In Part 1 of Content Marketing for E-Commerce, we talked about why content marketing for e-commerce is so important for certain types of businesses. (It’s not right for every type, but it’s essential for others.) We also reviewed the various media distribution channels for pushing content, and which ones work best for particular product lines. In today’s article, we offer six content ideas for e-commerce businesses.
Six content ideas for e-commerce businesses
(Caveat: The following suggestions apply only to those products that are your main best-sellers. Not even the biggest e-merchants have the time or resources to develop content for every product in their catalog.)
1. Product Guides
If it fits with your product line, build some product guides for your customers that include graphics and images.
Your guides can include how to use, assemble, or troubleshoot if there’s a problem. You could also provide in-depth details about any services you offer.
Many customers want to know every detail about a product and its uses before they buy. A product guide will satisfy that need. It can also move them steadily toward a purchase, by removing doubts and answering questions.
2. Photos and video
The benefits of photos and video are pretty obvious. You’re painting a story with visuals rather than text. Most people prefer to get their product information with a full-sensory experience, rather than just reading about it. For Facebook or Instagram videos, a 1-minute length is best.
3. Informational pages such as size charts and FAQ’s
Size charts can be used for more than clothes and shoes. They are popular for many kinds of products such as tools, furniture, and large or bulky equipment.
Customers often have a lot of questions in their minds when looking at a product:
- Will it fit in their car?
- Do I have space for that in [wherever they plan to keep it]?
- Will it be comfortable for their height or weight?
- Is it too large to be carried by just one person?
Try to imagine a whole range of questions a consumer might ask, then put those Q’s and A’s on a FAQ page, or make sure all the questions are covered in a product detail page or pop-out. FAQ pages can also serve as a content asset; see Idea # 6, below.
4. Customer stories
Customer-generated content (videos, testimonial quotes, reviews) has two advantages: It has the ring of authenticity, and it’s cheap to produce because your customers are doing most of the work.
Share customer success stories about their experience using your products or services, or how you handled a customer service issue. If the story is missing information, reach out to the customer and ask for it, along with permission to share their story.
Look for original or inspirational stories to increase engagement. Another strategy is to create competitions to encourage your customers to share stories, pictures, or videos about your products.
5. User tips, tricks, and hacks supply some great content ideas for e-commerce
Product hacks make for quirky, interesting content to share. Many inventive customers will love to share crazy new ideas for ways to use any item. This is perfect stuff for sharing on social media, to generate more interest in your products. To get people really engaged, you can run a contest for “most imaginative use” of your product, and post all the results.
Even people who have no intention of hacking it themselves might still be interested in the product. It can also be an amusing experiment.
6. Keywords in page copy phrased as a question
You know those question boxes on a Google search results page that show drop-down answers? They appear right after any paid ads, and before any organic search results. Those are called featured snippets. Google encourages use of featured snippets because its search crawlers prefer to match a search question to the same question on a website, phrased the same way. When it sees that question and a corresponding answer, it will use that page for a featured snippet.
FAQ pages are a great way to land yourself a featured snippet. (Just make sure that page is indexed on your website). Following a question-answer format for your product description is another strategy that works.
Using question Schema to prepare your content is another way to gain a Featured Snippet, it just requires a few settings on the back end.
Almost all of these strategies are simple enough to do yourself, but if you need help with copywriting, video, or photography then don’t hesitate to use a professional. That 6X conversion rate factor should be plenty enough incentive.
