When you have an online store, you need a constant stream of new leads and regular site visitors, and that means you need to make it easy for people to find you.
Content marketing is one of the best ways to bring new customers to your ecommerce business. Putting stellar, high-value content in front of your target audience helps to bring customers to your site.
Content marketing works by building genuine trust with your audience rather than pushing sales messages. Modern shoppers are increasingly skeptical of traditional advertising. They prefer recommendations from people they trust and brands that provide real value.
By creating material that educates, entertains, or helps solve problems, you position your business as a reliable resource that customers return to again and again. This article shows you how to get started.
What Are the Main Types of Marketing Content?
Before diving into creating content, it helps to understand the various formats available. Each type serves different purposes and connects with audiences in unique ways.
Written articles remain popular for answering customer questions and improving search visibility. Video material lets you demonstrate products and connect emotionally with viewers. Audio formats like podcasts work well for audiences who prefer listening while multitasking. Visual tools such as infographics simplify complicated topics into shareable graphics.
Interactive experiences like quizzes or assessments engage users by personalizing results based on their input. These often perform well because people enjoy learning something about themselves while you gather valuable information about their preferences.
Identify a Trending Story for Your Content
To create high-value content that everyone wants to read, you have to naturally research what people are interested in at the moment. This is easily accomplished via two sources.
First, you can get a lot out of BuzzSumo, a very popular and useful resource that empowers you to search for relevant content by specific keywords. The tool shows you the most popular topics by the number of social shares. Seeing these popular topics gives you a pretty safe idea of what's trending.
If you want an even more accurate picture of what's trending across the entire web, you can use Google Trends to research specific keywords. Google Trends indicates what trends are popular, and you can can check trends as far back as 2004. For instance, if you notice that your content marketing keyword has been gaining popularity for the past decade, then it's probably a good bet to choose as the content topic.
The key is to choose this keyword based on the product or service you're selling in your online store.
Let's say your ecommerce store sells chopsticks. One question you can ask is what people usually eat with chopsticks. Sushi would be one example. And it just so happens that a search for "sushi" shows an unrelenting upward trend over the last decade or so. This means people are increasingly interested in sushi, making it an intelligent and logical keyword choice for your content marketing plans.
Define Clear Objectives for Your Content
Before producing your first piece, establish what you want to accomplish. Vague aspirations won't help you measure success or guide your decisions.
Create objectives that are precise, quantifiable, realistic, aligned with business needs, and time-specific. For example, "Boost website visitors from search engines by 20% within twelve months," gives you a concrete target to work toward.
Your aims might focus on raising brand recognition, generating qualified leads, keeping existing customers engaged, or establishing industry authority. Each goal requires different content approaches and distribution methods.
Know Who You’re Creating Content For
Creating effective content starts with deeply understanding your audience. You should never assume you know what your target audiences want. Always make sure to set aside tons of research time.
Talk directly with customers to learn their challenges and aspirations. Monitor conversations on social platforms to see what they discuss. Look at questions they ask in forums and review sites.
Ask yourself: Who are your ideal buyers? What obstacles do they face? How can your unique knowledge help them succeed?
When you truly understand their perspective, you can create material that resonates on a personal level. Content that tries appealing to everyone usually connects with no one.
Start Creating Content
Now that you have a trending story and an understanding of your audience, it's time to open up a blank document and start creating content.
With "sushi," for example, you know what about it makes for a great story. People are interested in eating good food that's easy to prepare and that looks attractive to the eye. If you're selling chopsticks in your ecommerce store, you can make an engrossing story about sushi and use striking visuals that mix your product with sushi.
More concretely, you can write a blog post about:
- How to prepare sushi
- The various kinds of sushi
- What countries on Earth consume the most sushi
- What the most popular kinds of sushi are
- The craziest kinds of sushi
This is just a small example, of course, as the possibilities are almost endless. Once you settle on your topic, you're best off writing a long-form blog post about it for your site. That's because longer content of approximately 2000 words routinely performs better in SEO rankings and organic traffic.
Equipped with your trending-topic keyword and your long-form blog post, you are positioning your ecommerce site to be the beneficiary of a lot of traffic if you do the next steps properly.
Select the Right Distribution Channels
With limited time and resources, you can't be everywhere at once. Choose platforms that align with both your strengths and where your audience spends more time.
For building awareness, social platforms excel at reaching large targeted groups. Each network has distinct characteristics. Visual-focused platforms suit certain products while professional networks work better for business services.
When generating leads is your priority, consider offering valuable resources like detailed guides or interactive webinars. These high-value assets justify asking for contact information in exchange.
For keeping customers engaged, build resource centers on your site with helpful tutorials, tips, and community features. Regular social interaction also strengthens relationships with existing buyers.
Distribute Your Content on the Right Channels
Just because you've identified a hot topic and also written a high-quality piece of content doesn't automatically mean that traffic will go to your store. You have to put your content in front of people in the right channels.
Think of the big sites on the web that drive traffic because they're discussion-based and have a very active and large user base. What immediately springs to mind is Reddit. Reddit is a huge aggregation/social media/web-content rating/discussion site and one of the most-visited sites on the web. It's perfect for getting people to take note of your content and drive traffic to your ecommerce site.
A warning, though: Reddit can sometimes be strict about what it lets its users post, so be sure to understand how to use the system to your advantage. Marketing Land recommends five steps to succeed at getting traffic to your blog from Reddit:
- Become a Redditor (an actual user of the site)
- Determine Your Subreddit
- Create Content Specifically for Reddit
- Ensure You're Not Called out
- Don't Neglect Any Comments
If you succeed on Reddit, your post may get to a subreddit's front page, which will build awareness and bring many more eyeballs to your store.
