A well-executed content marketing plan has the ability to improve your business’ performance. Content can draw audiences to your site, it can speak directly to your users, it puts your products and services in a context that is relatable and impactful. In addition, according to Demand Metric, 20% of Internet users’ online time is spent on content. That’s a lot of opportunity to engage users.

Successful ecommerce businesses have since learned to use content to develop and grow their brand. Why? Because content marketing offers a lot of benefits. Here are some that you should know about:

1. Content marketing can build brand awareness

Well written content establishes your business as a reliable authority in the industry.  And numerous statistics show that users generally feel that they can relate to a brand better and establish a personal connection with them, if they create custom content that is tailored to their needs.

That said, taking the time to craft content for your brand will truly be an invaluable tool for building brand awareness.

• Remember to be consistent in terms of quality. You want to use your content to be relevant and essential to your audience and you can only do that by making sure that you produce content that is well-written and well-researched.
• Post regularly so that your audience comes to reply on the content you are producing.
• Get to know your audience so that you are actually able to produce content that is relevant to your users.

2. Content marketing can drive traffic to your site

A well thought out and executed content marketing strategy can improve how well search engines are able to recognize your site.

For a lot of businesses online, it’s hard to stand out from all the competition. Content marketing helps search engines go through your site and index its content, so that it can be found faster on search engines.

• Be sure to use relevant keywords and use it well as you write your content.
• Put some thought and effort behind your use of keywords—there are numerous tools available online that can help you with this.
• Remember, the critical thing about effective keyword use in your content is making sure that it is subtly threaded through your articles.

3. Content marketing can help expand your reach

Reaching out to your audience has become significantly easier online. From commenting on the posts, to sharing the posts online—all these contribute to ways businesses can engage with customers.

• Sometimes, if your content is just exceptionally written and demonstrates immense value for your users, you’ll find it’s enough to be shared across various audiences—even those outside your target audience.
• To help boost your reach, you can use social media as a way to share your content across a larger group.
• Be sure to encourage your users to help you expand your reach. This can be as simple as asking to click on the share links on your article.

Quite simply, audiences normally don’t like being pitched or feel like someone’s trying to “sales talk” them. They want to be told stories—to read about something that relates to their needs, to learn something new via content, to establish rapport with a brand that seems to understand their needs.

Content marketing is the best and most efficient way to do this. Additional statistics from Demand Metric show that—

• Content marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing—it’s around 62% less.
• It can generate around 3 times as many leads versus typical marketing methods.
• A huge chunk of audiences gain a more positive opinion of a particular business after they read custom content from their blog.
• 70% of audiences feel more connected to a brand or business because of well written and high quality content.
• More than half, 60% of consumers, truly enjoy reading related content from ecommerce brands.
• 70% of people want to learn about a business via an article as opposed to ads.

To be clear, content marketing isn’t simply about posting a blog every once in a while. You have to research and know what resonates with your consumers. You have to learn what channels are ideal to reach your desired audience. You have to work hard to produce thoughtfully written and high quality content. And you have to continue publishing regularly.

Taking the time to do all these however means that you can grow your brand effectively. And it will only be a matter of time before your business becomes a brand with strong and loyal following of consumers.

If you want to know how we can help you start or improve your content marketing strategy, get in touch with us today.

And if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave us a message below.