Content Marketing for Ecommerce: 10 Strategies, Tips + Examples

Content marketing can help ecommerce businesses increase their visibility, clicks, and conversions. We go beyond the basics with expert insights and real examples from ecommerce content marketing pros.

Here, you’ll find:

• What is content marketing for ecommerce?
• What is an ecommerce content strategy?
• How to build a content strategy for ecommerce
• 7 expert ecommerce content marketing tips
• Why is content marketing important for ecommerce?
• Why ecommerce brands need a content strategy

In 2024, retail ecommerce sales are estimated to exceed $6.3 trillion worldwide. With so many online shopping options, content marketing for ecommerce is becoming even more important to stand out in the crowded marketplace.

But to create killer content for your online store, you must go beyond the basics.

In this guide, we’ve tapped into expert insights from 11 ecommerce marketing pros who offer guidance on how to stand out online. Pulse, we share real-life content marketing examples of effective content at work.

What is content marketing for ecommerce?

Content marketing for ecommerce is a strategic marketing approach that involves creating valuable content to attract, convert, and retain ecommerce customers.

Ecommerce businesses create engaging, informative, optimized, and visually appealing content to reach consumers across the buyer’s journey and move them through the sales funnel toward making a purchase.

What is an ecommerce content strategy?

A content strategy for ecommerce is exactly what it sounds like: a strategy for all your content to achieve your ecommerce company’s business goals.

You’ll use insights like age groups, location demographics, and buying preferences to create the most resonant, helpful content for your target audience.

The most effective ecommerce content is informative, engaging, and visually appealing. But are these types of content enough for business owners and marketers to gain traction?

This is where your content marketing strategy comes into play. It gives every piece of content (product pages, blog posts, case studies, product descriptions, white papers, tutorials, and more) cohesion and a purpose.

The goal? Elevate good content to high-quality, valuable content that drives clear results, attracts potential buyers, and advances them on their customer journey.

Ready to leverage content to boost traffic and drive sales? Keep reading.

How to build a content strategy for ecommerce

At the heart of a great content strategy is the desire to help your audience. Use that as your beacon, and you won’t fail.

Of course, you’ll beef up the strategy using analytics and data, but remember that you’re creating content for humans with real problems.

With that in mind, let’s walk through each step to building an effective ecommerce content marketing strategy:

1. Audit your existing content
2. Research your competitors
3. Do topic research
4. Perform keyword research
5. Identify the best types of content
6. Establish content goals
7. Create a content calendar
8. Use the right content marketing tools
9. Format your content for impact
10. Measure your results

1. Audit your existing content

Auditing your ecommerce store’s existing content is a great way to get started with your ecommerce content marketing strategy.

Look for what’s working and what’s falling flat. With these insights, you’ll see patterns that help you fine-tune your strategy to produce more targeted, impactful content that resonates with your audience.

Here’s what you can do:

• Check content performance data to see what’s hitting and what’s missing
• Swap broken or insufficient internal links with relevant, updated links
• Flesh out thin, low-quality content with comprehensive, actionable tips
• Remove any duplicate posts or content to avoid Google penalties
• Update outdated statistics with the latest figures

Semrush’s domain overview is a good place to start looking at your content search metrics:

While doing your content marketing audit, you may find older content that isn’t relevant to your target audience anymore. Say you publish a yearly trend forecast every January. You should update this every year to reflect industry shifts since trends evolve.

Alternatively, some content may still be relevant but could benefit from additional information, updated statistics, or more optimized formatting.

Maybe you have a guide on how to create a monthly budget. What new, fresh value can you add to that piece? Perhaps you can cover new budgeting tools or apps that have hit the market since the piece was published.

Regularly auditing your company’s content is the best way to ensure content formats, topics, and research are always up-to-date. As you update the content, also consider what new internal links you can include to relevant content that was published after the initial piece.

2. Research your competitors

It’s no secret that ecommerce is booming. What makes your brand unique? To answer that, do some competitive research.

To get started, identify your main competitors. See what types of content they create and what topics they focus on. As you do your research, be sure to:

• Identify their most popular pieces of content. Whether it’s a high-ranking blog post or a TikTok video with thousands of likes, it shows you what content types and topics audiences may respond to.
• Take notes on their approach. Go beyond just the types of content they post. What channels are they active on? How do they position themselves in the market? How do they engage with customers?
• Make note of any content gaps. Find the gaps in your competitors’ content. These are great opportunities for your ecommerce site to offer something new to your target audience.

Tools like Semrush make it easy to conduct an SEO competitor analysis. It gives you search data on your main organic competitors, making it easy to see behind the scenes of their SEO strategies.

As you analyze their content, engagement, messaging, branding, and performance metrics, note their approach and find ways to improve it.

3. Do topic research

Many businesses will create content around topics they think their audience is interested in. However, instead of relying on guesswork, ecommerce brands should look at what the data is telling them.

It’s vital to research and determine the demand for topics before creating new content. Without intention behind the strategy, ecommerce content writers, marketers, and business owners risk publishing flat content that fails to bring in potential customers and foster engagement.

“When thinking of new topics, I try to put myself in customers’ shoes. I take time to see what questions they ask online and what types of things they look to learn. Then, I create material that genuinely helps, whether tips on how to do things, insider knowledge, or just something entertaining. To me, success means providing value to customers. By making their needs a top priority, content marketing has become what really propels my business ahead.” Ahn Nguyen, Product Analyst & Owner of 365 Crocs

4. Perform keyword research

Keyword research is at the heart of any SEO content strategy. Not only does it give you insights into which keywords you could rank for on Google, but it gives you a look into consumer minds.

