Content Marketing in the Retail & eCommerce Industry

Describe Your Customers

As you think more deeply about who your brand is, your company needs to consider who your customers are. After all, you’re seeking to build a brand that resonates with customers, so their personas should inform your brand’s identity.

A customer persona is a document that, similarly to a brand book, describes your ideal customer in detail. However, since your customers are likely quite diverse, customer personas take averages that represent the largest segment of your audience. Most companies end up defining a few personas.

For example, ASOS can likely draw up multiple personas that represent their customer base, with at least one for their female shoppers and one for their male shoppers. However, the best personas are broken down by more than gender or age range. Your customer personas should take into account:

• Categories of interest
• Hobbies and lifestyle
• Job title and salary
• Shopping habits (i.e., budget-conscious vs. “hauler”)
• Family status

Know Your Keywords

Going back to the statement straight from Google itself, remember the last sentence: “Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site.” These words are better described as search terms, which those in the marketing business call “keywords.”

As a company, it’s your job to know what keywords your customers are searching for, because optimizing your content for them will help your customers discover your brand and find your products. Of course, you have to remember that the sole focus on anything you create is to offer value for your customers.

So, don’t make the mistake of using “keyword stuffing” or other blackhat tactics to try and game the system. Google’s algorithm is extremely advanced and very complex, and it changes every single day. When Google picks up on odd behavior, it often determines that the website has been trying to game the system. The search engine company often penalizes the domain and may even blacklist it, depending on the severity of the behavior.

With all of that in mind, Google encourages you to explore the keywords your customers use because those keywords tell you a lot about your customers’ needs -- and those needs are exactly what you’re focusing on.

If you’re new to the world of keywords, explore keyword discovery tools and find one that fits your budget and needs. With the right tool, figuring out what your customers are searching for is easy. Often, you just have to look at the keywords your competitors are already targeting and go from there.

Your Next Move: Use Google Analytics and other tools to create a keyword list.

Phase 1: Awareness

The shopping experience a company provides will shape what the awareness phase looks like. However, from the customer’s perspective, the awareness phase starts when they realize they would like to purchase something. For example, let’s say a budding home cook has decided that they could use a stand mixer.

Once a notion enters a prospect’s mind, the awareness phase has begun. If they plan to pursue that notion, the prospect will almost always turn to the internet first. In fact, even if they plan to shop in-store, 81% of consumers will do some research online before they head out. That’s why even, and especially, in-store online retailers need a strong content marketing strategy.

During the awareness phase, it’s paramount that you show a prospect lots of introductory content. This is more important for major purchases, but it can play a role even in minor purchases, like a bathing suit. For instance, you might show a prospect who’s considering a stand mixer the following:

• What Size Stand Mixer Do You Need?
• The 5 Best Stand Mixers Under $500

• The Best Bathing Suit for Your Body Type
• 7 Trendy Swimsuit Brands You’ll Love

• “hand mixer vs stand mixer”
• “stand mixer reviews”

Phase 2: Consideration

For smaller purchases, it won’t take long for the customer to enter the consideration phase. In fact, some will go from “awareness” to “decision” in under an hour, especially if they’re repeating a purchase they’ve made before (i.e., another new bathing suit). However, if they’re making a purchase for the first time, like a stand mixer, they’re likely to spend more time in the consideration phase.

Once a customer reaches the consideration phase, it’s generally no longer a question of “Should I buy or not?” but more so a question of “Which one should I buy?” That’s good news for you because it means these prospects are much more likely to finalize the sale and become a customer.

However, you still have work to do. As a brand, you need to be showing customers in the consideration phase more detailed content about their options. Now that they have a basic idea of what’s out there, they want to know what’s best for them. Continuing with the stand mixer example, you might show them:

• Brand X vs. Brand Z: Which is better for your kitchen?
• The Best Stand Mixers for Every Cooking Style
• Must-Have Attachments to Make the Most of Your Stand Mixer

• “best stand mixer for bread dough”
• “best stand mixer brand”
• “stainless steel stand mixer”

Phase 3: Decision

After reading all of the reviews and comparisons they plan to, a prospect enters the decision phase. This when they’re ready to pull out their wallet and make a purchase, but they must be met with a frictionless purchasing experience, or they could go to a competitor or halt the purchasing process entirely.

During the decision phase, a customer will be finishing up the process of comparing options and weighing the pros and cons. The content you serve them will play a major role in this.

