13 types of content for your content-driven eCommerce campaigns
Reading Time: 12 minutesContent-driven eCommerce is the no. 1 trend among the eCommerce market trends for 2020 and beyond. And, that’s the reason why content-driven campaigns are on the rise in the eCommerce industry.
After conducting 13 eCommerce workshops and training 267 eCommerce merchants at Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA), Vatsal Shah, an eCommerce business coach, often says,
“Content acts like oxygen in eCommerce marketing.”
And, I agree with him completely as I experience the same.
While strategizing content marketing with content creators and Marketing teams at various eCommerce brands, I guide them on how they can create platform-specific content and market them the right way to multiply conversion ratios.
Here are the top types of content to use in your content-driven campaigns for effective eCommerce content marketing.
1. Advertisements (Online and Offline ADs)
More than half of the US local advertisers plan to increase their ad spend in content marketing, as per a survey conducted by Borrell Associates between April and July 2019.
Local marketers believe content marketing as one of the top ways to drive sales for their local/retail stores.
And, when it comes to video advertising in content marketing, Apple has always nailed it.
The moment they launched this campaign, “Born with Wings”, I was able to spot this video across all my social channels as a sponsored post.
Because it was a tribute to India’s former president, Late Shri Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam with an emotionally and psychologically strong message, it clicked thousands of Indian, Apple lovers on republic day of 2020.
Another video ad I remember is of Myntra when they chose Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli as their brand ambassadors for their ‘Go Myntra La-La’ Campaign.
According to Myntra, they launched this campaign to offer an unmatched fashion shopping experience with their super-ly high-tech app features like scan and buy, try and buy, and more. That’s all for today’s young, confident, and successful India.
Tips on launching successful eCommerce content-driven advertising campaigns
- Choose the audience before you design your ads (video, audio or text-based)
- Identify the platforms you would use to promote them
- Collaborate with the PR media companies to ensure your ads get better limelight
- Promote it across all your channels
- Create supported media to use for such campaigns
2. Blogs
A blog is one of the basic content-driven commerce examples to inform, educate, entertain, and persuade your audience to buy your products.
Though it’s basic, it’s highly essential.
You talk about an eCommerce brand and it’s impossible to say they don’t blog.
I know H&M, and I’m sure you know the brand too. I would say not entirely my wardrobe is filled with H&M fashion, but I do love reading their styling blogs.
Here is the latest one that I received in my mailbox-
Before moving to explain how you can get this look, they feature a list of products that you’ll need. Check this image out-
Such blogging creates an impression of how much you care for your audience. ‘Sharing is caring’ definitely works in business and especially for eCommerce businesses.
Tips to create powerful eCommerce content-driven blogs
- Identify your customer pain areas with each of your product categories
- Understand what emotional appeal you want to make to promote those product categories
- Jot down the topics you would want to write cover the pain areas with the right products
- Promote them across all the channels
- Don’t forget to interlink them whenever and wherever necessary
3. News / Editorial
Another example of a content-driven commerce campaign could be adding news to your store. If you think news cannot bring conversions then I won’t argue. It’s true that no conversions take place from the news/editorial section of your eCommerce store.
But, I would want you to know what reflects from your brand when you post news.
Why should news be added to your eCommerce store?
Check out the top reasons/benefits of posting news on your eCommerce store:
- Today, it’s not easy to grab customers. They look around on search engines and social media on how you operate and how popular you are. Your news section on eCommerce showcases what people talk about you and your brand.
- A news section builds trust among your buyers. When your existing buyers see you positively on media coverage, they feel proud to be your customer.
- Investors looking to invest in your eCommerce store come to know whether it’s worth investing in your brand in various ways and one of them is the news section.
Lyft, an online ride-sharing platform usually posts news on its blog section. But, as people have this habit of finding news on the “News/Press” section, they have a separate Press section.
In this Press section, they cover multiple media mentions here. And, if they have specific news to share, they use their blog section–
Tips to create powerful eCommerce News section for your content-driven campaigns
- Share product upgrades, funding round-ups, expert opinions, surveys, reports, and more in this News section.
- You don’t need a strategy to post on the News section, but use it in a way that can impress your customers.
- Design it right so that impressing investor becomes easy.
4. User guides
User guides play a crucial role in selling online and hence, a powerful type of content in your content-driven commerce campaign.