Similarly, you can harness social media for the same distribution effect.
On X (formerly Twitter), you can create a sizable following for your ecommerce store by tweeting valuable and relevant content to your industry peers, broken up once in a while with self-promoting tweets. It's called the 80/20 rule. The longer you do this and the greater your following, the more traffic you'll drive to your ecommerce store.
Leverage Helpful Tools and Resources
Smart marketers use technology to work more efficiently and gain better insights. Analytics platforms help you understand which material performs best and where visitors come from.
Scheduling tools let you plan publication calendars and maintain consistency across platforms. Research tools reveal what questions people ask and what topics generate interest.
Educational resources from marketing institutes and industry blogs keep you updated on best practices. AI-powered assistants can help with brainstorming ideas and adapting content for different formats, though human creativity and expertise remain essential.
Maintain Consistency in Creation and Distribution
A brilliant strategy means nothing without consistent execution. Commit to a realistic publishing schedule you can maintain long-term.
Quality matters more than quantity, but regular publication builds audience expectations. Whether you publish weekly or monthly, stick to your schedule so readers know when to expect new material.
Invest equally in promotion. Spend time distributing through appropriate channels, engaging with comments, and adapting content for different platforms. A great article that nobody sees won't help your business grow.
Measure Your Results Continuously
Although all the previous steps are very important and arguably the foundation of your whole content marketing strategy, measuring your results is the most vital of all. You need to know the return on investment (ROI) on your time and effort.
That's why keeping careful track of the results you got is necessary and will inform your future content marketing aims.
The first place to start is consulting your ecommerce store's site analytics. You want to know whether you got a meaningful spike in traffic during the time in which you shared your trending-story blog post on the various distribution channels.
Check also the various distribution channels in which you shared or otherwise promoted your high-value content.
Check Reddit to see if your post made it to the front page of its particular subreddit. If you crafted your content to be suitable for said subreddit and establish yourself as a legitimate user by regularly participating in the comments section, your chances of having your post make it to the subreddit's front page drastically increase.
Check your social media stats to see the number of impressions, likes and retweets your blog-post tweet got. It's also helpful to see if posting at different times and days raises traffic back to your ecommerce store.
Adjust your Approach Based on Data
Your initial strategy shouldn't be permanent. Regular evaluation and adjustment keep your efforts effective and aligned with business objectives.
Track progress against the specific goals you established. When something underperforms, investigate why before changing course. Look for patterns in what resonates with your audience.
Platform analytics and website data reveal which topics attract attention, what formats engage readers, and which distribution methods drive results. Use these insights to refine future efforts and double down on what works.
Understand the Customer Journey
People don't usually discover your brand and immediately make a purchase. They move through stages as they identify needs, explore solutions, and decide what to buy.
Early on, potential customers recognize they have a problem but haven't determined how to solve it. Content that explains issues and educates works well here.
In the middle phase, they're comparing different approaches and looking for the best option. Material that demonstrates your expertise while gently highlighting your offerings fits this stage.
Finally, when ready to purchase, they want confirmation they're making the right choice. Content showcasing what makes you different helps convert browsers into buyers.
However, modern shopping journeys aren't always linear. People might jump between stages or research multiple aspects simultaneously. Create content addressing various needs so you're helpful regardless of where someone is in their decision process.
Way More Than Writing Great Content
So many ecommerce store owners still believe that great content will somehow automatically bring traffic to their site. In nearly all cases, this is not true.
Creating awesome content is just half the battle (if half at all). It’s also vital to create implementation, distribution, and improvement strategies that solve your audience’s needs and motivate them to come to your store again and again. After all, without doing that, no one will find your store, and your store will just be a URL in some lonely corner of the web.
Success requires strategic thinking about what to create, deep understanding of who you're serving, smart choices about where to publish, and disciplined tracking of what delivers results. When you combine valuable content with effective distribution and continuous improvement, you build lasting relationships that drive sustainable growth for your online business.
Content Marketing FAQ
What Are the Best Tools for Measuring Content Marketing Performance?
There are so many platforms out there for measuring the performance of your content marketing, many of which have onboard for identifying opportunities to optimize and grow. For traffic and behavior metrics, you can try Google Analytics, while Semrush and Ahrefs are solid options for tracking search engine optimization (SEO performance). HubSpot is an essential content management system (CMS) for tracking leads and ROI, and Sprout Social helps figure out what’s working and what’s not on social channels.
How Do You Identify the Right Channels for Your Content Marketing?
What is your target audience looking for and where do they spend most of their time? Answer these questions and you’ll be well on your way to figure out which channels are best suited for your content marketing goals. You first want to define what your audience wants and build personas based on factors like demographics and psychographics, and then evaluate the channels that fit these types of audiences. Importantly, you have to price out each channel before you commit to certain platforms, as the ROI may not justify choosing one channel over another.
How Do You Create a Target Audience for Content Marketing?
Your target audience will be comprised of the buyer personas most likely to purchase your products and services over and over again. The way you develop these personas is to research your ideal customers and dig into their demographics and psychographics. This data will help you draw lines around specific buyer segments, which you can fill in with more details like interests, shopping behaviors, and pain points.
How Much Does Content Marketing Cost?
There’s no easy answer to this question, as you can spend as little or as much on content marketing as you want. It’s one of the most scalable parts of marketing, and it doesn’t depend on ad or commercial costs. Your investment will depend on how much focus you want to have on content over other types of marketing. While AI tools can reduce the price of content creation and other strategic steps, quality may go down and you may need more people to help scale. In-house content marketers are often worth the price, but you can secure a few reliable freelancers without breaking the bank.