February 22, 2023
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If you've taken any interest in marketing lately, you'll have heard the 'Content Is King' mantra countless times. So what exactly is content marketing? Can you do it? How does it benefit your ecommerce business? Let's give these basic questions an answer.
In simple terms, content marketing is centred on the creation of well-produced content, distributed via a number of channels with the aim to acquire and nurture traffic, ultimately resulting in conversions.
It may be in the form of blog posts, videos, podcasts or other formats that will both entertain and inform the viewer.
This sort of content is not only engaging for visitors, but appealing to Google too, helping with SEO and higher page ranking.
As well as producing the content, the best marketers closely track and measure the results of their efforts, to build an understanding of what grabs their audience's attention, and converts into goals - sales in our case!
The consumer is now at the heart of everything and anything we do. But how do you get all of your interesting ideas across to your target market?
Start by identifying your target demographic. Small business owners? People interested in buying property? Stay-at-home mums? In the case of an e-commerce website, you will be speaking to your potential customers.
Then consider what content you can create to engage this audience, which will serve the purpose of building trust and improving your brand.
Next, come up with ideas. Start with a brainstorm. You may want to research what content has worked before for your business, maybe there was a great tweet you put out that was relevant, maybe there was a story you shared in a LinkedIn group that was shared a lot.
It's a good idea to observe your competitors of course: whatever they are doing right, might work for you too, if you do share the same customer base.
From these ideas you can create a plan of attack with dates and specific goals you want to achieve. Planning is crucial, as maintaining all of these different activities requires time and ongoing effort.
You should be constantly referring back to (and adjusting) this plan as you measure your results.
Social media platforms are excellent distribution channels for your content - they are a free and, if used correctly, can be a really effective tool to generate traffic.
However, there's a trick here that must carefully be taken into account. Don't fall into the trap of distributing the same content across every platform - each one has a different kind of user and tone of voice. To blanket-spread the same message without distinction will show your audience you don't really understand who they are and how to really engage with them.
Think about types of content being created that work well for other companies or brands. Who is sharing this content? Why does it work? Who has it been created for?
If your content is engaging, followers will share it, which is a way to show they are 'liking' what you are doing. This will help your SEO as Google now uses social media shares as a key indicator of site quality.
Blog - This acts as the glue which holds everything together. It gives your customers insights and tips, which they then associate with your brand.
Guest Blogging - Try writing for other blogs in your industry. It is a really good way to raise awareness around you, and a great chance for networking. Naturally, one thing here is to make sure that the guest blogging isn't with a competitor.
Newsletter - Together with your blog, your newsletter is the best way you have to communicate with your audience. Newsletters can only be sent to readers that have opted-in to your mailing list, which is a sure sign they are interested in receving news from you. And because they reach their individual inboxes, you have a chance to receive a high response - rather than waiting for your reader to visit your blog, you are bringing your stories to them.
There are quite a few email marketing providers now (such as Mailchimp) that offer excellent design, which means you can align the look of your newsletters to that of your website - consistency is key in branding.
Your newsletter is the perfect way to share your news, offers and blog posts - but remember to keep your content mixed and balanced. Nobody wants to receive a weekly sales pitch that brings them no other benefit, and if they do they might quickly reach for the 'unsubscribe' button.
PR Opportunities - Platfroms such as Gorkana or Google News are really useful for collecting all the different news from a relevant industry.
If you find a story you can offer insights on, contact journalists and explain your credibility and how you can help them add to their content with your expert advice.
Images - Create a Pinterest page. This is a really great way to gather some of your favourite images that are reflective of your industry or even more specifically your business. It's a chance to get colourful and creative. If you have interesting content, people will share it and help build your brand for you, see Wool & The Gang's Pinterest page as an example.
Videos - Gone are the times when producing video content was expensive and time-consuming. You can now create information videos on a shoestring budget, simply with your smartphone. And it's worth it: videos produce high engagement and increase traffic.
Infographics - Information graphics are visual representations of data or knowledge, intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. They are very popular at the moment: readers can gain a lot of useful information from them, and so tend to share them a lot. Make sure that this content is unique and engaging, with good graphics.
White Papers - These are informative e-documents which analyse an issue more in-depth - which is why they tend to be particularly useful in B2B communication.
An example of a whitepaper we might produce would be "A guide to converting more customers on your online store" - it's something we have expert knowledge about and is valuable to our target market.
If you're building a mailing list, a great thing to do is restrict access to a whitepaper until a visitor has provided their email address. This is a great way to attract a targetted audience and get them to sign up to your newsletter, so that you have the opportunity to directly share your content with them on a regular basis.
Surveys - A good way to test the waters about a new business initiative, and gather valuable input directly from your target audience. There are quite a few programmes now that allow you to very easily conduct a survey online, which feed information and traffic back to your website. A good one is Survey Monkey, and it's free.
There are many ways of getting your brand out there, just use your imagination and think about where your audience will be looking for good content.
Content marketing is hot topic in online marketing. Many organisations are getting stuck into this, creating specialist roles for content producers and strategists within their teams.
Content marketing is often a lot cheaper than other forms of marketing and if you follow the steps above correctly then there is no reason you can't make it work.
So get cracking with that strategy, come up with some ideas, go social and the key is to plan, plan and plan.