Before I move on to discuss user guides, you must know these statistics about eCommerce-
- In 2014, there were 1.32 billion digital buyers across the globe (Statista)
- In 2019, retail eCommerce sales amounted to 3.53 trillion U.S. dollars across the world (Statista)
The number of digital buyers has increased and online shopping has also increased. Thanks to the efforts marketers made in the early days of eCommerce and brought it here.
And, that would have been impossible without user guides.
If I talk about Zivame, one of the top niche fashion brands, they struggled to convince women to buy lingerie online. They created guides on how to choose the perfect size and shape for different lingeries, different women.
So, user guides are super important especially if you want to convince your audience why you’re the perfect brand for them.
Let’s check out how Airbnb, an online marketplace to offer and arrange homestays and tourism experiences, creates user guides for each of their segmented groups of audiences-
Tips to create powerful eCommerce user guides for your content-driven campaigns
- Jot down a proper outline to cover an entire topic in the correct flow
- Add pictures/videos/GIFs/Memes to add and describe your words powerfully
- Promote it across social channels and emails to help them reach the right audience at the right time
- Keep a separate section on your eCommerce store to help your audience to reach user guides quickly and easily
5. Digital Catalogs
The digital catalog is a collection of products digitally printed and showcased in a PDF-formatted document on the eCommerce store. As it is digitally printed, it’s one of the types of content to be used in your content-driven campaigns.
Without digital catalogs, B2B eCommerce cannot survive. Even if we talk about offline B2B business, then when a wholesaler sends the catalog to the customer, they receive orders based on the product SKUs available in the catalog. The online B2B business is exactly the same.
Even in B2C eCommerce, digital catalogs play a crucial role in getting online as well as offline orders.
Check out an example of India’s leading sanitaryware manufacturer, Cera’s digital catalog–
As they deal with more than 1000s of products in each category, they add all of these products in a catalog. They ask the customer to choose their product from the catalog and then they place an order for the same.
Benefits of digital catalogs-
- Builds customer interests for your products
- Gives extraordinary choices to select from
- Converting potential customers to loyal buyers
Tips to create amazing digital catalogs for your eCommerce store-
- For each product line, keep a separate product catalog
- Make sure each of the products looks clean and attractive
- Keep it in a PDF format to help your customers to download it easily
- Don’t forget to keep a contact form before you help them download to collect lead information
6. Lookbooks
Don’t confuse digital catalogs with lookbooks because lookbooks are intended to showcase how a product would look when fitted with the other supplementary products.
A lookbook is a collection of photographs to showcase the latest trends and how to style a particular product.
Mostly, you can find lookbooks with the fashion and furniture eCommerce brands. They showcase how their product would look like when they accessorize with others.
Here is an example of a lookbook from SATYA PAUL Accessories-
For the fashion eCommerce marketplaces, lookbooks can help them sell the entire look. So, this type of content-driven commerce campaign can drive instant sales on multiple products resulting in improving the total average order value (AOV).
Tips to create powerful eCommerce lookbooks for your content-driven campaigns
- Make it look super attractive so that conversions can happen quickly
- Ensure it talks to-the-point else you would lose customer interests
- Work on minute details while doing a professional photoshoot to take the maximum benefit of the lookbook
7. FAQs
Another type of content you can publish on your eCommerce store is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
You don’t publish FAQs to promote them and grab business out of it. FAQs are the part of your product pages/online store that helps you answer all the customer queries that stop them from buying your products.
When you answer all the queries in advance, you deliver a better user experience by saving their time and effort in asking you. Hence, you earn their respect and trust which results in quick conversions.
Here is an eCommerce FAQ example from a well-known company, Adobe-
Tips to create powerful eCommerce FAQs for your content-driven commerce campaign-
- Choose the right place to showcase your FAQ section
- Identify what questions you want to cover
- Finalize the design- text-based, interactive, or LIVE FAQs
- Keep updating the list of FAQs based on the changing queries
8. Social media posts
Content-driven commerce campaigns are incomplete without social media content. Whether it’s text, photo, video, audio, and any graphics-based, content is the only thing that rules and makes conversions happen over social media.
Here are types of social media content you must try in your content-driven campaigns-
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Photos
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You can add a single or an array of photos to attract, engage, convert, and delight your customers on social media.
