Marketing is storytelling – An eCommerce website that tells its story memorably will succeed, one that doesn’t is doomed to fail, especially as the inescapable powers of consolidation continue to play in favour of the giants.
How to Amazon-proof yourself?
As Amazon, Alibaba, and Lazada proceed to swallow up increasingly large swaths of the retail space, the only strategy smaller brands can hope to leverage to keep market share and succeed, is to play on their uniqueness.
To craft a story that rings true with their core audiences in such a way that promotes loyalty and love that motivate purchases for reasons that go past our all-consuming love for the best bargains out there.
This isn’t news. It’s been true for as long as people have been doing business. Ecommerce websites pose additional challenges for marketing due to the changing technology landscape and the sheer scale of the competition you’re up against.
Build your Ecommerce website as a content Base
But it’s not only the competitors out there that you need to worry about – Google’s ever-changing algorithm has one constant and insatiable hunger – It yearns for new content to index and shares with the world.
Google loves content! Devote energy into building a content base as part of your e-commerce marketing campaign for your eCommerce website. If you don’t have a blog; start one! Not creating presentations, videos, podcasts, etc.? Big mistake! Get busy!
When you’re able to feed the beast new and tasty content morsels regularly, it befriends and rewards you with better rankings, and when you neglect it, you’re consigning yourself to the backwaters of the internet. Places where no one comes and nothing happens.
Beyond the benefit of increasing your search ranking, your content defines your brand and creates opportunities to interact with potential customers. If you’re reading this, you’re interacting with Vimi. Who knows? Some time down the line you might choose to become one of our happy clients…
What stories can we tell?
Not caring about content is probably the biggest mistake an e-marketer can make on their Ecommerce website. Fifty-word posts and keyword stuffing will get you nowhere – “Garbage in, garbage out” applies here. If you want your audience to care about what you have to say, you have to make the effort to make your content ENGAGING.
Engaging content = content that’s:
- useful
- educational
- inspirational,
- controversial
- interesting
- etc.
How do I know if it’s interesting?
When aiming to gauge the quality of the content you create – Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes. Would you find your blog posts helpful or annoying if you run into them on some other company’s site?
Unless you truly care about what you’re doing, no one else will, and if your content bores you, it bores your visitors, too.
Need ideas for topics to cover? Try a few of these:
- Cover trends and news in your industry.
- Write “how-to’s” listing hints and tips relating to your products and services.
- Interview clients and suppliers – Beyond the value as a marketing piece this is great to strengthen your relationship with them.
- Won an award? Promote it! – Your fans will find it interesting, plus it shows that you are a mover and shaker in the industry, which helps to build your brand.
- Explain your working process in detail – Highlight the benefits the process has for the client.
- Etc…
The best type of content is “Evergreen” – It’s not time-specific and preserves its value over time. I’m no prophet, but I’ll wager this post will be just as relevant in three years, as it is today.
Share your story every way you can
Now that we’ve established your need to keep telling new and engaging stories for your audience to connect with and for Google to pick-up and rank, it’s time to talk about how you can maximize the impact of these efforts.
If you’ve made the effort to create good content once – you really need to maximize your ROI by syndicating your quality content to the absolute best of your ability.
Using this post as an example again – We’ve shared it on Facebook, Linkedin, our newsletter, and we’ll probably share it again sometime in the future. Chances are you’re reading it as a result of these efforts. We’re entirely unapologetic about the hard work we do to push our messages, and our clients’, using every tool that’s relevant to our target audiences.
Video WORKS
If wiring isn’t for you, you should take a look at the video.
Why not create a short how-to video relating to your products/services and add them to your eCommerce website design?
It doesn’t take half as much effort as you think.
Don’t worry about production values too much. Research, and a zillion cat videos, prove people are happy to engage with video content, even when the quality is dashcam-poor.
Videos don’t have to be long either, in fact, the shorter they are, the likelier they are to be watched in their entirety. Look at Lowe’s classic Vine campaign – They shared a series of 6-second videos that became an instant hit with viewers because rather than just promote products, Lowe opted to share money-saving tips (who doesn’t love saving money?).
It proved to be a long-term approach to social media and e-commerce marketing that worked marvellously.
Technology isn’t an excuse to keep silent
Don’t hide behind excuses related to technology. Not sure how to start a blog? You can publish directly on Facebook or Linkedin. Want to take it a step further? WordPress is probably the best platform for blogging – it’s free and it powers “only” about 22% of the entire web. Setting up the blog is a simple technical task you’ll have to deal with once – and it’s worth the effort. Your commitment to content must be ongoing, especially since the content you create must be compelling and engaging, which bring us to our next point:
Afterword
In e-commerce marketing, ongoing improvement is quite simply imperative to handle the fact your competitors and Google’s ever-changing algorithm are always adapting.
You have to keep looking for new online marketing tactics. In this post, we highlighted some of the steps we take, but you should view this as an introduction – there’s really no end to the depth of knowledge you can acquire in this space. The good news is that the more you learn and implement, the likelier you are to succeed.
In most businesses, the vital stories and intelligence that should serve as the basis for creating a good content repository are already there, but no one ever had the time to convert them into shareable web content. The key to getting started is not to wrack your brains in an effort to develop new ideas. Start with the stories you’re already sharing in your team and with customers. Remember – Fast beats perfect…
