One of the fundamental part of gaining brand recognition and attracting new customers is by creating content to market your online store.
Instead of promoting your store and products directly, content marketing is the practice of sharing valuable information with your target audience to connect with them, provide useful tips and expert know-how, establish a relationship, and ultimately drive sales.
Content marketing strategies are typically centered around any of the following:
- On-site content, like blogs, guides, and infographics
- Informational, educational videos
- Lead magnets, like eBooks and checklists
- Webinars
What is content strategy?
A content strategy is a clear plan that details the goals you want to accomplish with your content and how you plan to achieve them.
It often details what types of content you want to write, the general topics you want to cover, the SEO keywords you want to optimize for, and the audience you want to reach.
Content strategies are essential to giving focus to your blog posts, videos, and lead magnets, and a necessary step in helping you build your brand.
Here’s how to create the content strategy for your online store in 7 easy steps:
- Write down your Content Goals
You absolutely need to know what you want your content to do for you before you start. This will affect how you’re optimizing it…
…the audience segment you focus on, and the topics that you choose.
Write down your overall business goals for your content marketing campaigns (like selling more or increasing brand recognition) as well as smaller steps you want to accomplish in order to reach those goals.
These are a few common ones:
- Increased site traffic
- Heightened SEO visibility
- Improve your site’s domain authority
- Increase social shares
- Establish credibility for your brand or building thought leadership
- Drive email sign-ups or other forms of lead generation
- Boost sales and increasing product knowledge or awareness
- Dive Into Competitor Research
Competitor research is an often overlooked part of content strategy creation, but it shouldn’t be.
Look at what direct and indirect competition is doing and gain inspiration from their content.
Aim to do something more and something a little different. Snag their best strategies and adapt them for your brand.
If you want to take this to the next level, use tools like BuzzSumo and SEMrush to identify top competitors in your space, including those who are ranking for SEO keywords or topics that you want to rank for.
- Start with Topic & Keyword Research
You’ve conducted the research into your own goals, your audience, and your competition. Now it’s time to apply that to topic creation.
- Assess, Monitor & Optimize
As your content strategy is implemented, monitor your progress closely so that you can adapt as needed.
Note that it will take several months (sometimes longer) to see progress. That’s okay; it’s about momentum.
Content creation can be like the holy grail of marketing for a business, but only if it’s executed strategically.
Businesses with eCommerce websites should invest the time into creating a strong, perfect-for-them content strategy that is designed to appeal specifically to their target audiences.
This is how you can set yourself apart from the competition and scale your business moving forward.
Thank you for reading kindly leave a comment below, if there’s any other thing you will love to know.