eCommerce Content Marketing Strategies in 2024

Whether you are an established player in your niche or are just starting out with eCommerce now that COVID-19 has closed many brick-and-mortar stores, we are going to show you exactly how eCommerce content marketing can take your business to the next level on search engines such as Google.

We’ll show you how to make content your target audience actually cares about and how to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible while giving your search engine rankings a healthy boost for good measure.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on developing valuable and educational content that is targeted specifically to a well-defined audience with the goal of building brand awareness and authority. 

Content marketing isn’t about writing a sales pitch for your business or telling people how great your products are but rather educating people through different forms of content such as blog articles, eBooks, podcasts, videos, and webinars in order to become a trusted and reliable resource potential customers can turn to.

While the underlying goal of content marketing is to increase your sales, it should not be the focus of your content. Many people might believe this is counterintuitive and could even feel like you are giving all of your secrets away to your competitors. We have seen this strategy work across many different niches and industries and we have found the opposite to be true. You could even be our competitor reading this right now, which means we know we’ve done something right because you see us as a trusted source of information in the industry.

Why should you care?

People don’t buy things from businesses they don’t trust. When it comes to building a solid relationship with your customers, content marketing is the most powerful weapon in your arsenal. 

People also tend to do their research. The goal is for your business to provide information to customers along the journey from the research phase to the buy phase then you will be able

Consumers are looking for brands that are authentic and are only interested in information that specifically solves the problem they have – this is where your content comes in.

Not only does it demonstrate your position in the market, it also gives your customers increased avenues for finding your business’ online properties such as your website and social media.  If your customers come to you as a trusted source of information, where will they go when they need to buy something?

Step 1: Who exactly am I building content for?

The whole purpose of this strategy is to build your brand authority to become a serious thought leader within your niche that your audience actually listens to. This is achieved by consistently developing fresh and relevant content that gives the answers your target audience is looking for.

So before you even think about making content you need to become familiar with who your target audience is.

Some useful characteristics to know include:

• Location
• Age
• Income
• Education
• Where they spend time online
• Style of language they use to describe the problem they have

This data can be collected through surveys or analysis of your existing customers via Google Analytics or third-party tools such as Narratiive.

Ideally, you want to ask broad questions around your product to let your customers speak as much as possible.

Polarising questions such as “What do you hate about X?” or “What do you love most about X” that are relevant to your niche can also give you valuable insight into the pain points your customers experience.

This will help you collect invaluable information on the exact language your customers are using to describe the problems/solutions they are facing around your product and will allow you to develop content that resonates with them.

Step 2: Finding the right content

The goal of this step is to learn more about what questions and problems your audience are having. We don’t want to aimlessly create content that delivers no value and your audience has no interest in.

The best way to start is to find out what your audience is searching for in Search Engines such as Google and Bing. There are a number of ways to find search data from both 1st and 3rd party sources with paid and free options, we have listed a few of the best below.

• Google Trends
• Keyword Surfer
• Keywords Everywhere
• QuestionDB
• Answer The Public
• Ahrefs Keyword Generator
• SEMRush Keyword Magic
• Your Google Search Console account

For our research example we will be using a combination of Keyword Surfer chrome extension, which is completely free, and QuestionDB which has free and paid options. Learn more about keyword research tools or read this guide to learn about the keyword research process here.

In this example, our niche is “wedding rings.”.

By searching “wedding rings” on Google the Keyword Surfer tool gives us the estimated monthly volume of that search term which shows how popular it is. We can also see that Google is showing a “People Also Ask” box which gives you some ideas for alternate content. 

We can also see that the top result, Larsen Jewellery has done this correctly by answering some questions about wedding rings on their page and that is now also showing in Google.

Next we can use the QuestionDB tool to see what sub-topics and questions people might be interested in for the “wedding ring” topic. Already this is giving us an idea of the type of questions and product features potential customers care about.

The strategy is to repeat this process using more words in your keywords to find obscure topics that your audience would like to know about. 

We can also plug in some of the top keywords (keywords with high search volume) into Buzzsumo to give us an idea of what content is working well in the “wedding rings” niche.

Hopefully, by now you have a decent sized list of questions, problems, and topics that your target audience is interested in that you can use to start building your content.

Step 3: Sharing your content

So, by now you should know everything there is to know about your audience, you’ve found what content is working well in your niche and have developed an awesome piece of content.

Now it’s time to start getting your content out there.

• Your Website – The best place to put your content is on a web property you own. You can then share snippets of that content on other properties listed below and attempt to direct readers and viewers back to your website.
• Medium.com – Is a super powerful blogging platform that lets you easily share original blog posts. Medium rewards long-form content and is a great way to get in front of a new audience, get discovered by other bloggers in your niche and grow your social media following so make sure you include links at the end to make it easy for your readers.  
• Instagram – Relies heavily on visual content so ensure you’ve got awesome high-quality photos of your product, don’t forget to use plenty of hashtags!
• LinkedIn – Here you’ll find a more business-oriented audience, that surprisingly has higher levels of engagement on written content than you would expect.
• Facebook – Is your bread and butter of social media networks with the majority of your audience having some form of presence on the site. Facebook is a great place to not only get instant feedback on your content but is also a great place to engage and interact with your audience.
• Quora – Is a Q&A site that gets 160 million+ visitors a month. Providing great answers to questions that are relevant to your niche will not only improve your authority and influence but will also improve your brand’s visibility in search engines.
• Twitter – If your product is detail oriented or relies heavily on text, Twitter is the way to go. Here you can reel your audience in with a snappy intro that links to your in-depth content piece.
• YouTube – One of the best places to put out your video content as YouTube receives millions of visitors.

Make sure you focus on the platforms that are not only suited to the type of content you are sharing but are also where your audience spends the majority of their time.

In order to get the most out of using these sites for your eCommerce content marketing strategy, you need to make sure you are consistently posting useful content, engaging with your followers and staying up to date with the latest trends and news in your niche.

Guest Blogging: How to Build Your Authority while Boosting Traffic

Guest blogging is not a new concept but is still a super effective and simple tactic that any business that is serious about its eCommerce content marketing strategy can implement.

Simply search “(insert your niche) blog” on Google this will give you a list of all the top sites writing content related to your niche.

Once you find a site that has similar content send them an email offering to contribute a high-quality blog post that their audience will enjoy in exchange for a backlink to your site.

Guest blogging is a win-win strategy since backlinks that are relevant to your website are viewed favorably by Google and will also have the added bonus of targeted referral traffic that could potentially lead to conversions.

You can find a comprehensive guide to link-building outreach here.

Create Useful Content Assets for Others:

The aim of the game here is to create a piece of content that other sites in your niche would want to repost or link back to on their own sites.

Some ways to do this include:

Infographics: Comprehensive infographics that summarise complex or large amounts of information in your niche e.g. “Wedding ring fingers in different cultures around the world”. The more effort you put into the infographic the greater the chance blogs will include it on their own site.

Conduct a study: Bloggers love to reference interesting and useful studies in their blog posts. To capitalize on this consider conducting a study or test that relates to hot topics within your niche. For example “Wireless Headphones vs. Wired Headphones: Which Actually Sounds Better?”.

“Skyscraper” blog post: Brian Dean’s famous strategy involves looking at a popular topic within your niche and then building the most comprehensive and in-depth version of it. Not only will this encourage people to link back to the resource it will also do wonders for your brand’s authority.

Final word

Content marketing is undoubtedly the most organic way to build the authority and perception of your brand. Despite being more of a slow-burn long-term strategy the potential revenue and savings from your eCommerce content marketing strategy can be what makes or breaks your business in today’s super competitive market.