How to Grow Your Ecommerce Business with Content Marketing in 2022

Content marketing remains one of the most popular marketing tactics in B2C, with over 90% of marketers actively investing in it. While this means there are numerous new ideas that you can utilize, it also makes it harder to stand out and ensure you out-market your competitors.

Let’s take a look at seven different strategies for growing your ecommerce business in 2022 and what you need to be mindful of when creating and promoting your content.

Provide Extra Value

The content you produce should both align with your line of products and complement them and appeal to the interests of your target audience. However, it should also be just a little bit more than that: it should provide the kind of value that sets it apart from your direct competitors.

Take some time to consider what your edge might be. Can you provide in-depth guides? Can you film how-to videos? What kinds of problems are you able to solve for your customers, and what would the best way to showcase the solutions be?

Here’s one way to do it: Rockin’ Wellness features delicious recipes on their website that naturally feature their products. You can substitute them for the ones you already have at home and still make good use of the value they provide.

Source: rockinwellness.com

This is a great way to put yourself on the map: offer that little something extra that customers will appreciate.

Target More Than One Audience Segment

You also want to make sure that you carefully target more than one audience segment. Speaking to a very general audience may get you more brand recognition, but once someone is already aware of you, they will want something more personalized.

You can start by targeting different funnel stages and craft content for your top, middle, and bottom-funnel audience. Or, you can target specific preferences, locations, age groups, interests, etc.

You already know a lot about your audience. Just check your Analytics to determine what people are engaging with the most and what kinds of queries bring them to your store. Focus on creating content that will fill any information and value gaps.

Here’s a very straightforward example: Bay Alarm Medical sells medical alarms. However, their target audience isn’t limited to only the elderly. That’s why their content also targets those who are looking to buy the product for their parents or grandparents.

Source: bayalarmmedical.com

This kind of segmentation is a great way to reach a wider audience as well and start ranking for a wider range of keywords.

Promote Your Products

The purpose of your content marketing efforts will always be to promote your brand and your products, but you want to do that carefully. You never want a piece of content to sound like nothing more than a sales pitch.

When inserting your product, make sure it makes sense and that there is additional value provided. For example, if you’re talking about the best way to prepare a backyard for the spring, you can very straightforwardly mention your rakes, brooms, or garbage cans. On the other hand, it would be much less effective to write a post about the benefits of using one of your brooms – and way too promotional.

Take a look at the Bolland and Branch blog and how they feature their products. There are plenty of useful internal links that take you right to the product mentioned.

Source: bollandbranch.com

Plus, the brand’s images are always original and feature their own products, which is another great way to insert some interest without pushing your agenda too much.

Think Outside the Box

Knowing what kind of content to create can sometimes be the major snag. While you certainly want to stay within a certain space and appeal to a certain audience’s interests, you also want to do something unique.

Writing about topics that no one is looking for will never get you much organic traffic. However, writing about something super interesting no one has ever heard of and highlighting it on a post that has much higher chances of driving traffic can be super-lucrative. It will put you on the map, so to speak.

Take a look at the Real Thread blog. They feature some conventional posts as well as some super-fun pieces, like their post on the most iconic t-shirts. And they have a really good one on bucket hats, too.

Source: realthread.com

This is your chance to show off your creativity. Create content that truly speaks to your brand’s values and ethos – and potentially your sense of humor. In time, you can gain a loyal audience base that will love to see what you come up with next.

Compile ‘Best of’ Lists

Another great way to be of service to your customers and attract plenty of useful attention is to create “best of” lists that will help readers make a purchasing decision. Ideally, you can feature only your own products and compare them against each other, telling shoppers which would best suit their specific needs.

Most shoppers aren’t usually sure about a product. They aren’t sure whether it will do what they need it to do and whether it will fit into their lifestyle. By eliminating most of the doubt and answering their questions upfront, you can significantly improve your sales.

US Fireplace Store does this very well, and they’ve created several of these product list posts that help make a purchasing decision. This is especially useful in their industry, as most of their customers won’t be fireplace experts. Any advice they can get will certainly be useful.

Source: usfireplacestore.com

Don’t Neglect the Visuals

What your content looks like can often be just as, if not more important than what the copy itself says. By creating visually appealing content, you will instantly be increasing its inherent value and making it that much easier to promote across social media channels that are more visual-oriented.

This is especially important for the kinds of posts that provide step-by-step instructions or that would benefit from a visual aid.

Make sure that the images add to the post and that they’re not just placeholders. You want them to enhance what you are saying without distracting a reader from the content itself.

Here’s a great example from REI. Their post on self-rescue in a kayak comes with a video and plenty of images that show you exactly what you need to do. The words themselves wouldn’t be as effective.

Improve Your Categorization

Finally, take a moment to consider how people will get from one of your pieces of content to another. If you make it very difficult to surf your website, you will lose a lot of potential subscribers and customers. People will simply click off as soon as they’ve found what they’re looking for.

By creating a good hub page, you can circumvent this. A good hub page can help ensure that people find other articles of interest once they’ve finished browsing one article.

Lowes did this well with their DIY hub. This is where they’re able to showcase different categories of posts and carefully trickle traffic down to their most important and most interesting pages.

Source: lowes.com

You don’t need a hub per se, but you should consider breadcrumbs and the way your content navigation menu works.

Final Thoughts

Consider these content marketing tips and tricks before writing another post for your blog, and you’ll notice an increase in interest and traffic. If you also promote your products right, the conversions will follow right along as well.