 31 shares, equates to free social media advertising.
Arguably the most interactive and effective way to embrace visitors is with professional/creative videos – usually ‘teasers’ or demos of products and services. Creating how-to videos is a great way to turn your page into a share-able asset, to inspire customers and informational shoppers, and to stress the direct benefits customers will gain.
This can give you an opportunity to explain the subtleties of your product in ways that may not translate well to text alone. You might even consider enlisting your existing customers; Amazon does a great job of encouraging reviewers to upload videos so that shoppers can see a product in action.
If you are running an eCommerce site, you can also include a call-to-action button beneath your video, such as “add to cart”, making it more transactional.
Email marketing remains a valuable tool for eCommerce sites, especially when it’s done effectively.
HubSpot explains three primary tactics and benefits:
Ultimately, every email should be tethered to an eCommerce goal such as newsletter/e-catalog sign-ups, sharing a coupon, taking advantage of a bundle deal, or encouraging social engagement for a chance to win a gift card.
Infographics have been around in various forms for quite a long time, but only recently have the tools necessary to create them, such as Photoshop, GIMP, or Piktochart, become widely available to small businesses and entrepreneurs. It’s now more affordable than ever (and often free) to create high-quality, visually stimulating, and information-rich content.
So what can you do with an infographic? Like video content, you’re limited almost exclusively by your imagination.
Because infographics are so efficient at presenting a lot of information all at once, they can be a great way to communicate with your user base about issues they may be interested in. For example: you may have an opportunity to explore the larger issues or trends that your product or service is connected to. For example, The World’s Fastest Roads infographic highlights the speed limits and accident statistics for the most high-speed roads around the globe. This is for an eCommerce site in the auto industry, making it relevant enough to the brand, but broad enough to appeal to the general public.
The most important takeaway here is that infographics are a great opportunity to turn your brand into not just a marketing machine, but a resource. Educating, impressing, and inspiring would-be customers before they commit to making a purchase is a great way to build trust and to provide a national and perhaps even global context for the products your company sells.
Website design is crucial to conversion rate. This eBook gives you some insights on product grouping, website focus, customer expectations, and live chat measurement.
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Jesse Aaron is a professional marketing blogger and a Community Manager at WebpageFX. He writes about eCommerce, social media marketing, and conversion rate optimization. Follow Jesse on Google+
