Content marketing isn’t novel; all your competitors are posting content on their websites and social media.
However, as an eCommerce business owner, strong content — and in the right formats — can still be your differentiator when competing with countless other stores for your audience’s attention.
Doubling down on the right types of content can help you outshine them and build better brand awareness and authority by showcasing value beyond your products. By strategically focusing on a few top formats, you can boost your search engine visibility (thus driving organic traffic to your store), influence buying decisions, encourage repeat business, and increase customer loyalty through personalized experiences.
In this blog post, we will delve into five essential types of content that can amplify your eCommerce marketing efforts. Each type offers unique advantages and, when used effectively, can help elevate your brand’s online presence and sales.
1. Creative Videos
Visual-first social media platforms, specifically Instagram and TikTok, are your primary marketing channels as an online business.
These are perfect for sharing creative videos that take the viewer on a guided tour of your product while highlighting its features and benefits, connecting your products with real-life experiences or challenges.
A well-crafted video should:
- Demonstrate Product Use: Videos show products in action, helping customers understand the value and functionality.
- Boost Engagement: Interactive elements like polls and Q&As better engage viewers by encouraging interaction with your brand.
- Build a Brand Narrative: Short-form storytelling within videos creates emotional connections with viewers, making your brand more memorable.
- Aid Discoverability: Optimized videos (using relevant keywords, audio, and hashtags) increase visibility on social media, drawing more potential customers to your content and, subsequently, your store.
- Drive Action: Videos with clear calls to action can direct viewers from the video to the purchase page, shortening the customer journey from discovery to conversion.
For example, you can give customers a peek behind the curtain of your operations, humanizing your brand. Glossier did this well with their behind-the-scenes video on the creative process that led to their Balm DotWorld initiative.
Source: Glossier on Instagram
You can also make creative short clips like Madewell, a jeans brand.
Source: Madewell on Instagram
With an AI-powered creative video editor like Videoleap, you can generate professional-quality videos with unique AI effects and filters, making your content pop in user feeds. Using its trending templates, you can quickly edit your videos into bite-sized clips likely to engage viewers.
2. Infographics
If you’re looking for a way to distill complex information into digestible, visually appealing content, then infographics may be the answer.
By combining data, text, and graphics, infographics can efficiently communicate your product’s unique selling points while building trust and authority. Infographics can include benefits, comparisons, statistics, and tutorials to help customers better understand your product or business.
Graphical content tends to retain audience attention longer than text-only content, increasing the likelihood of conversion. Also, due to their visual appeal, infographics are more likely to be shared across social media, organically expanding your brand’s reach.
They can even improve your website’s SEO. When distributed to relevant websites and blogs in your niche, infographics generate backlinks, boosting your ranking in search engines — which drives more traffic to your store.
Check out this beautiful infographic from Myprotein, a nutritional supplement brand. It clearly and concisely conveys the step-by-step process of how whey protein is made.
Source: Myprotein
To create infographics, you can use a solution like Piktochart, an online infographic-maker tool that lets you easily create professional-quality infographics, presentations, and other visual content.
3. Blog Posts for All Funnel Stages
Did you know that 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine like Google? Even with all the multimedia content out there, when it comes to getting your eCommerce website to rank high on Google and drive organic traffic, business blogging still plays a pivotal role.
Put simply, your website’s blog section is a great opportunity to enhance brand awareness and visibility on Google. In fact, blogs play a crucial role in attracting customers from search engines and converting them with engaging product-driven content.
Upper Funnel Blog Content
Starting with top-of-the-funnel content, these are blog posts on broader educational topics relevant to your niche that draw in readers who might not yet be familiar with your brand but are interested in your content themes.
Establish your brand as a trusted resource through informative and insightful posts, laying the groundwork for future engagement.
Mid-Funnel & Lower Funnel Blog Content
As potential customers move further down the funnel, their focus shifts towards comparing products, seeking alternatives, and making purchase decisions. Here, blog content can address more specific needs, such as product comparisons, detailed guides, and the benefits of your products over competitors.