Coronavirus, aka COVID-19, has shaken the entire world. Check out how an online pharmacy brand, PharmEasy, took Instagram to share a list of myths, people have across the globe around Coronavirus-
That goes without saying that spreading awareness is definitely a part of your content-driven commerce campaigns.
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Videos
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You can use videos on your social media platforms for various purposes. Nike uses to connect with its audience with emotions using videos-
Here is another retail chain, MTR Foods, that shares a video of a recipe using one of their products-
MTR Foods educate their buyers and even persuade them to buy their breakfast mix.
Your purpose to use the video decides what, when, and how you want to promote the same in your campaign.
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Blogs
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Most eCommerce brands use blogging as a part of their content-driven campaigns. But, creating blogs is not enough, their distribution across the right channels is what makes it successful.
Here is an example of an on-demand eCommerce brand of online professional education, Udemy, that shares their blogs on their social media platforms-
The 3D framework for taking control of #stress, according to Udemy instructor @RituRiyat
Develop awareness of stress
Discover how stress manifests
Do something about it— Udemy (@udemy) February 26, 2020
Your blog is another type of social media content that engages.
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Polls
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Polls are available on Instagram stories, Twitter and Facebook. Initially, a few eCommerce brands used polls on Twitter. But with Instagram Stories, more and more brands have started utilizing polls to drive engagement on their stories.
Look at this Instagram story of Netflix, an online video-streaming app-
Utterly a superb idea to drive engagement to your content-driven commerce campaigns!
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Contests
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Usually, contests are those types of social media content that drives the highest engagement and for which the people who stalk your brand, eventually become your buyers.
Swiggy, an online food-delivery service-based brand, come up with contests to help their potential buyers with discounts or food vouchers which their customers can utilize in ordering food on their platform-
We’re celebrating Swiggy Super’s 1st anniversary with#SwiggyPictorama – play and win prizes worth ₹5 lacs! https://t.co/6yGR0yaQr4 pic.twitter.com/9v4E7ibixF
— Swiggy (@swiggy_in) October 23, 2019
Social media posts are so flexible that you can use them the way you want on each of the platforms to see higher ROI on your content-driven commerce campaigns.
10. Influencer posts
Earlier it was word-of-mouth and today, it’s influencer marketing. I can either say,
Influencer marketing is the new word-of-mouth marketing.
According to a September 2019 report by eMarketer, 57% of millennials and 55% of the US Gen Z internet users consider the knowledge and real enthusiasm for a product, brand or industry to buy a product recommended by an influencer.
And, that’s the reason why most of the eCommerce brands have started investing more on influencer marketing.
Here is an online skincare wipes’ brand highly focuses on influencer marketing to drive sales and improve ROI of their content-driven campaigns-
Make sure you know everything about influencer marketing to ensure you get the maximum results out of the same.
11. User-generated content
Another killer type of content to use in your content-driven campaigns is the user-generated content.
Well, user-generated content can often be confused with influencer marketing because after all, you’re going to promote what the paid or unpaid users have talked about your brand or products.
You sometimes pay influencers to use your products and market them across their followers. But, user-generated content comes directly from unpaid users. Your real-life customers have paid you for your products and come up with honest reviews about your products.
You can use them the way you want- either you share those reviews on social media or include them in your blogs.
Check out a user-generated travel experience of Los Angeles by the Verge Girl customer who shared her photos wearing outfits from VG and her journey of moving to L.A. from Australia. Let me remind you, VG is an Australian fashion eCommerce brand.
12. Emails
Your content-driven commerce campaigns are incomplete without emails. With the right set of emails to your customers, you can actually drive conversions.
I receive emails consistently on specific days and times. That’s the best way to let your audience know when they can expect one from you.
Like a welcome email, which your audience expects right after they sign up your newsletter or join your eCommerce portal.
Here is an example of a perfect welcome email from a top EduTech eCommerce brand, Education.com-
Make sure you follow these Dos and Don’ts of email marketing before you send the right series of emails. They will help you avoid certain mistakes and grab amazing open and click-through rates.
13. Memes
Memes are the most fun type of content in your content-driven commerce campaigns that you can use to engage your audience.
Not most of the eCommerce brands use Memes, but I know the one that does it amazingly-
So, use Memes in your content-driven campaigns when you want to super-ly connect with your audience and they become your loyal fans (loyal customers happens after that :D).
