Content is a crucial player in the world of ecommerce and digital marketing. It is an effective tool used to share a message and draw an audience. Aside from that, online businesses use content to drive traffic, boost brand awareness, increase online visibility, and generate valuable leads. However, content marketing is not as simple as one would think. It involves a ton of planning, strategizing, and optimizing in order to edge out the millions of ecommerce websites that are also using content as part of their marketing strategy. With that in mind, here’s a quick overview of content marketing and how to properly use it for your ecommerce business.

 

What is Content Marketing?

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Content marketing refers to the use and publishing of different content types with the primary goal of drawing an audience and generating leads. A content marketing strategy typically includes a variety of formats such as blog articles, e-books, infographics, video content, and the like. 

These different contents are then shared to a platform specifically for a targeted group, market, or audience. Content marketing campaigns are most often focused on driving an audience to your ecommerce website. This tactic is specifically effective as the target audience is those already out looking for answers online as to what your content aims to provide. 

A good content marketing strategy emphasizes the need to create and publish original, high-quality, valuable, and relevant content that would attract and generate interest from your target market. 

It is an effective marketing tactic that allows online businesses to communicate and establish a relationship with potential customers without coming across as too sales-y. So instead of promoting their products or services, content marketing aims to provide informational content that can be considered valuable by your audience. 

It is a non-disruptive form of marketing that allows the customers to consume your content as they want and slowly consider your website relevant and valuable. From this, consistent quality content marketing turns leads into loyal customers. 

 

Benefits of Content Marketing

Whether you are just starting a business online or already a massive global company, producing content can play a crucial role in your marketing strategy. In general, content marketing allows businesses to share valuable content with their audience. This helps build a sense of trust with potential buyers as well as build a relationship with customers. Keeping your audience entertained, engaged, and involved also helps boost brand awareness and brand loyalty. 

Aside from that, publishing quality content is one of the most effective ways to generate leads. Part of the content marketing strategy involves publishing content that people are already searching about. Therefore, it effectively drives traffic and generates valuable leads that can be further encouraged and turned into actual sales.

 

Tips For Starting A Content Marketing Campaign 

Publishing content is easy. However, using content for marketing and business purposes requires more planning and strategizing. Given that ecommerce businesses often use content marketing as part of their business plan and strategy, it’s important to know how to properly execute a content marketing campaign. With that, here are some tips and tricks on how to use content marketing for ecommerce and how your content can stand out from the competition.

 

Optimize your content for SEO

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Search engine optimization or SEO is undoubtedly one of the best ways to drive traffic to your ecommerce website. Publishing content about what people are already searching for is one sure way to bring them to your website. However, SEO content marketing is more than just reporting about what is the latest trend or news.

In order to rank your website high in search engine result pages (SERPs), it’s important that you know what elements to improve and optimize. Learn about keyword research and optimize your content with words and phrases relevant to engine searches. Practicing link building with reputable sites and sources can also help search engines understand your content better and determine that it contains valuable information. And most importantly, make sure that you are creating high-quality and original content and avoid plagiarism at all costs. 

 

Learn about short-from and long-form content

While people tend to consume content they like, sometimes there are just articles, blogs, or even videos that are too long or too short to be considered valuable. There have been varying opinions on what the suitable content length should be for content marketing. Should online businesses stick with short-form blogs and video highlights or should they dwell on evergreen content featuring in-depth discussions? 

Short-form and long-form content have their own share of advantages and disadvantages. The important part for digital marketers is to figure out when and where short-form and long-form content offer the best return on investment (ROI). 

Short-from types of content are those under 1,200 words for texts and less than 10 minutes long for videos or audio. One of the benefits of short-form content is that it is easier to produce and consume. Some consumer habits involve skimming which prevents them from digesting whole articles, full documentaries, and in-depth podcast discussions. Instead, they thrive with short-from content such as TikTok videos, social media posts, and the like. 

The beauty of short-form content is that it can communicate its message to consumers in a short amount of time. However, the challenge for digital marketers is to know how to make their content impactful and memorable. Fifteen-second videos are considerably too quick to send out a full message while short blogs and articles couldn’t fit all information in less than 1,200 words. Creativity and innovation play a huge role in ensuring that short-form content used in marketing gets the attention and piques the interest of the target audience. 

On the other hand, long-form content offers the complete opposite. This type of content provides detailed information and in-depth discussion with the goal of sharing the most valuable content with consumers. Long-form content is typically better for search engine optimization (SEO) and allows brands to establish their reliability, credibility, and reputation as experts in their field or niche. This makes long-form content the better option to generate quality leads and boost website traffic. However, it’s important to consider not everyone can reach a whole 2,000-word article or watch an hour-long TEDxTalk.

 

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