I’m going to share a secret with you at the end of this blog post. Hopefully, it will inspire you to invest in a marketing strategy for your eCommerce site that you know you should have been doing for years now but have somehow put it off.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been telling retailers that they should be blogging. A good blog is the perfect content marketing strategy for sharing your wisdom and knowledge with existing and potential customers. It’s a place where you can increase visibility, build reputation, and, let’s not forget why we are all here, sell more.
Blogging can also be incredibly cost-effective and reap long-term rewards.
Despite my insistence that content marketing works for everyone, not everyone gets it. This is for a very simple reason. Many people believe that content marketing is time-consuming and difficult. They’re not wrong — but this doesn’t mean that blogging should be discounted as a legitimate marketing strategy.
Why should I invest in a blog for my retail business?
There are many reasons why you should invest in a blog. Here are just a few of my favourites:
- Google loves a blog: Do I need to say anymore? Google loves fresh, original, useful content. Note the use of the word “useful” — if you want your content to be found on the major search engines, you better make sure you are writing content that your customers want to read.
- Social media loves a blog: If you are not producing good content on your blog, what exactly are you sharing on social media. Sure special offers might drive a little engagement, but at the end of the day, people don’t always react so well to being sold to in a social environment. You’ll find your followers are much more likely to share your social posts if you offer real value and insight in your content.
- Email marketing loves a blog: A good blog post can act as a highly effective lead magnet, encouraging visitors to subscribe to your email lists and encouraging repeat visits. A regularly updated blog also provides great content for your email marketing newsletters. When you give some thought to the content you share, your email subscribers will actively engage with your emails and return to your website on a more regular occurrence.
- Your customers love a blog: People buy from people they like and trust. Suppose you can deliver real insight via your blog during the research phase of any purchase. In that case, people will find it much easier to part with their cash, knowing the individuals in your business have an interest beyond the transaction.
What’s the alternative to content marketing?
The answer to this question is simple — spend more money on expensive acquisition marketing. If that option works for you, that’s great — but I would question if it’s a sustainable approach.
The question you need to ask yourself is: Do you have enough margin in your products to afford to keep on spending on paid search and paid social media activities? I’ve met many online business owners whose entire marketing strategy revolves around paid search and shopping. While they find it easy to generate sales and scale their businesses, they often struggle to realise significant profits.
This in no way suggests that you should stop paying for traffic. It’s more a case of finding balance in your acquisition and retention strategy. It’s also important to remember that your traffic will stop as soon as you stop any paid activities.
Great content just keeps on working for you.
Content marketing success — what’s the secret?
I promised to share a secret with you at the end of this post — so here goes.
Frooition has always seen great value in investing in content marketing. A great example of why we do this is demonstrated by a simple blog post we posted a little more than three years ago. The blog post talks about email marketing best practices for Halloween. Every October, that blog post rises up in the search engine rankings and delivers an incredible amount of traffic to our website. Seriously, we are talking thousands of page impressions.
Imagine how a bank of seasonable content could kick-start your holiday marketing this year, next year, and long into the future.
Community Values
You might be asking, how does a blog post about email marketing help an eCommerce design, build, and optimisation agency like Frooition? It’s all about community.
While Frooition is not in the business of selling email marketing, it’s something that many of our clients and prospective clients are very interested in. It’s also a strategy we fully endorse as a driver of repeat purchases and increased profits. After all, there is no point in designing beautiful websites if our clients cannot make money out of them, and email marketing certainly helps.
Essentially, we aim to build a community around Frooition’s content. Suppose people can find value in our content. In that case, we believe the Frooition brand will be front of mind when people think about eBay listing optimisation, Amazon store branding, or BigCommerce design and build services. Until then, we’re happy if you find the information we share helpful.
With that in mind, we are always interested in hearing from the community about what they would like to read on the Frooition blog. The best content always seeks to solve a problem, so if you have an eCommerce problem, perhaps we can help you solve it.
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Could your blog help you better position your retail business in front of its target audience this holiday season, and the next, and maybe even the next? Share your comments below:
