When considering online businesses, many aspiring entrepreneurs think e-commerce and blogging to be two diverse opportunities. Online retailers often focus marketing resources on paid ads and social media marketing. However, adding a blog to an e-commerce website offers several lead generation and monetization benefits.
Here's how you can use smart blogging as a powerful marketing tool that drives warm leads to your e-commerce website.
The Benefits of a Blog
It's often difficult to conceptualize how a blog can benefit an e-commerce business. After all, no one wants to spend time reading about the products you're selling beyond the product descriptions and sales copy. The key to success with e-commerce blogging is to share relevant and adjacent information to your product offering.
"Our experts cover countless topics on our blog. This helps share industry updates as well as attract target visitors to the website of our sign company," marketing specialists at Front Signs say. Front Signs shares resources about architectural trends, branding, and even logo designs — all relevant content to their broader B2B audience. Similarly, a clothing retailer could share blogs on upcoming fashion trends, how to create a signature look, and helpful wardrobe tips.
The takeaway: there's plenty of relevant content you can create to attract an audience and build trust through sharing valuable resources. This approach to marketing also serves as a form of social proof by establishing a strong online presence.
The other crucial aspect of blogging for e-commerce is search engine optimization (SEO), which helps your site rank above the competition. Creating well-written content with relevant keywords builds recognition on search engines, helping drive organic traffic to your website. In other words, people will naturally gravitate to your store without you spending thousands on paid ads. As SEO has a long-term, potentially exponential effect, building a blog is an effective forward-thinking strategy.
Outlining Your Blog
It's not enough to create a blog; the content must resonate with your audience. Starting your blog starts with revisiting your target sales demographic, then finding content that provides solutions for them. Using the signage example above, the small businesses looking for signage may not spend much time thinking about their signs. However, as the product falls under a broader branding umbrella, marketing content is a sensible focus.
Clarify your niche, then identify what content is relevant to them. One strategy for finding content inspiration is to discover what questions people are asking concerning your e-commerce products. Use a free service like Answer the Public to find a visual representation of queries based on your product offering.
Conducting Keyword Research
Creating blog content is a starting point for attracting organic traffic to your website. However, there's a key difference between gaining organic traffic and gaining qualified leads.
Keyword Research 101
Keyword research is the process by which businesses determine what search topics they want to compete for. The process requires understanding your niche, discovering what keywords have the most traffic, and determining how difficult they are to compete with.
It's important to understand that competing for a first-page ranking on Google is tough. If your e-commerce business sells athletic attire, it's doubtful that you'll ever rank for "Nike shoes." The trick is to find relevant keyword combinations that have lower competition so you can start to gain traction. For example, while "Nike shoes" may be out of reach, "are Nike blazers suitable for running" could be an easy target.
While you can figure out keywords without investing in tools, you'll need a more sophisticated approach to start ranking. Tools like Ahrefs and Frase.io can help you determine what keywords to use, what headers are relevant in your content, and what pieces you're competing with online.
Keyword Cannibalization
One essential concern for e-commerce businesses with blogs that isn't such an issue to blog-based firms is keyword cannibalization. Ideally, product-based keywords will direct potential customers to the product page, reducing customer friction and making it easier to transact. Using product-specific keywords like "Nike Blazers" instead of longer queries like "are Nike blazers suitable for running" could redirect traffic to the blog instead of the product. Using relevant, adjacent keywords is ideal for avoiding this issue.
Creating Compelling Content
While the focus of SEO and keyword research is to appeal to the Google Bots, it's vital to remember your true audience: humans. There are several factors beyond keywords that impact whether your content will rank or not. One of those factors is how long people spend on a page and how far they scroll. Another consideration is whether they bounce (ie; leave your site) after reading content or navigate to another page within your site.
So while incorporating keywords is integral, it's equally important to create content that's enjoyable to read. Google stays on top of "black hat" SEO methods like keyword stuffing and looks for high-quality content that gives readers the information they need. In other words, writing a list of keywords in white ink at the end of your blog post will get you penalized by Google.
E-Commerce Blogging Success Tips
Creating a blog to drive customers to your e-commerce business is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some key concepts to remember as you start this journey.
Consistency Matters
Google looks for continuously refreshed pages on your website when ranking. Posting a blog every few months isn't enough to drive organic traffic; you must be consistent. Start by posting every two weeks and scaling up over time. This consideration is crucial for e-commerce and service businesses that don't refresh product offerings often.
Clarify Your Customer Journey
So you've driven traffic to your page. Now what?
Beyond attracting new visitors to your website, you need to consider how you want to guide them through the sales funnel to become customers. Generating a lead magnet with an email capture is the most straightforward approach. Online retailers often experience success by offering a discount code in return for an email address. Even if you don't have an email marketing strategy in place yet, you should start capturing emails ASAP.
Outlining your customer journey will also help you nourish your audience and create an experience that keeps them coming back for more.
Analyze and Optimize
The keywords you rank for today will change over time. As more competition comes online, the relevant terms and information required could cause your long-standing blog post to start losing traffic. When this happens, it's time for a content refresh. Analyze your web traffic, and update content for new keywords.
Your analytics will also provide insights into customer behavior and needs. This data can help you create targeted marketing campaigns and improve your website to reduce friction.
Final Thoughts
Creating a blog can help drive organic traffic to your website, creating a continuous feed of warm leads to your e-commerce store. Create a strategy with the long-term in mind. There's no overnight success with a blog, but it could be the key to a sustainable business in the future.