The internet is filled with numerous content for people to consume. Social media sites overflow with posts while ecommerce websites continue to produce web articles designed to provide valuable information for people in need. Given the demand for good content, there is no wonder why digital marketers have utilized content marketing as part of their strategies. If you are starting a business, here’s everything you need to know about content marketing and how to best use it in the electronic commerce industry.

 

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a widely used strategy in the ecommerce industry. It is the smart and strategic use of various types of digital content to reach specific marketing goals and audiences. The idea behind this marketing strategy is to capture people’s attention by providing them with quality content that would drive them to take actionable steps that would benefit your ecommerce business. 

 

Key Elements of Good Content

Source: Pexels

Not all digital content is automatically good content. There are tons of articles, blogs, videos, and the like that don’t exactly provide people with what they are looking for or what they need. 

The center of any content marketing strategy should focus on the needs of your defined audience. It should be able to provide your audience with valuable content in a timely manner. Otherwise, it won’t be able to attract people’s attention and interest. 

Thus, quality content should have these three key elements: 

 

Relevance

Your content marketing strategy should account for the needs and interests of your target audience at a given point in time. For example, it is not ideal to create content about the iPhone Gen 3 when the latest model is already the iPhone 14. Content relevance revolves around the idea that your content should provide information within a time frame when your audience is interested the most. 

 

Value

Publishing content in a timely manner is not enough to create quality content for your marketing strategy. Your content should also be able to provide your audience with valuable information that can help provide answers to or solutions for their unmet needs. 

 

Consistency

To establish your brand as a reliable and trustworthy source of content, your content marketing strategy must be able to produce relevant and valuable information consistently. Consistency is key to building a loyal community base that is more likely to look up to your brand, trust your content, and come back to your website whenever they are in need. 

 

Purpose Of Content Marketing

While your content marketing strategy must highlight the needs of your target audience, it should also be designed to meet your set goals and objectives for the campaign. 

 

Boost brand awareness and credibility

One of the most important goals of any marketing campaign is to advertise and promote your brand or ecommerce business to as many people as people. Content marketing is an effective way to interact and engage with an audience, providing them with valuable information that can help solve their problems. The ability to offer help and provide solutions puts your brand in a position of authority with credibility and reliability. 

 

Generate leads

Good content can bring your audience to take actionable steps. This includes subscribing to newsletters, registering for an event, or signing up for a promo or voucher. Such steps provide marketers with important consumer details such as their email addresses, locations, and other demographic information that can be utilized in other marketing tactics such as email marketing and inbound marketing. 

 

Create a solid audience and consumer base

More than presence and visibility, another important element of content marketing is its ability to build loyalty and establish a solid audience and consumer base. A larger audience helps in brand promotions and advertisements while brand loyalty is crucial in converting sales and increasing business revenue. 

There are several more ways that content can help achieve your marketing goals and objectives. This includes the likes of

    • Educating audiences
    • Establishing trust
    • Supporting sales efforts and campaigns
    • Boosting online presence and engagements
    • Promoting digital goods, products, and services
    • Creating relationships with customers and clients

 

5 Steps To Building A Successful Content Marketing Campaign

Source: Pexels

 

Step 1: Identify your content marketing objectives

The first step to any marketing campaign is to set the goals and objectives you want to achieve. In content marketing, this can be to boost brand awareness, increase revenue, interact and engage with people, generate leads, and so on. These goals will serve as the foundation and guide on how to further plan and design your content marketing efforts. 

It is also important for you to determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your campaign so that you can identify which aspects of your content needs adjustments and improvements. Some content marketing KPIs include

    • Website traffic
    • Social media engagements
    • Conversion rates
    • Click through rates
    • Newsletter subscriptions

 

Step 2: Determine the ideal marketing platforms and channels

Choosing the right ecommerce platform or digital channel is crucial in building a successful content marketing campaign. Your choice of marketing channel should be based on your target audience and demographic. Generally, the most common marketing channels utilized for content marketing are social media sites and their ecommerce website. 

Social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn provide access to a significantly large and diverse audience. These sites are also easily accessible and widely used globally. On the other hand, publishing content on your ecommerce website helps improve visibility through search engine optimization. It also brings traffic directly to your online store, which can help improve online sales and retail. 

 

Step 3: Plan your content creation process

Producing quality content requires a lot of planning and effort. In order to come up with relevant and valuable content consistently for your marketing campaign, it is important that you plan each aspect of it from start to finish.

One of the first things that you need to figure out is the type of content that you want to create. Content marketing can utilize a wide range of content types and media. You can use blogs, articles, videos, images, infographics, graphic design, and more. Ideally, the content type should be received well by your target audience and fit your choice of marketing platform.

Once you’ve determined your choice of content type, you can then decide on the budget allotted for your campaign. Some of the factors you need to consider when setting a budget for your content marketing campaign include

    • Tools and equipment required
    • Cost for ad space and paid promotions
    • Additional employee or talent fees

Start your content creation process by making a content calendar and establishing a content structure and framework to follow for every content that you produce. Take your time researching and polishing your content before publishing them online. 

 

Step 4: Publish and distribute content

 

Using your content calendar, you can organize and manage the way you publish and distribute your content online. An important part of this step is to learn how to optimize your content for search engines so that it would be more visible when a related keyword is searched on the web. Keep track of your calendar and make sure that you are publishing your content on every platform timely.  


Step 5: Gauge and analyze the results

Give your content some time to see measure and analyze the results of your campaign. Go back to your key performance indicators and determine which content is performing well and which ones are not producing as much. Identify what needs to be changed and then adjust your content creation process and marketing tactics accordingly. 

 

Bottomline

The online retail or ecommerce world is a highly competitive industry. In order to make an online sale, it is crucial that you are able to promote and advertise your brand effectively. Content marketing has proven to be one of the most successful and effective strategies for ecommerce businesses as long as you are able to utilize it properly. 

 

Want to know more about digital marketing strategies? Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up for our newsletter. We also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you prefer something more personal.

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