1. Create how-to content
How-to content helps your audience connect better with your brand. They are simple explainers that show people how to use your product/service the right way that will give them the best experience and satisfaction. They encourage people to buy your product/service because from seeing your how-to content customers will believe that your brand cares about how they feel and experience your product/service.
Just like every type of content, how-to content can be text, images, audio and video. Videos typically serve as the most engaging option because they allow customers to learn more about your products/services. However, having both text and video is the best way to go in order to cater to any preference your audience has.
2. Include lifestyle photos of your products
Lifestyle photos create a more realistic view of your product. They are images that show a product in the context of how it can be used and/or enjoyed, aka your product in real situations.
Adding lifestyle images of your products is a good way to engage people more. The images can be used as part of the main gallery of product images, in the extensive product description and as part of blog posts that link to the product.
Using a combination of useful text content with high-quality lifestyle images on your blog and social media also encourages customers to learn more about your product/service and to connect with your brand.
3. Using User generated content (UGC) is one of the content marketing strategies for eCommerce that proves most relatable
Encouraging customers to share photos and videos of them using your product is a fantastic way to foster deeper connections that ultimately lead to more revenue. This works even better when you offer some rewards.
User generated content creates a wide range of lifestyle images that provide social proof that can promote your brand. People may not believe everything you say about your products, but they’re more likely to believe what actual customers say.
User generated content can boost the effectiveness of your ads because of the trust factor associated with them. Customers tend to click through on UGC based ads more also because they are more relatable.
4. Become a thought leader
Talking about a subject matter repeatedly using quality content is a way to build your authority in that subject. By publishing content related to your industry, customers can turn to your brand when they have questions. This essentially starts to build your brand into a thought leader.
Thought leadership is a tactic content marketers use to build credibility for themselves or leaders in their company. The main goal of thought leadership is to become recognized as an expert and used as a go-to resource in your field. – hubspot.com
A thought leader is an industry expert who shares their expertise and experience with as many people as possible and as many times as possible for the purpose of educating, improving, and adding value to the industry as a whole and more specifically a certain subject matter.
Thought leadership can lead directly to sales. Almost 60% of business decision makers said that thought leadership directly led to their awarding of business to an organization. – LinkedIn Marketing Blog
Thought leadership content ultimately affects purchasing decisions of the audience because it is a mixed flavour of word of mouth and influencer marketing that is more relatable to people. It helps convince people to buy a product or service they weren't previously considering because they believe in the reputation of the thought leader.
Thought leadership is a long term strategy that requires consistent work and patience. The most important thing is ensuring you add value to those who come across your content. It is important to set out knowing this and planning accordingly.
5. Build SEO topic clusters on your blog is one of the effective content marketing strategies for eCommerce worth investing in
Topic clusters are a group of content that revolves around a central topic and uses a pillar/hub page connection to link to and from. In short, topic clusters are centred around a single topic and offer multiple internal linking opportunities to keep readers connected to your brand.
Topic clusters are an incredibly effective way to increase organic search performance as well as conversions because they typically feed into impressing viewers of your capacity and ability of your brand.
So if your brand is a shoe brand, a typical topic cluster is simply SHOES, you can talk about how to take care of shoes, how to repair shoes, how to protect shoes, how to donate your old shoes to people who need them and so on.
The way social media is developing in recent times also allows brands to build topic clusters on the different apps using features like LISTS on twitter and Guides on Instagram.i
