If you are familiar with the internet, websites, and SEO, you probably understand the importance of content marketing.
But is content marketing crucial for the success of your e-commerce business?
Yes!
Your e-commerce business needs it the most.
It is important for businesses to keep devising ways so that they can effectively communicate with their prospects and customers. Businesses adopt different ways to put across their messages to their customers and prospects. And, content marketing is by far the most effective way of communicating with your target audience, especially if you are in the retail vertical.
The retail sector needs content marketing the most because their target audience is selective and they interact only with the content that interests them.
Sample these statistics:
Effective content marketing can increase the conversion rates by almost 6X for an e-commerce brand.
Websites that do not have a content marketing strategy in place have an average conversion rate of 0.5%, whereas those brand websites that focus on content marketing have an average conversion rate of 2.9%. What a staggering difference to say the least.
Also, we know that the time spent by the adults on the digital media has constantly seen an increase over the years and is set to go up further.
Content marketing, therefore, helps you conquer the social media battle as well and is the best place for the word of the mouth publicity. Social media is the go-to place if you want to create a buzz for your product, service, or brand.
In this blog, we will take you through why content marketing is important for your e-commerce business. But before getting into that lets first try to understand what is content marketing?
What is content marketing?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Naturally, content marketing has found favour from all forward-thinking marketers because traditional marketing is getting less and less effective. All the leading brands across the world are using content marketing to promote their brands.
You do not have to hard sell your product or service in this form of marketing. All you do is provide truly relevant content that is useful to your customers and prospects that help them solve their issues, in turn, making them your loyal clients.
And, why does content marketing work?
Customers are fed-up with offers, advertisements, and sops to buy products and services on a day to day basis. The slide in traditional marketing has led to the rapid rise of content marketing where companies and brands publish relevant content in the form of articles, blogs, etc. to provide useful information targeted at their customers. It is an inbound marketing strategy where you do not go to the users at the point of sale instead content visibility ensures that customers come to you.
Content marketing helps you generate brand equity and attracts new customers. Content marketing educates your prospects which helps in building a rapport with them that can lead to an immediate sale and long-term loyalty.
When you ensure that your content marketing is effective, it spreads like wildfire on the social networks, and word of mouth publicity can generate a lot of goodwill for your brand which helps drive sales.
Why do brands need a content marketing strategy?
Content marketing educates and solves your customer’s problems and is the perfect way to create customer engagement. Content marketing improves your search engine rankings, increases brand awareness, and drives traffic. Also, content marketing promotes integrated marketing, generates leads, and provides you the competitive edge.
In content marketing, your message directly interacts with your target audience which creates a direct connection with them causing deeper levels of emotions as compared to the traditional ways. This leaves a lasting impact on your customers as you can convey your brand message more effectively.
According to Demand Metric, content marketing is three times more effective in lead generation than traditional forms of marketing.
Content marketing is more cost-effective which works out to 62% less than traditional marketing.
With custom content, 82% of the customers develop a positive opinion about the brand.
Content marketing helps 70% of the customers to develop a personal connection.
Content marketing helps 72% of the customers to develop a relationship with a brand due to custom content.
This is how your e-commerce business can benefit from an effective content marketing strategy
People in the sales function know it pretty well that selling is more about building an emotional connection with your customer.
Sample these statistics:
- 60% of the customers plan to buy a product only after getting informed about it.
- 90% of the customers like to read custom content that is relevant.
- And, 86% of the customers are ready to pay more for better customer experience.
This is how your e-commerce business can benefit from an effective content marketing strategy:
Content marketing helps in product research – Before buying a product, more than 80% of the online shoppers first conduct detailed research. What is more interesting is that around 60% of these customers start their product research over search engines. Hence, with a content marketing strategy in place, businesses in the e-commerce sector stand a better chance to attract online shoppers to their site through the process of search. For example, up-to-date product reviews and insightful buying guides are an effective content marketing strategy that can do wonders for your e-commerce business.
It increases your brand awareness – It is a known fact that brands that produce custom content are more likely to develop a positive connection with their customers. This proves that putting in place a content strategy is an effective method of building customer relations. If you generate high-quality content, then people will retain information about your brand and can also make a positive association with it. And, in case you use social media to promote your content, then it can create a lot of awareness and buzz about your brand. It is no secret that relevant and useful content is shared on the social media like wildfire which increases your brand awareness significantly.
It improves the overall experience of the shopper – Content marketing provides relevant and useful information to your online customers, which generates more user engagement and also keeps them entertained. When you provide custom content to your online shoppers, they tend to spend more time on your site. For example, adding terms and conditions policies increases your customer’s understanding as well as enhances his or her trust in your site. Hence, content that is high in quality increases the overall experience of your customers.
It allows you to display your products in a more meaningful way – Custom content can display the products in the right frame and in a more meaningful way. While going through the content, an individual can understand the value he or she would get if they buy the product which increases their urge to own your brand. The custom content educates the customers on how to use the product and informs them about its useful features. All this develops a stronger emotional bond with your customers which encourage them to buy the product.
It increases conversions and augments brand loyalty – If people can relate to your content more, then they develop trust in your brand and feel connected to it. Hence, if your content is useful and relevant, then people get attracted to your brand more and this, in turn, can increase your conversions. If you carefully position call-to-action in your content, you can redirect many individuals where you want them to go. You can increase your conversions if you have a good content strategy in place.
Useful and relevant content not just improves your conversions, it also boosts customer loyalty. People who find your content interesting and useful will keep coming back to your site to gain knowledge which, in turn, can boost customer loyalty.
Content in the form of product videos increases the trust and augments sale – Adding product or explainer videos to your site is another way of influencing your customers positively. Almost three fourth of the online buyers make their decision after watching the video. Not just that around half of the online buyers (46%) avoid shopping if they don’t get to see a video. Also, 71% of your online buyers consider that a video offers a better explanation. And, not to forget that 58% of your online shoppers trust a brand more if it has a product video. Hence, you need to add product videos to increase the trust and augment sales.
If you want to improve customer engagement for your e-commerce store, you should get in touch with vStacks Infotech now. We will make sure that you get a smart content marketing strategy for your e-commerce business.
vStacks Infotech has been in the world of digital marketing for long, and we not only create meaningful content for your e-commerce store, but we can also create, run, and manage your social media activities.
