With eCommerce continually on the rise, it’s more important than ever to get your marketing and content marketing strategy right. If you want a slice of the booming eCommerce market, you’ll need to stand out amongst the crowd.
Sometimes, a little creativity is the most effective route towards brand awareness. In this post, I’ll offer some creative ideas and tips that will turn your eCommerce marketing from boring to brilliant.
Why do you need to rethink your eCommerce marketing?
You’re likely reading this post because you want to improve your eCommerce marketing. But you might be asking yourself, why should you rethink your strategies if they’ve been working for some time?
The eCommerce market is getting larger every year. New eCommerce companies are popping up every day. It’s only a matter of time before even the most original and unique sellers have a throng of competitors. Marketing strategies are not evergreen. We all need to keep up with the times if we want to succeed.
There are plenty of other reasons why now is the time to rethink your eCommerce marketing:
Consumer Habits are Changing
Mobile phones, smart speakers, new social media platforms, video content—these are just some of the ways that consumers are discovering and purchasing from eCommerce brands. While traditional eCommerce marketing strategies such as PPC ads are still important, you need to be more creative with your marketing.
You Can Gain Stronger Insight Into Your Buyers
By using various approaches to eCommerce marketing, you will also give yourself more opportunities to get to know your customers. Monitoring what sort of posts, videos, and approaches result in sales will help you make more meaningful content in the future.
You Can Improve Your Website
A new approach to your eCommerce marketing is also an opportunity to rethink your website. Creating blogs, buying guides, and video content can help generate user traffic.
You Can Boost Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty took a hit during the pandemic. Consumers are looking for brands they can trust now more than ever. Taking a creative approach to your eCommerce marketing strategy, will generate new ways of engaging with your customers in a personal and innovative way.
Creative Concepts for Your eCommerce Marketing
Now that you know you need to make some changes to your eCommerce marketing, let’s talk about some creative concepts you can consider to get potential customers’ attention:
1. Magazine-inspired Blogs
Digital magazines are growing in popularity. It might be the best time, then, to rethink your approach to your eCommerce blog.
Creating a magazine-inspired blog is a creative and exciting way to draw in more customers. Instead of building a text-heavy blog why not make it image-centric and lay the images out on a spread like this?
Image Source: Au Lit Fine Linens
However, you’ll need to ensure the images load quickly for an ideal user experience. You may compress the image files or crop them so they load faster. You should also use a responsive web design so your images load quicker on mobile devices.
My tip: Start off by posting some unique images, GIFs, or infographics to your social media channels. Keep an eye on the topics that have the most engagement and website traffic. Use this data to figure out the topics your customers are interested in.
2. Influencers
Finding the best influencers for your eCommerce marketing strategy is an increasingly important step. You need to ensure that the influencers you work with are legitimate, on-brand, and able to communicate with your ideal audience.
Many marketers already recognize the impact of influencer marketing, with 89% in one survey saying that the return on investment (ROI) is comparable or better than other channels.
My tip: Engage with customers by getting a musical influencer to post a video with their music playing in the background. That could be a video of them using your products and celebrating them so that viewers connect their favorite songs to your brand.
3. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is an important way to drive traffic to your eCommerce website. SEO specialists are well aware of the importance of backlinks for improving your spot in search rankings.
Writing guest posts for other websites is a great way to move up in search rankings. It also increases your brand awareness and establishes your website as a credible source of information in your niche.
Customers want to know that the online store they are buying from is high-quality and legitimate. They’re more likely to feel this way if your brand appears on other high-quality and legitimate sites.
My tip: Find a non-competitor site that is related to your niche. For example, an ecommerce site that sells light fixtures can write a guest post for a website on home improvements.
4. Instructional Content
Creating instructional and educational content for your customers will not only drive traffic. It will also give you an opportunity to show your products or services in action.
There are different ways to use instructional content for customer engagement. For instance, you can either show off your product’s features or demonstrate how your products can solve common user problems.
My tip: Start a podcast or YouTube series that provides instructional and educational content. Invite guests such as influencers, your employees, and even customers to explain your products or describe their experience with your business.
5. Storytelling
Crafting a narrative about your company and the products or services you sell is a key way to build a brand. It’s easy to view customers as numbers rather than people. The reality is, however, your customers are people and people respond to stories.
By building a user persona, you can create content that resonates with your target audience. For instance, if your audience consists of athletic types, your content should contain inspiring stories of people who defied their physical limitations.
Check out this example from Magnolia Market. The founders put emphasis on the many challenges they had to face to turn Magnolia Market into the brand it is now.
Once you’ve woven your eCommerce company’s narrative, it’s time to implement that across all channels. Everything from your website and blogs to your social media feed and emails should align with the narrative you have built.
My tip: Create an “Our Story” page on your website that has an interactive timeline detailing your company’s story—from its humble beginnings in your garage to your latest product.
6. User-generated Video Content
Many eCommerce companies are aware of how to drive traffic using social media videos. But sharing user-generated video content is an exciting and appealing way to engage with present and future customers.
These videos will showcase your product in real-life situations. To get user-generated content, you can send follow-up emails to your customers or reach them through social media.
My tip: Run a competition or giveaway on social media that asks customers to upload videos of them using your products. That’s exactly what sporting goods brand REI did on Instagram:
You can share these videos, create a montage of them for your website, and reward the best video creators with freebies. This approach can help build customer loyalty and attract new social media followers.
7. Buying Guides
Many customers use buying guides to find the right product for their needs. Creating buying guides is an eCommerce marketing strategy that allows you to showcase your product while helping customers with their questions.
A buying guide will give customers recommendations if they’re looking for a type of product or service. These are keyword-rich and often show up high on search rankings. Using a balanced combination of long-tail and short keywords will also help your site rank high in voice searches. Remember to keep an eye on keyword density.
With 29% of customers using their smart speakers to research items, ensuring your buying guides will answer their questions is a must. Using questions as headings in your buying guides is the best way to make sure they appear in voice searches.
My tip: Using insights from frequently asked questions, create buying guides with images, customer feedback, and videos. You can share them on social media or use them on your landing pages. You may also answer user questions in real time through a Facebook Live stream.
In Conclusion
Creative content is an exciting way to engage with customers and develop your brand’s identity. It’s also key for many brands if they want to stand out amongst their competitors but don’t have the time or money to pay for ads on every website or hire marketing specialists.
In this post, I’ve suggested creative ways you can transform your eCommerce marketing. From creating your own digital “magazine” to uploading user-generated video content, these tips are aimed at any eCommerce company hoping to drive traffic, boost sales, and increase brand awareness.
Storytelling, blogs, buying guides, and video content will help you discover and pinpoint what your customers want and need from you.
By following these tips, you’ll transform your eCommerce marketing and that will help your company reach its business goals.
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