How to Grow Your Shopify E-commerce Store Using Content Marketing

Then, you need to get your content out there. That’s why not just any content will do. How do you come up with content? The most common choices are: Directly on your e-commerce site Through social media By email Emails are a really great way to deliver any type of content. Shopify’s email buy button also makes it simple for your customers to go straight to checkout when you email them an offer they want. If you create at least 16 posts per month, you will get on average 4.5 times more leads than your competitors who only create four posts or less. Post often and post consistently, and you will see huge results in traffic, leads and sales. This is the time when you have to successfully target those people in your audience who are ready to buy. Paid social media ads can be used at any stage of the sales funnel: When targeting ready-to-buy consumers, make sure you always include a call to action (CTA). Using multiple channels and formats will get your content out to your ideal target audiences Finally, turn content into sales for consumers who have reached the ready-to-buy stage of the sales funnel.

Content marketing is a huge opportunity to grow sales.

Creating great, engaging content can help increase your traffic to your site and boost your revenue.

Why?

Customers want to feel connected. They want to feel engaged.

Strong content marketing can build this connection.

Customers who are “fully connected” are over 50% more valuable than just “highly satisfied customers.”

Wondering how to make your customers feel the connection?

It all starts with content creation.

Then, you need to get your content out there.

Finally, you need to close the loop, from content to sale.

Without great content, you’re more likely to fail

You can boost traffic and sales through content creation.

After all, 70% of your customers would rather learn about your business through an article than an advertisement.

Only one-third of e-commerce sites’ traffic is returning visitors.

The reality is that two-thirds of people who visit your site are new visitors who will never visit again.

But we know that consumers can visit up to five times before they actually buy.

Few people will jump straight from discovery to buying.

Instead, they will usually discover your website, think about your product, spend even more time thinking, maybe even forget about it, see a retargeting ad, and then buy.

The exact process may vary, but the point is that people take a lot of time to buy.

Content marketing is a great top-of-funnel strategy to grab your visitors the first time they come to your store and are still hanging out in the ‘awareness’ stage.

If you understand the way people buy, you can create content for each stage of the funnel to help move them toward buying.

Lots of people use a slightly different version of a sales funnel, but they all boil down to three basic stages:

Awareness
Consideration
Decision

Each stage will require a different kind of content marketing.

It’s not enough to just create content. You need to make sure the content suits your audience.

People in the awareness stage aren’t ready to buy yet. They may not even be ready to opt-in to your email list or newsletter.

Content aimed at them that is targeting a hard sell will fail.

You can use content marketing to build brand awareness and engagement with them, moving them into the consideration phase.

Content mapping is about trying to understanding your audience well enough that you can then create appropriate content for each stage of their journey toward actually buying your product.

In a perfect world, your content marketing strategy would look like this:

The catch is that it’s not quite that simple. We all know it’s not a perfect world.

That’s why not just any content will do.

To grow your e-commerce site as much as possible, you need to know what types of content perform best.

You also need to understand how to get it out to as many potential customers as possible, and the best ways to turn it into sales.

Don’t worry. We’re about to cover all of that as well.

Create content that’s not ordinary

Internet users create a massive amount of content every single minute of every day.

Facebook has 3.3 million new posts every minute.

You can see how it can be incredibly easy to get lost amid all this noise.

The volume has become so great that the phrase ‘content shock’ has been created to capture the effect this can have on people.

Can you still successfully use content marketing in this environment?

Absolutely!

But, to succeed, you need to be able to create content that will stand out in the crowd.

How?

First, you need to come up with a content plan.

Determine what topics you will create content about, what form of content you will create and how you will put it out there.

How do you come up with content?

Think about topics that would be useful to your customers.

What is your target market?

What would your ideal shopper like?

What problems might they have, that you can help them solve?

Here are some ways you can generate content ideas:

Listen to podcasts by people in the same niche as you.
Check out what books are selling on Amazon that relate to your niche.
Hang out in Facebook Groups related to your business, or start your own group!
Ask your customers what they’d like to know more about.

According to a survey conducted by CoSchedule, people share content for the following reasons:

To grow and nourish their personal relationships with others
To get the word out
For a sense of self-fulfillment and to participate in the world
To bring value and entertainment
To define themselves

So if you want content that people will share, then keep those things in mind.

What I’ve learned is that people generally:

Will tag people they know if they might relate to or find interest in a piece of content.
Appreciate being taught something new and interesting and like passing on that knowledge.
Are likely to click and share content that relates to newsworthy topics or trending celebrities.
Are more likely to share something that makes them laugh.
Love to share their opinions and engage in controversy.

Your top priority should be making sure that your content will be engaging for your audience.

What types of content will engage?

Some types are shown to share better than others, with infographics being in the lead.

What about forms of content?

You can consider any of the following: