6 Benefits of Content Marketing for Your Ecommerce Business

Content marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful ways to draw attention to your business, with the industry expected to grow by $417.85 billion from 2021 to 2025.¹

Underestimating the power of content marketing, too many online store owners have been quick to prioritise paid advertising, which can serve as a quick fix to temporarily increase sales. However, by nurturing those all important relationships with your customers, a sound ecommerce content marketing plan can end up benefiting your other traffic-driving activities exponentially, getting people onto your site and keeping them there.

Today, we’ll take a look at some of the main benefits of utilising content in your marketing strategy, for both your ecommerce business and your customers. Along the way, there’ll be some examples of content marketing in action, as well as insights from Anna Giles, Digital Content Marketer in our Growth Accelerator team.

What is content marketing?

Simply put, content marketing is the creation of original, relevant content in various written and visual formats to attract your target audience and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action. This can be anything from an article, ebook or report, to an infographic, video or podcast.

Short articles (83%) and videos (61%) accounted for the top two types of content that B2C marketers used in the last 12 months, with long-form articles increasing from 22% to 42% last year!²

As a form of inbound marketing, content marketing is primarily designed to drive potential customers to your site from search engines, social media networks, and video discovery platforms without “hard selling”.

Rather than simply advertising your products or services, content marketing provides valuable information that goes further to entertain and educate your audience without expecting anything in return, subsequently encouraging customer loyalty.

“Content marketing is a hugely underrated traffic acquisition strategy that has taken a back seat in the growing arena of paid advertising. Sustaining a long-term PPC strategy will become increasingly difficult, especially as customer acquisition costs begin to rise amongst competitive industries and saturated markets.

And whilst paid advertising is absolutely a viable and valuable marketing strategy, content marketing may indeed have the edge: longevity, lower costs and stable content assets that bring in a steady stream of traffic and ultimately conversions.” 

– Anna Giles, Senior SEO & Content Manager at Swanky

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of content marketing in more detail.

How does ecommerce content marketing benefit your online business?

#1 Increases search exposure and drives organic traffic to your site

First up, content marketing can do wonders for your organic search potential. It’s actually one of the most cost-effective strategies to bring organic traffic to your website!

By strategically creating compelling, original content like blog posts, infographics and ebooks, optimised with targeted keywords, you’ll find your business climb up those search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s all about marrying a sound SEO strategy with unique content that provides value to your target audience, answers the right questions and keeps them on your website.

And, the higher your ecommerce site ranks on a SERP, the more traffic (and sales!) you can drive. In fact, studies have shown that businesses with a blog receive 55% more website traffic than those without!³

#2 Builds brand awareness and authority

In consistently providing helpful information via engaging content such as video, case studies and social media posts (perfect for engagement!), your target audience can learn more about your brand, its products, services, and what it stands for.

This is a surefire way to increase brand recognition, build authentic relationships with shoppers (more on this later!), and ensure your business is top-of-mind when they start their search for a product in your industry. It’s also an effective tactic when it comes to differentiating yourself from the competition.

Not only does ecommerce content marketing build brand awareness, it also positions you as a go-to authority in your sector. Gain credibility among peers and potential customers by sharing free, valuable content that establishes your business as an expert in its field and you’ll soon turn business prospects into loyal customers!

One way to add some extra weight to your content and demonstrate your authority is to team up with certified industry experts. For example, Swanky’s Senior SEO & Content Manager, Anna Giles, collaborated with a professional postnatal doula to provide relevant, expert, unique content for one of our clients, global baby dock brand DockATot. Combining keyword research and the desire to increase brand credibility, we created a blog post for new mums about preparing for life after giving birth: how to look after yourself in the fourth trimester.

It became DockATot EU’s third most read blog post in 2021, and the blog post with the longest time on page – 603 seconds compared to the average time on page (across all industries) of 54 seconds!

