Content marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies for small eCommerce businesses, mainly because it doesn’t require a large budget. According to recent surveys, more than half of all businesses rely on this strategy to connect with and engage target audiences.
Indeed, using content marketing strategies for eCommerce has a lot of benefits, but with 57 percent of marketers increasing budgets for content marketing, small businesses need to rely on the most effective and affordable ideas; for example, a survey by Content Marketing Institute has found that content creation was the area where spending was increased the most.
Credit: Content Marketing Institute
Credit: Content Marketing Institute
However, the increasing competition doesn’t mean that small businesses don’t have a chance to have their content ranked high. The only thing that matters for Google – which is the one in charge of that – the quality of the content. This means that if you create really good content, you can outcompete a lot of businesses spending more money but failing to achieve this goal.
But how does one create such content? Read below to find out.
What Content Can Help You to Beat the Competition?
To get an answer to this question, we can turn to Google’s content guidelines. These describe the principles of content creation, which, if followed, give the best chance of ranking high in search results.
To save you some time, here are the most important guidelines that you need to follow while creating content for your eCommerce business, as instructed by Google:
- Write content for users, not search engines. This means maximum usefulness for the target audience
- Avoid keyword stuffing and place keywords naturally
- Describe topics clearly and accurately using the language that your readers prefer.
Now, let’s see three low-budget content marketing ideas for eCommerce businesses based on these guidelines that you can use to outcompete your rivals.
Create Product-Related Video Reviews
According to recent studies, 87 percent of online shoppers begin product research online. This makes perfect sense, as they often seek for customer reviews, usage instructions, unboxing videos, tutorials, tips, and other useful information.
If you’re running a small eCommerce business, then you should be there waiting for potential customers with your awesome content. Not only you’ll be helping people to find products that can help to meet their needs but also improving your reputation in the eyes of Google and attracting leads.
So, here are low-budget content types that you should consider here:
- Videos on how to use products
- Product reviews from experts
- Product comparisons with detailed reviews of both products to help viewers make an informed choice about which one to buy
- Q&A sessions to answer the most common customer questions about popular products and services.
To produce these types of content, you don’t need expensive equipment – in fact, you can use a good smartphone to record your videos – but the impact of this effort may be tremendous.
According to the State of Video Marketing report, 96 percent of consumers watched a product explainer video to learn about a product and 81 percent of marketers also said that videos helped them to generate leads.
Here are the content types that customers prefer to learn about a new product or service, according to the report.
Credit: The State of Video Marketing report
Making a short (<5 minutes) video review of a product won’t cost you a lot of money, so try investing in these content types to see how they can help you to get more quality leads.
If you make your helpful video production consistent, you’ll maximize the chances of Google recognizing you as a useful and reliable content provider, which means only good things for your business.
Write Blog Posts
While videos are the reigning champion of the eCommerce content world, one shouldn’t underestimate the impact of text-based articles. Textual guides and how-to articles can be extremely useful to certain kinds of eCommerce businesses, and play a great role in improving search engine ranking and website traffic.
For example, text-based articles are a perfect content type for eCommerce businesses selling food and making food delivery. If we take a look at the blog of HelloFresh, a Germany-based meal-kit company, we’ll discover a lot of really good content, including recipes, food tips, and even master classes from professional chefs.
For people interested in learning how to cook – which is a large part of the blog’s target audience – this information could be very interesting and useful. In fact, here are some of the most popular articles that enjoyed a lot of attention from readers, according to HelloFresh.
Clearly, most of these articles are educational, which means that people go to HelloFresh blog to learn new skills. For you as an owner of an eCommerce business, this means that you should follow a similar content strategy to increase the traffic on your website and lead generation by collecting the emails of visitors (HelloFresh does this as well).
By the way, the company has boosted quarterly revenue for the seventh consecutive time since its listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and content product certainly was one of the factors that contributed to the success.
So, how can you also use blog articles to educate your audience and bring more business? Consider the following tips, as described by Peter Rowe, a content specialist from Top Writers Review:
- Write articles that your readers can use in real life, just like HelloFresh does. This includes how-to articles, recipes, tutorials, tips from experts, industry news
- Write with your readers in mind. If your content provides tons of value for them and helps them to solve problems or improve skills, it has the best chance to attract a lot of visitors
- Write about the problems that your products can help to solve. Introduce your products and services in a non-salesy way to avoid being too pushy, and show that they are, indeed, a good way to go about solving a problem or an issue your reader has.
The bottom line here is that your blog must show the readers that you care a great deal about educating them and assisting to make good decisions.
Infographics
Infographics are a popular type of marketing material to connect with potential customers because it helps them to learn helpful information in a very easy way. That’s why they are the most shared content type that outperforms both videos and text-based articles.
Credit: OkDork & Buzzsumo
Credit: OkDork & Buzzsumo
The reason for the popularity of infographics is pretty simple: they make it a lot easier to digest complex information in a visually appealing way. Your customers will also be interested in checking out some infographics as well, so here are some ideas for you to consider:
- A comparison of two products listing their features, advantages, and disadvantages, and the verdict
- A detailed infographic that explains how a certain product works
- A how-to guide describing steps on how to use a product or service
- A photo-packed infographic describing how to use a product
- A guide describing how to do something related to your product, e.g. “how to use [product name] to cook perfect carbonara”
- An explainer describing why people should buy your product, e.g. “X reasons why investing in [product name] is worth your money.”
Creating these infographics won’t burn a hole in your pocket because you can use free creators like Canva to design them. These tools typically have a lot of free templates, icons, and images to include in your creations, so you can start improving your content strategy with infographics without spending a lot of money.
The Bottom Line
Creating awesome content that can help to increase Google ranking and improve lead generation effort shouldn’t be expensive. If you follow the above tips, your eCommerce business will have a good chance to outcompete a lot of companies without a huge marketing budget to spend. If you try some ideas, we’d love your feedback, so feel free to tell us what worked for you best!
Image credit: Suat
The post 3 Low Budget Content Marketing Ideas for a Small Online Business appeared first on ECN | E-Commerce Nation.
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Jessica Fender, Khareem Sudlow
