Build Real Connections with Content Marketing for eCommerce
With so many businesses jumping on the ecommerce boom and big players like Amazon and Walmart increasing their respective online shopping experiences, it’s easy for smaller online retailers to get lost in the shuffle. To gain the online visibility needed to grow, content marketing is a strategy that builds relationships with customers and puts your brand on the winning side of search engines like Google.
Through high-quality materials designed to provide real value to readers, our content marketing strategy:
- Helps you climb Google and other search engine rankings
- Draws the right people to your website and resources
- Gives you a platform to build customer loyalty for your brand
- Decreases the need for paid advertising
Sound good? New Leaf Marketing Solutions is a small, mighty content marketing agency for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and startups looking for a better way to connect with customers and stand out in crowded markets. If you have a hidden-gem product, take pride in serving customers, and want to grow, let us show you how content marketing can help!
eCommerce Businesses Need a Content Marketing Strategy
If you launch an amazing online store in the woods but customers can’t find it, was it really ever there? Content marketing is the flare that gets your brand above the treetops — so you can make connections with the right people and show your value. Whether you’re a third-party reseller or a direct-to-consumer retailer, there are big benefits to building content around your products and platform.
Let’s face it: you’re not going to win every transaction on price or shipping capabilities. Amazon is a juggernaut. But that’s okay. Whether you’re looking for B2B buyers or B2C shoppers, the best customers come from a good fit. There are plenty of ecommerce platforms crushing sales by building followers and brand enthusiasts. Maybe your brand has a unique story or mission like Patagonia. Maybe you want to relate with your customers like Dollar Shave Club or create a cultural groundswell like Red Bull. Content marketing is a tool to create those connections — letting customers learn about your brand while collecting information on their way to their next purchase.
As your content marketing strategy matures, you’ll get better at resonating with your ideal customers, and your improved ranking on search engines like Google will bring more people to your virtual door.
Want to know more about how we can help?
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is all about gaining market exposure, building traction on search engines, and moving customers closer to your shopping cart by offering materials that build their knowledge or resonates with their values.
It could be a blog, video, comic book, telegram, or anything else. The key is to focus on your customer, not your products. Your customers are out there, right now, surfing the web for answers. They trust search engine results and click away — the same as you probably do in your personal or professional life. By creating materials that address people’s online searches, you give your brand a chance to make an impression that could lead to a long-time customer.
When your content focuses on addressing customer challenges instead of your products, you’re:
- Proving that you identify with your customer’s lifestyle and needs
- Showing interest in helping — not just profits
- Building trust with prospects and search engines like Google
- Bubbling up customers that could be your next brand ambassadors or influencers
What is Great eCommerce Content?
There’s more to it than just “doing content marketing.” Content marketing isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme or a few pieces of content. It’s a strategy and investment that builds. But, what is good content marketing? It’s a tough question, because the value of content marketing comes down to your business goals.
At the highest level, good content marketing achieves three things:
- Solves a reader challenge or provides some level of insights
- Boosts search engine visibility and inbound traffic
- Ties back to a business goal
Developing a content strategy will identify key challenges to address in your content, business goals, and search engine optimization (SEO) needed to give you a foothold in search result pages. Goals vary by company, but some common examples include increasing website traffic, building a newsletter following, increasing shopping cart size, or opt-ins for a subscription service.
When getting into specific topics, we focus on a customer-oriented scope for each piece of content. A piece of content might help with:
- Awareness: Coverage of current or upcoming industry and world events
- Decision-making: Information on product, price, or other trends
- Overcoming challenges: Tips and educational materials on specific topics
- Aspirations: Providing perspectives to help achieve a transformative goal or milestone
These are high-level, but you’ll notice everything focuses on a benefit to the reader. We generate topics based on what people actually search for, and we mix in knowledge found uniquely within your organization to put a spin on content that only you can provide.
Why work with New Leaf Marketing Solutions for your eCommerce Content Marketing?
We deliver much more than blogs to fill up your website. We invest in aligning our content strategy with your business goals, getting to know your ideal customers, understanding the competition in your industry (and for your key search terms), and put together a comprehensive program that helps you get the most out of everything we create.
We’ve been doing content marketing for almost two decades, including launching and managing several ecommerce stores generating millions in revenue. As a small agency, we can give focused attention to your business needs and truly get to know your team, solutions, and audience.
FAQs about Content Marketing for eCommerce
It depends on the maturity of your market, competition, and how much high-value content you publish. Some businesses may start to see results in just a few months, while others may take a year or two before it replaces other marketing strategies. We help determine this in our kickoff strategy session with new clients.
Blogs on their own won’t move the needle much without a strategy driving the topics, SEO, and efforts to get more visibility to your posts. With a content marketing strategy, we develop a plan that aligns content to your business goals. We’ll determine what kind of content to create, how to link and weave disparate content together, a publishing schedule, and plans to reach your ideal audience.
Running ads will generate leads or give your brand visibility. However, digital ads on Google, Facebook, or other platforms tend to be very expensive. Also, the quality of leads varies as ads don’t always find people when they’re ready to buy. Leveraging content marketing can help you improve brand awareness, increase conversions, and move people from researching to purchasing.