Content Marketing and E-commerce: 8 Tips for Leveraging Your Sales Online

Selling on an e-commerce platform such as Amazon, Shopify, and eBay is one of the wisest decisions you can make for your business. But you might not be the only Amazon FBA seller who’ll have this idea. 

With the rise of the e-commerce industry today, it’s no secret that people are also looking to sell online. The demand is constant, and it’s very convenient to sell online compared to when you have a physical location. 

Given these advantages, it only strengthens that you should try to follow these tips for leveraging your sales and marketing online. Here are some of them:

Identify your audience and craft content that appeals to them

When you’re selling on Amazon, one of the most important things you’ll need to get your message across is to identify who your customers are and craft content that appeals to them specifically. This can be tricky, but it’s worth all the time and effort when you see an increase in your conversion rates. 

How to know the right Target Market?

When creating content, you should first be familiar with your target audience and market if you want to succeed in online marketing. This way, you can ensure that you’re devoting your energy in the right direction. 

Knowing who your target audience is can help you create content that would pique their interest. The more relevant the content is for them, the more interested they are to read it and could influence them to purchase your items. With that, here are some helpful tips on how you can identify who your audience is:

Analyzing your customer base

You can use Google Analytics to see which pages get the most hits, so you know what topics are popular among your customers. Google Analytics is a free tool, and it lets you segment your audience based on location, demographic information (age, gender), interests (type of content they like), search engine data (keywords that brought them to your site), and website behavior (bounce rate). This way, you can figure out who exactly is your target audience and create relevant content based on that information.

Leveraging social media

If you have just recently launched your e-commerce business, it might take you quite some time to get all the data that you’ll need to get customers. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any way of knowing who your audience is!

You can always try a different method for identifying who your customer base is. One of these strategies is through social media. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to create custom audiences depending on user behavior. 

You can also create lookalike audiences if you don’t bring in the number of leads you need. It may take you quite a while to figure it out, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run.

Understanding your competitors’ marketing strategies

You can also use Google Trends to understand what content is trending in your industry, so you know how it should be done. But the best way to know your audience is through your competitor’s marketing strategy. 

Although some business owners would contest that looking at how their competitors are doing is one of the common seller mistakes one can make, it’s easy to deal with them and it will bring you some useful insights you can apply to your business.

You can find out more about their product promotion methods and see if that will benefit yours as well. This way, you’ll have a better idea of who you’re up against and how to improve on it.

Deciding for your product’s category

Aside from identifying who your target audience is, it’s also important to know how you can fit in each Amazon category so you can improve the visibility of your business products. Always choose a product to sell after knowing its demand and competition. Identify which categories are easier for new sellers, so you don’t waste too much money on listing fees. 

Quality content is key to a successful e-commerce strategy

In building an online brand, you’ll need to focus on your product reviews. The e-commerce industry is already crowded with tons of similar business products, and it can be daunting even to decide what to sell. So it would be best if you stood out from the rest by providing quality content so your customers will have an easier time trusting you. 

It’s also wise to aim for customer satisfaction to boost your online credibility. It might take some time and effort on your end, but the more trustworthy you are to your customers, the more likely they are to purchase from you. 

Make sure that the posts are relevant to what you’re selling so customers won’t get confused about what kind of brand ambassador you are. For example, talk about how others are using your products or services, or talk straight up about the benefits they get whenever they buy from you. Make them feel special because they’re getting exclusive discounts, freebies, or even gifts.

Remember that you need to be consistent with your posts, though. If you only post once a day on Facebook, don’t do it again the next day because this will confuse people about your brand ambassador. People expect things to be happening “now,” so make sure that all posts are within the same time frame of each other, especially if these are planned for future events.

Optimize product pages to attract more customers

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is not limited to Google rankings only. You also need to learn how to optimize your Amazon Seller Central account so you can increase traffic and conversions on your page. Always focus on building content with high value so people won’t mind sharing it with others through social media. 

You can also link your product pages to other parts of the web to have a wider audience who can see what you’re offering. This will help boost sales because people would want to make side-by-side comparisons.

Leverage social media platforms to share your content and reach a wider audience

It’s one thing to list your products on social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest. It takes a lot of time and effort to generate leads and increase sales, but it’s worth the results when you see how much interest you’ll get in return. 

Look for ways to share content by using hashtags so people will start searching for them. This is also ideal when you need to rank high on Google search engines because people would find your business page more easily.

Don’t just limit your content to you talking about your products! You can make your posts engaging by simply asking your audience to comment on what they’re looking for in a perfect product or what they love about your products. When you do this, you’re hitting two birds at once – you have a post that your customers can interact with, and you get to know their thoughts about your products. 

Optimize your website for search engines so potential customers can easily find you online

We live in a digital age where more and more people are looking for businesses through web searches. Therefore, you need to make sure that you optimize your website to show up on top of Google search results when someone is looking for something in particular. If you do this, there’s no doubt that your business will gain credibility fast because people will see you as an authority in your niche.

Here are some other tips on how you can optimize your websites for search engines:

Regularly post high-quality content

Regularly posting on your social media accounts can also rank high on the search engine results pages. Google and other search engines favor brands that have compelling content that will be relevant for a long time, so always keep this in mind when you’re formatting your posts.

