Content Marketing for E-Commerce Sites
-
Let's have a real discussion about content marketing for B2B and B2C e-commerce sites.
As an SEO/inbound marketer (these days, I'm not sure what to call myself other than my first name), it's part of my job to keep a pulse on what's going on in the online marketing community. My daily routine starts with checking several sites for news/discussion (Moz, Inbound.org, SearchEngineLand, etc). Anyone actively involved in the community knows the word "content" appears in more articles than any other word (ok, maybe there a few others). Want to increase brand awareness? Generate content. Want to drive more traffic to your site? Generate content. Want to build quality links? Generate content. Want to discover the Higgs particle before the physicists? Generate content (and distribute to the right audience, so not to the chemists - ok maybe to the chemists, they're a related audience). Content, content, content, we're told! Yes I did see the Rand's WBF from a couple months back about content-less marketing, but frankly his suggestions fall under the traditional model of advertising and word-of-mouth. We're online marketers baby, we're expanding and changing the traditional model - with content!
Enough of content marketing about content marketing. Let's see some content marketing for the small B2C, mom n' pop client who sells gardening tools. Let's see the amazing infographic you made for your local pizzeria client that drove traffic to their site. Let's see the Q+A discussion thread you identified and contributed to as means to display 'market leadership' in your niche of home air purifiers.
Look, I love the idea of content marketing to increase brand awareness and drive traffic. Displaying market leadership by answering questions and offering something beneficial to your target audience should be the way to grow business (along with having a good product/service, I guess). But it's much easier said than done. And to be clear, I never expected otherwise. The motivation for this post was to start a discussion about real-world, applied content marketing, not content marketing about content marketing.
Let the conversation begin.
-
Rule #1: A company MUST be 110% committed to the resources for content.
Rule#2: Inbound content traffic is the weakest form of traffic from a conversion perspective.
Rule#3: Because of Rule #2, you must change the process in which you convert.
Most of my clients are smaller ecommerce sites. While content is king, and content marketing drives traffic, remember what we learned about SEO that took 15 years to figure out: It's not just about traffic.
Basically, I convert my client's funnels from a click-->conversion process to a click-->lead acquisition-->lead nurture-->conversion process. Content is a great way to acquire leads, even if your site is an ecommerce site and regardless if it is B2B or B2C or its size.
This means you need to integrate all your promotional tactics into a comprehensive plan that marries SEO, content, email, and ecommerce into one, unified program.
Let's define a lead as an email address for now.
A few ideas to generate leads from content:
- Offers - About the best way to get anyone's attention. Consider a free download or a coupon that you need to be sent via email. FREE is good.
- Comments - I am always asked what is the best commenting system. My response is ALWAYS the one that allows you to own the community. So, comment systems like disqus,etc, I ignore. They are GREAT from a community standpoint, but you can't capture the email address from the person leaving the comment. So, KISS, and make sure that you can acquire the commentors email address.
- Free Subscriptions to content
Now that you have their email address, you can create campaigns that strenghten your value propositions and get people into a buying state of mind. Then, go for the kill and ask for the sale! Convert!
Best,
GuyP.S. Side Note: IMO, gone are the days that you treat each tactic as its own silo. They need to be fully integrated with each other in order for your marketing to convert.
-
Yes I agree with you, content marketing it's much more complex than seems like, also gets harder depends on your product.
I think the solution for your gardening tools example would be generate "how to" content... In our company we sell tools, recently our copywriter did a post with the title: How it Works and How to Use a Pocket-Hole Jig in the post you can see links to the product page.
Does any one else have real-world application of Content Marketing for E-Commerce Sites?
I think will be very nice if we can get together on this post a few of those examples.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What other major publications use bloggers for content? (UK)
Hi Guys. I've been building a database of journos who write about our niche recently for some outreach. I discovered that in at least one case (Metro UK), a huge amount of content is simply by bloggers, not 'official' journalists. (They can be found easily on Twitter but not in databases like muck rack etc) Generally, bloggers represent an easier 'way in'. So I thought id ask... Is this common practice? Has anyone identified other publications using bloggers for content creation? (Bit of context... We're looking at' Best diary/ planner' runs downs, 'best stationery for new year' and similar. Not strong story-based pitches to journos. (For example: Company blar is revolutionizing market X with Blar.) Simple product runs downs is what we're after for some quick wins on exposure during the holiday period.)
Branding | | isaac6630 -
Re-directing Multiple Sites to a Single Location
Hello Mozzers! So, I have a client whom has purchased a number of different domains that they want to re-direct to their main website. Their thinking is: that by doing as much, they will increase their opportunities to rank for related KW terms. To the best of my recollection, that is not the case, especially if they are not posting any content on those other domains, but simply redirecting the page to their "main site". I am very concerned, however, that by doing as much they run the risk of receiving a penalty from the Google Search team. I am a little hazy on this issue, as it's been some time, but to the best of my recollection doesn't this constitute "spammy behavior". Again, since it's been so long since I've had a client try to implement a strategy like this, I'm a little unfamiliar with how it may play out in the current landscape, so I'm eager to hear all of your opinions on the utility of such a strategy and whether or not it will spell doom for my client. I'm anxious to hear what you think, thanks for reading!
Branding | | maxcarnage1 -
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
Site Architecture for Sub-Brands
I am working on launching a few industry specific sub-brands for our marketing agency and am trying to figure out the best way to deliver a tailored user experience using subfolders instead of subdomains, if this is indeed the best option... Since I am trying to provide separate experiences, I looking at housing microsites in sub-folders - say /technology or /medical. Each with its own navigation, home page, and industry specific content/blog/portfolio. A couple things I am considering: Will my microsite "home pages" and site pages rank as well in a sub-folder versus if they were actually the primary pages on their own sub-domain? Will separate Wordpress and theme installs and separate primary navigations have any affect on SEO if they are in sub-folders of the same site? Thanks in advance for any input. I really appreciate it!
Branding | | Alaniz0 -
Social Media Content - Duplicate Content?
Hi All, What's your opinion on sharing the same content across your social media outlets. We are targeting only slightly different markets across each social media outlet. I find it hard to develop content for each outlet 3-5 times a week. There really is so much to share. At the same time, I wouldn't want to get canned for any duplicate content or anything like that. Along those lines, can anyone provide some advice on which social media outlets are "followed" vs. "not-followed," both in terms of links and overall indexing? Thanks!
Branding | | CSawatzky0 -
Impact on Global SEO of Losing One Regional Site
Hi, Plans are in place to have an affiliate company take over the marketing, sale, and distribution of our products in one region of the 35 that we currently operate in. The regional site is responsible for 10% of our overall global traffic. 26% of the revenue to that specific site comes from organic search traffic. The question is whether the loss of this traffic and these pages will have any negative impact on our global SEO status?
Branding | | Corel0 -
What are some good ways to market a used car sales site?
I have thought of using craigslist and other classified ads, social media and of course good old SEO. What else can be done to drive traffic to a used car website?
Branding | | MangoMan160 -
Should I submit my articles to article submition sites myself or have a service submit my articles for me?
It seems that articles I've written about the transmission industry and submitted aren't being noticed by Google. The sites I've submitted them to were free sites, so my question is should I pay to submit them, or pay a service to submit them for me? Or, should I just continue to submit them myself to as high a ranking site as I can find?
Branding | | allstatetransmission0