Check out our DockATot case study to find out more about how the brand has leveraged our strategic digital marketing services, including how we helped them navigate an ecommerce rebrand.

#3 Boosts purchase conversions

A huge benefit of content marketing is that it can improve the rate at which you convert leads to customers, resulting in increased revenue. 

Just as informative content can strengthen brand awareness and grow your authority, text descriptions, videos and images of your products can only encourage your target audience to convert by removing any doubts about the quality and benefits of your offerings, nurturing leads through the purchase funnel.

#4 Develops meaningful relationships with customers

Creating useful content that’s focused on solving customers’ problems, or engaging, relatable content that they can enjoy, will enable brands to develop strong emotional connections with their audience.

It’s these positive emotional relationships that drive increased satisfaction, belonging and loyalty, encouraging them to come back time and time again.

#5 Increases customer lifetime value

One of the most significant benefits of content marketing is its ability to foster trust and therefore increase customer lifetime value (CLTV). Since it aligns with modern consumer habits, particularly on social media platforms where content is consumed relentlessly on a daily basis, content marketing can cement your position as a reliable brand that customers will have confidence in buying from time and time again.

After converting potential business prospects into paying customers, your content will only continue to nurture their faith in your brand, increasing the CLTV of those who consume it.

Swanky’s Growth Accelerator Team has recently created a content strategy (or editorial calendar) for New York based baby boutique Pish Posh Baby, with the goal of boosting authority and increasing CLTV. Publishing content that is relevant and helpful for parents from birth to preschool is helping to establish them as an industry lead, as well as a trustworthy brand that customers can return to throughout different stages of their child’s development, as Anna Giles, SEO & Content Marketer, explains:

“Not only are we crafting well-researched content to help new parents make sense of the baby gear market (for example, an article titled ‘Your Comprehensive Guide to Baby Strollers’), we are also writing about navigating the world of newborns, toddlers and preschoolers. 

“Whether that’s developmental milestones you can expect to see from your six month old or how to find unique gifts for one year olds – Pish Posh Baby are positioning themselves as a brand worth buying from again and again, targeting parents, grandparents and gifters alike.” 

Want to know more about our work with Pish Posh? Find out how our digital marketing expertise helped them achieve their 85% year-on-year revenue growth goal in this case study.

#6 Lowers cost of acquisition

As we’ve explored, content marketing is one of the most cost-effective methods of increasing brand loyalty and, in turn, online sales. Avoiding consumer mistrust by producing educational content that is both exciting and functional, ecommerce content marketing can even counter rising acquisition costs.

Strategically leverage your business’ knowledge and expertise across your content and you’ll be rewarded with loyal customers and highly engaged new prospects. In sharing free resources that benefit customer ROI, shorten sale cycles by nurturing high-intent visitors, and lower customer service costs by enabling customer self-help, content marketing is a simple way to reduce your cost of acquisition.

Summary

In a world of false advertising and diminishing consumer trust, content marketing saves the day by sharing unique business expertise and valuable brand insights to customers, all for free. From conversion to repeat purchase and retention, content marketing has the power to create the entire roadmap for your customer journey, lowering acquisition costs, building brand loyalty and generating more leads in the process.

Your ecommerce content marketing agency

Looking to increase search exposure, build brand awareness and generate more leads? Our dedicated team of content marketers will reignite your ecommerce brand with carefully-crafted, high-quality content that’s built to do exactly this. We’ll create a targeted ecommerce content marketing strategy with your commercial priorities in mind, bringing your brand to life with content that compels, engages and converts.

Get in touch today to find out how our Growth Accelerator team could help transform your content marketing strategy!

For reference:

[1] https://www.technavio.com/report/content-marketing-market-industry-analysis

[2] https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/b2c-content-marketing-research-2022

[3] https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5014/study-shows-business-blogging-leads-to-55-more-website-visitors.aspx?_ga=2.227054165.911468166.1586729501-1582690004.1559596502