This targeted content helps nudge readers from consideration to the decision stage, offering them the detailed information they need to make informed purchase choices.
Source: CartStack
Keyword research is foundational for your blog posts to rank on Google for relevant keywords and reach the right audience. Follow these tips to find the right keywords and use them effectively:
- Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs to find relevant keywords with sufficient search volume and manageable competition.
- Focus on keywords that match your audience’s search intent, whether they’re looking for general information or specific products.
- Incorporate these keywords naturally into your blog posts to boost your SEO, making it easier for customers to find you at the right moment.
Coconut Bowls, an eco-friendly kitchenware brand, actively posts recipes and sustainability tips on its blog, which helps it rank high on Google for relevant keywords and thus drive traffic to its store.
Source: Coconut Bowls
By now, we’re sure you’ve gotten your hands on ChatGPT, a free tool for generating content ideas, producing outlines and first drafts for your blog posts, and refining the language to ensure clarity and engagement. Google’s algorithms have gotten better at detecting and penalizing articles written purely by AI, so don’t rely on generative AI tools for entire blogs — they’re better used as jumping-off points or brainstorming aids.
4. User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful tool for eCommerce businesses, harnessing customers’ voices to give your business more credibility. UGC can include customer reviews, testimonials, photos, and videos.
This form of social proof can significantly influence purchasing decisions, as people tend to trust peer recommendations over traditional advertising and company promises.
Consider adding UGC to:
- Product pages (galleries, customer reviews, etc.)
- Social media content (both organic posting and reposts)
- Email marketing campaigns
For instance, the fitness brand Fabletics used UGC to enhance customer engagement by incorporating a hashtag, #livingmypassion, into their marketing emails. This strategy encouraged customers to share their product experiences on social media, potentially featuring them on the brand’s accounts. This kept customers engaged, working to foster a community of brand advocates.
Source: Smartrmail
Another great example is from the swimsuit brand Cupshe, which effectively uses customer-generated content to enhance the shopping experience on its product pages. Their page design template features essential product details at the top, complemented by customer reviews and photos below.
These images, comments, and ratings illustrate how the swimsuit fits various body types.
Source: Cupshe
To source and manage UGC for your eCommerce store, consider using a platform like Yotpo or TurnTo. These tools help you to generate and collect reviews and UGC to use on your website and in your marketing campaigns.
5. Nurturing Email Newsletters
Email is a highly potent content channel for eCommerce brands. It allows direct engagement with both new subscribers and past customers who have chosen to sign up to your email list during purchase.
Leveraging newsletters can help you nurture relationships with your audience with:
- Consistent product and brand updates
- Exclusive promotions and discounts
- Personalized content tailored to subscriber preferences.
To attract newsletter subscribers, you can offer incentives like special discounts or exclusive access to new products. Implementing an easy sign-up process on your website with a pop-up, on product pages and checkout, or via social media platforms also helps grow the subscriber list.
Here’s a great example of an effective email newsletter by Chamberlain Coffee:
Source: Really Good Emails
To streamline and automate your email marketing, consider using an email marketing tool like Mailchimp. It provides features like a drag-and-drop newsletter editor, personalized email automation, automated product recommendations, and detailed analytics to track campaign performance. Mailchimp supports integration with various eCommerce platforms, like Shift4Shop.
Wrapping Up
Effective content marketing informs, engages, and persuades customers to keep your brand on their radar or, better yet, give it a try and keep buying from you.
Each content type plays a crucial role in your eCommerce marketing strategy, from creative videos that showcase product uses in real-world scenarios to infographics that distill complex data into digestible visuals. Engaging blog posts deepen customer understanding and boost SEO, while user-generated content builds trust through authenticity. Email newsletters keep the communication lines open, encouraging repeat business.
Ultimately, implementing these content formats will both attract potential customers and foster lasting relationships with them, propelling your eCommerce store towards sustained growth.