What is Content Marketing, and Why Is It Important For Your E-commerce Business?

One of the keys to a robust marketing plan for your e-commerce business is content marketing. E-commerce content marketing can help you better connect with your audience, address FAQs, and ultimately improve the SEO for your e-commerce business. This is a huge win that can mean more customers and a lot more sales.

So you might be wondering, what exactly is content marketing? What are your different options in this space, and how can they be used to drive success? Luckily for you, we are going to cover all of this and then some in this guide. This will get you started down the path to building out your eCommerce content strategy!

What is Content Marketing?

Simply put, content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable information with a specific audience in mind. For e-commerce businesses, it should be used to inform and educate individuals and then used to drive those individuals to purchase. When used and implemented correctly, content marketing can be an incredible tool for communicating your online brand to your customers. 

Every landing page, email sent, product description, blog, and ad you publish are all examples of content. The question is, “How can you use content effectively in your marketing to amplify your brand and ultimately grow the business?” 

Content marketing is a crucial part of the SEO puzzle. Without content, there would be nothing to optimize for your e-commerce SEO strategy. One of the purposes that content serves on your website is to help Google understand what your business has to offer and what keywords your business is related to. That way you can show up in Google searches when someone looks for a specific product or when researching products they will consider buying. Even sites linking to other resources are aimed at helping people to find what they’re looking for, and it always points them back to, you guessed it, content. It’s incredibly powerful!

“Many people hear content and immediately think of blog posts or videos. This thinking limits marketers. Content covers anything that shares a message – the images you choose to use, the font and the design, as well as any long-form content.”

-Laurel Teuscher, VP of Services, Stryde

This is the essence of content marketing–creating a space where words, images, videos, and more can be shared to serve your audience, whether it’s directly or indirectly related to your products, and helping improve your conversion rate 

What’s the difference between content strategy and content marketing?

You may notice that the terms “content strategy” and “content marketing” are used often, and perhaps even used interchangeably. However, they are not the same thing. For our purposes, you can safely assume that when we reference a “content strategy” that we are talking about “content marketing strategy.” Here is a quick diagram to show how to think about the two. 

You’ll find that content marketing focuses on execution. The process of creating, curating, and editing content that has been created specifically to be used in marketing efforts falls under the umbrella of content marketing. It ranges from blog posts to FAQ pages and is always created with the goal to build trust between your company and your customers. It’s more than just simply creating content that people want to consume. It’s about guiding them through the buying journey to ultimately make a purchase.

So, content marketing is everything that communicates and gives information to your audience. By utilizing a carefully thought-out content marketing strategy, you can change the trajectory of your business. We hope this guide has helped you better understand content marketing and its purpose. If you’d like help with your strategy, though, let’s see if our team would be a good fit to help you. Set up a free consultation, today.

Looking for more content marketing tips to help you grow your e-commerce business? Check out these posts:

Join an E-commerce Newsletter Worth Reading

Subscribe to our weekly, no-fluff newsletter packed with actionable insights to help grow your D2C brand!