Always remember that Google wants to see engagement from its users. So if people are clicking on your links often and it gains a lot of likes, then there’s no doubt that you’ll have a higher ranking next time someone does a web search looking for something related to what you posted. Also, pay attention to the kind of comments people leave behind because it’ll give you an idea of how interested they were in what you put up.

Use alt tags with your keywords

Some of the images that you use on your website should have alt tags so Google can read them. Fill them with keywords relevant to the contents, but try not to overdo it because less is more. If you’re using descriptive words more than three times, it’s usually best to replace some with synonyms or remove them altogether.

Google also pays attention to the content on your site’s meta description. This tells people what you have posted and why they should click on your link instead of your competitors. Make sure that this tag has specific details about what people will find once they land on your page.

Make your website link-worthy

You can use your site’s content or social media presence to attract links to your site. This is the easiest way for people to find out what you’re offering because it’ll appear on top of Google search results without doing anything at all. It also helps if you put a lot of effort in engaging with other brands through comments and likes but make sure that whatever you post is relevant to their contents since Google deems this as spamming.

Use effective call to action on your website and social media pages

It’s a good idea to add a contact us page on your site so people will have an easy time reaching you. You should also place calls to action (CTA) that tell them what they can do next, such as buy now or get started here. This way, customers won’t get confused and will convert because there is no doubt about what you’re offering and how it would benefit them.

If you’re not sure how you can make a good CTA, check out some of these tips:

• Start your sentences or phrases strong.
• Be aggressive but put zero pressure on your audience.
• Create a sense of urgency.
• Insert these CTAs after providing a piece of very long information.

Make it easy for customers to purchase your products or services online

You must give your customers the convenience for them to buy from you. It will take some time before you can see results, but it’s worth the wait when people start trusting what you’re offering because it’s easy to use. Make the “Add to Cart” symbol and the whole checking-out process as seamless as possible. Ensure that your stocks are updated and always answer customer inquiries.

Use email marketing to stay in touch with customers and promote special offers

Email marketing is still one of the best strategies around. You can use this to promote new products or services, special promotions, run contests, and the like. As long as you have your customers’ permission before sending anything out, they will appreciate hearing from you and may even buy something on impulse because they feel connected with your brand.

As a consumer yourself, you’ve probably received numerous emails from brands you’ve purchased from before. Unfortunately, these emails tend to be marked as “spam” emails or those that go directly to the trash. Don’t let this happen! See to it that you send out personalized emails if you can. You can initially capture your readers’ attention with a good email title and first line. Make these lines as intriguing as you can!

Use paid advertising platforms to reach a wider audience

Google Adwords is a great place to start if you want to increase your website’s traffic. Just make sure that you have a clear objective in mind so you’ll be able to track everything and know whether or not your ads are successful.

Don’t just settle for one platform, though, because other options are available. Facebook Ads, for instance, is great for building relationships with customers because it’s more personal compared to other platforms. You can even style it according to people’s likes, which helps save money on ad placements.

If you’re selling on Amazon, there are available advertising functions on the platform. For example, you can use Amazon DSP to advertise your products on and off Amazon. This is a great feature to use since you can target where your customers are, regardless of whether they’re on Amazon or not.

Work with influencers in your industry to promote your products or services

Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to get your content in front of more people because there are already people who are trusted by your target audience. It’s free, too, which means that you don’t have to pay influencers so that they can promote or review your products or services.

Build relationships with them instead and give them what they need so they’ll be willing to help you out. Just remember not to follow their accounts so that you can send direct messages about promoting your brand since it’ll be the opposite of what the whole point of influencer marketing is all about.

Plan out your editorial calendar

An editorial calendar is a plan that shows exactly what content you’re going to release at which date. This way, you’ll know when something needs to be done and will have less trouble keeping track of all your moves because everything is planned.

You don’t have to make it fancy or complicated, though. You can even use free tools like Trello or Google Calendar to keep track of all your deadlines without spending extra money on it.

Try out different marketing strategies and see what works for you

No two businesses are alike, even if they sell in the same product category. Remember that what works for other businesses might not work for you and vice versa. This is why it’s important to experiment with the different content marketing strategies until you find what works best for you. Remember that you need to keep track of your analytics because it’ll tell you what’s working and what isn’t.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, either, if you need some. There are plenty of resources out there on the net to help beginners and small business owners improve their content marketing and social media strategies and may even do these things for a small fee.

Final Thoughts

Selling on any e-commerce platform is not an easy thing to do. You should expect to encounter some problems and learning curves you have to address along the way. Although it will take you quite some time to figure it out, it’s worth doing in the long run. The twelve tips we’ve outlined above are some ways how you can make content marketing easier for you. Just make sure to follow these steps and see what works best for your business!

Author’s Bio

Jayce is the managing director of Seller Interactive, the number one Amazon advertising agency based in Canada that helps brands build their business on Amazon. His content marketing expertise has led him to work with brands such as Toyota and GoDaddy, producing content that has reached over 20M views in a month. 

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