Content marketing: Our 5 tips for your content in e-commerce

What seems simple in stationary trade poses challenges for many retailers and shop operators online: providing personal customer advice in one’s own online shop without really being there “in person”. How do you succeed in advising, informing, animating and inspiring the customer throughout the entire buying process? The answer is: content marketing. Content marketing is one of the most important tools for e-commerce to create a memorable customer experience around digital shopping.

Make content marketing your best employee and stand out with content that offers your visitors real added value. But what is content marketing, why is it so important, what are the benefits and how does it all work? We reveal our 5 most important tips for your content marketing.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing can be translated into German as “content marketing”. Content marketing is about planning, developing and creating content whose purpose is to provide customers with valuable information, to entertain and to animate them. Goals in general content marketing can be to build reach, link building or lead generation. In e-commerce, however, content marketing focuses on the sale of products and services. Content should accompany the entire customer journey through the online shop, so that the customer can access high-quality information at every touchpoint.

Content marketing thus takes over the task of a salesperson in stationary trade. If the customer wants advice, the appropriate content is there immediately. Content marketing begins when the customer enters an online shop, but does not end with the purchase of a product. One advantage over retail is that with content marketing you can also support your customer after the purchase with helpful content, e.g. on how to use the product, and thus promote customer loyalty.

Why content marketing in e-commerce?

Visitors who come to your website rarely have a clear intention to buy. They enter your online shop and first want to inform themselves – about your products, services and prices. Today, quality and sustainability are also at the top of the list. Good content provides the content that ultimately influences the purchase decision. If interested parties do not get the information they are looking for, they are likely to abandon the purchase.

Content marketing offers the chance to recreate a similar buying experience that a customer is used to in bricks-and-mortar retail. The “touching” and “trying out” are substituted by sophisticated descriptions that awaken emotions as well as an image in the mind. High-quality texts with added values, supported by product images and videos, are the recipe for success for successful content marketing. If you think about content from the customer’s point of view and make “dry” content entertaining, this can become a decisive competitive advantage for you.

What are the advantages of content marketing?

Let’s summarise once again: Content marketing is your best sales agent in the online shop and takes on the function of providing your visitors with the most important information at every touchpoint – in an appealing, target group-oriented and entertaining way. If this balancing act succeeds, content marketing has a whole range of advantages:

• Creating shopping experiences
• longer time spent on the website
• Increasing customer satisfaction
• higher graduation rate
• fewer returns
• Relief of the customer service
• positive reviews
• more recommendations

How does content marketing succeed?

Not so long ago, content was one thing above all: an SEO tool. Texts for products were written solely for Google and Co. in order to achieve the best possible rankings. That has changed fundamentally in recent years. Meanwhile, Google itself focuses on the high quality of content in its metrics and website ratings instead of pure keyword bashing. Content marketing therefore pays off twice for you.

There are various ways to realise content marketing. We would like to introduce you to five of them below.

Product descriptions

A high-quality product description informs, convinces, surprises, arouses curiosity or even the need and encourages the purchase. It consists of much more than just a string of features and functions. Think from the customer’s point of view: What advantages does the user have with your product, what makes your service so unique, how does one feel when using the item and how does it improve the life of those interested? Also add usage and care tips directly to your item description.

How to optimise your product descriptions with content marketing:

• Write from the customer’s point of view
• Tailor content to the target group
• Use figurative language
• Use bullet points to describe features and functions
• Write short sentences
• Use simple formulations
• Include professional images or video
• Link to further and more comprehensive information

Important: Never copy product descriptions from the manufacturer. This neither creates added value for customers nor helps you to achieve good rankings in the search engine. On the contrary, duplicate content is severely penalised by Google.

Start optimising your product descriptions with content marketing. Start with your bestsellers.

Category texts

If you have combined several products in one group or category, you should write category texts for them. In the context of category management, the aim is to inform the customer about what to expect from the individual products. The aim is to whet the customer’s appetite for more, i.e. to call up the products. Within this framework, it is important to package the information in such a way that it arouses interest and attention. At the same time, they provide a practical overview. A good mix of teasers and somewhat detailed information that fits well at the bottom of the page or in fold-out elements is ideal. Include relevant keywords in the category texts.

Blogs and magazines

Within content marketing tools, blog posts and magazine articles are the best known. They allow you to provide varied and entertaining content that adds value to your readers and positions you as an expert. In contrast to product descriptions, blog articles give you the opportunity to turn more extensive information into knowledge articles, stories or useful tips. First and foremost, well-researched texts are aimed at pure information and not at direct sales. However, you can encourage a purchase with sensibly placed links to products.

Your advantages with a blog:

• more traffic
• longer dwell time
• improved ranking
• higher reach as through sharing in social media
• gain a steady readership
• well-informed customers
• targeted communication

Guidebook

In the form of guides, you use content marketing to pass on your knowledge to your customers and visitors and support them with concrete help, expert tips and solutions to problems. You underline your competences as an expert. A guidebook provides credibility, builds trust and can help win new customers. Here, too, you can integrate links to products at the appropriate places.

Which content is suitable for the tool in content marketing:

• Expert tips
• Tricks and hacks
• Suggestions for the use of a product
• Best practice examples

FAQs and glossaries

Products, ingredients, ingredients and self-services raise many questions. If one comes up, the customer wants the answer now and not two days later. To satisfy this need and make it convenient for him, the so-called FAQ – “Frequently Asked Questions” – have established themselves in content marketing, where you answer such questions directly. The interested party can inform himself in self-service and saves himself the trouble of contacting you, which in turn relieves your customer service.

Possible FAQs could be:

• How much does shipping cost?
• How can I pay?
• When will the product be delivered?
• Where is the product manufactured?
• What materials is the item made of?

As part of proactive customer service, outline the most important technical terms in a glossary or lexicon in a way that your customers can understand. For example, explain certain substances, procedures, components or processes here.

Whitepapers and e-books

In addition to blog articles and guides, you can also package more detailed information in the form of white papers or e-books. With this content marketing tool, you take up a relevant topic, pass on detailed information and expert knowledge, incorporate infographics and give the whole thing a high-quality look. White papers or e-books can be compared to small technical papers that you offer in a suitable setting. In any case, emphasise the quality and high value. Offer whitepapers or e-books as a gift for newsletter sign-ups. In this way, you directly collect leads for your mailing list and make efficient use of your e-mail marketing.

Personalisation in content marketing

Today’s content marketing goes one step further. Don’t just give your customers information, personalise it. This is relatively easy with content management systems or software solutions. They personalise content specifically with the help of certain characteristics of the different customer groups and play them out completely automatically at the right time. An intelligent algorithm is used for this. With the personalised exit-intent pop-ups from uptain, for example, you support content marketing in a targeted manner and create suitable purchase incentives. If customers still have questions, a service pop-up is displayed so that they can contact customer service immediately. Thus, an exit-intent pop-up becomes a meaningful extension of content marketing.

Make content marketing your best salesperson

Use content marketing to create a customer experience that leaves no question unanswered. And if you do, answer them directly in the FAQ section. Make content marketing your reliable customer advisor who also takes care of sales. Create high-quality content for every touchpoint. With content marketing, you specifically guide the decision-making process and facilitate the purchase decision of your customers.