Prospects who are ready to make a decision will use keywords that display purchase intent. If you analyze these keywords, you’ll see that they are among the most difficult to rank for. If you’re using pay-per-click advertising, you’ll see that they’re generally among the most expensive keywords to target.

This is all because keywords that display purchase intent have a much greater chance of converting into a sale because they demonstrate that the prospect behind them is in the decision phase and ready to make a purchase.
Examples of keywords that point to the “decision” phase include:

• “coupon code for XYZ store”
• “stand mixer for sale near me”
• “stand mixer buy now pay later”

1. Compare Media Formats

To power your SEO strategies, you’ll need to prioritize written content as the heart of your content plan. However, don’t overlook other formats. Videos, images, and audio can all play an important role in building awareness for your company and building a reputation among your customers.

Written Content: The first thing that comes to mind may be your blog, but look beyond that and consider everywhere else your writing impacts customers. Product descriptions, FAQ pages, social media -- it all matters.

Image Content: Images couldn’t be more critical than in the retail and eCommerce space. People want detailed photos that show what they’re buying, but you should also use relevant imagery as part of your social media posts and promotions. For instance, an athletic brand would showcase images of various hobbies, sports, and destination hiking spots.

Video Content: If you have the means of doing it, creating video content for your brand will prove extremely powerful. It can do wonders for building up a strong reputation, and it gives you another platform for discussing, demonstrating, and showing off products.

Audio Content: Those in the B2B space may find podcasts to be a worthwhile investment, though B2C retailers may have a harder time gaining a following and figuring out what works. Still, if you think your podcast could offer something truly unique, it’s worth testing.

As you consider all of these different formats you could pursue, it’s important that you don’t spread yourself too thin. Regardless of your budget or resources, a great content plan generally starts small where it’s measurable and managed, and then it’s scaled up once you figure out what works.

2. Choose The Right Platforms

Speaking of starting small, when it comes to deciding where you want your content to go live, you can’t try to build a presence on every platform under the sun. Instead, you need to think back to your customer personas and figure out where your audience is already active.

By going to your audience, you’ll have a better chance of building a large, loyal following with less effort. Over time, you might choose to expand to other platforms, but you should start with just 1-2 and focus your efforts. You might also test out platforms and find that you simply aren’t getting enough engagement to justify the effort, and that’s okay, too.

Your audience wants to interact with interesting, engaging content, but they may not want to do it on certain platforms. For instance, a B2B customer is most likely to network with you on LinkedIn, not on Facebook, where they’re likely connecting with friends and family.

3. Create a Content Schedule

Now that you know what you’re posting and where you’re posting it, you can get into the really exciting part: Your content calendar. A content calendar is like a blank slate. This is where you lay out your schedule to ensure that content is posted on a consistent basis that your audience can come to expect and look forward to.

It’s ideal to create a content calendar for a full calendar year (January through December). In doing so, you’ll be able to schedule around holiday promotions, allowing you to accommodate for sales influxes, events, and the need for seasonal content accordingly.

Scheduling out a full year also allows you to coordinate certain types of content better, all while making sure that you hit your publishing goals and stay on track throughout each month.

4. Turn Keywords Into Topics

Once you create your content schedule, you may very well breathe a sigh of relief that the bulk of the research is behind you. After all, while coming up with topics and ideas to fill your content schedule can be tough, you’ve done a lot of the work already.

The keyword plan you’ve created will inform a lot of the topics you create content around as these keywords tell you exactly what your prospects want, need, or are concerned about.

Of course, you will build upon the keywords as time goes on, and some content won’t be keyword-oriented at all -- like your “behind-the-scenes” content that introduces team members, explains your brand’s backstory, and reinforces your company values.

Trendy and always ahead of the times, Nordstrom’s keeps their customers engaged with “The Thread,” a blog dedicated to all things fashion. They have categories for beauty, culture, style, and weddings, along with a dedicated section for men’s fashion. Their major social media presence with eye-catching imagery also plays a big role in their content marketing success.

Whether you’re using Shopify to host your eCommerce store or not, the Shopify blog holds unique, valuable insights that you can certainly use to inform your marketing methods. Even the layout of the blog is perfect, with a place to sign up for the free newsletter right there in the header. The content is exceptional, too, and it contributes to making Shopify a thought leader in the industry.

Since the beginning, Square has looked to empower small retailers with its line of convenient credit card readers. Built for small businesses, they keep that target audience center focus on the “Town Square” blog, where they offer business resources for all niches.