Take the list of topics that you put together during your topic research, and brainstorm keywords for each. You want a good mix of short- and long-tail keywords.

Then, use a keyword research tool to find related terms. These can be synonyms to the keywords you’ve brainstormed or more specific search queries.

For example, a women’s clothing retailer may want to rank for keywords related to women’s pants.

While that is a great broad topic, it’s likely too broad to bring in the kind of high-intent traffic they’re looking for. There’s also a good chance that the competition level is high.

Here are additional keywords they may add to the list:

• Women’s slacks
• Pants for women
• Where to buy women’s slacks
• Women’s pants size 12
• Cheap trousers for women

While conducting keyword research, remember to look at the keywords you already rank for. If you rank for any keywords on the bottom of page one of Google or on page two, these are considered low-hanging fruit keywords because you have a good chance of ranking for them by optimizing the content.

“Being a language app, creating value-added and building authority within the language learning community is of utmost importance. For each language, we create a topical map of topics readers—beginner to expert-level language learners—want to find on our site. We then conduct a huge amount of keyword research to rank for low-hanging fruit within our topical map. Also of importance is creating an internal link strategy which helps with schema and silos.” Natalia Dávila Merlo, Content Marketing Manager at Ling

When conducting keyword research, look for keywords that balance high search volume and lower keyword difficulty. These are the keywords you have the best chance of ranking for.

Also, consider the intent of the search engine user. Are they looking for information? Do they want to purchase something? This will be important when you start to create content around the topic.

5. Identify the best types of content

The world of content is vast. Blog posts, videos, landing pages, product descriptions, podcasts, social media, infographics, and web pages galore.

But just because they all exist doesn’t mean they all make sense for your ecommerce business. Rather than reaching for every medium available, hone in on a few types of content.

Consider what types of content best highlight the product’s benefits and features, and show potential buyers how to use the product or how it fits into their lifestyle.

Video and other visual content allow you to show the products in use. Whether it’s demonstration videos your team produces or user-generated unboxing videos, these types of content are often successful for ecommerce brands.

“For many people, it’s hard to believe that a rug can be spill-proof and, more so, can be tossed into a spin cycle for cleaning. That skepticism could hurt our sales if we don’t address it. Hence, we make it a point to demonstrate how our customers do this by creating product demonstration videos, collaborating with digital content creators in developing them. People trust what they see. So, if you have a product that may raise a few eyebrows with its unique value proposition, it’s best to show people (not tell them) how it can resolve their pain points, and demonstration videos are the best at achieving this.” Zach Dannett, Co-Founder Tumble

This is where the seeds of your strategy begin to take shape. Tailoring your content creation to meet your audience exactly where they’re at will capture their attention and interest them in trying your products.

The best part? You can repurpose content across various digital spaces. Take a long-form video as an example. You can chop that bad boy into a ton of bite-sized videos to share on social media. Or turn the video into a blog post to capture more organic traffic from the search engines.

And voilà! you just created dozens of content pieces from one meaty video.

6. Establish content goals

Not having marketing goals as an ecommerce business is like shooting blindly at a target. Sure, you may land some shots here and there… but it leaves your entire strategy up to chance.

It’s easy to want to do it all. But try to clarify what metrics you want to move the needle on.

Do you want to:

• Get more web traffic?
• Build trust?
• Grow brand awareness?
• Increase your conversion rates?
• Get more backlinks?

Once you have more specific goals for your content marketing efforts, you can create a strategy to achieve those goals.

Too often, ecommerce brands focus just on conversion rates or revenue. But that’s not the only element of ecommerce content strategy. Your content marketing campaigns target people across the buyer’s journey, so it’s important to create good content that aligns with the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel.

For example, product reviews and tutorial video content are great for consumers who are ready to buy (bottom-of-funnel). But those who are still identifying their problems and researching how to solve them (top-of-funnel) will need more educational content like blog posts before they’re ready to make a purchasing decision.

“Our client, Apotheke, a luxury lifestyle fragrance brand, wanted to move away from always-on sales and offer codes so they could attract more high-intent buyers for its luxury goods. Our team helped them expand into social formats that could help humanize the brand. We worked with influencers who unboxed products, described the fragrances, and showed them in different home and lifestyle settings. This really helped the company connect with customers while differentiating them from competitors.” Rambod Yadegar, President of HawkSEM

7. Create a content calendar

We’ve all been there: scrambling to throw together last-minute content ideas just to get something published. You can avoid this by having a content calendar.

This is a clean, organized space where you’ll create content briefs, outline topics, assign content, and communicate with your team.

It’ll also ensure you stay consistent with publishing content, letting your audience know you’re active, and search engines know you’re knowledgeable. After all, SEO is a long game, requiring consistent content creation, publishing, monitoring, and tweaking to see optimal results.

Having a content calendar helps marketing teams stay on task while creating blog posts, videos, graphics, social media posts, and other content for ecommerce companies.

CoSchedule is a great content calendar tool that keeps everything organized across content marketing campaigns. Use it to see all your social media marketing, email marketing, and blog posts in a calendar format.

8. Use the right content marketing tools

There are tons of online tools that make refining your ecommerce marketing strategy easier than ever. Plus, they’re fun to experiment with.

Keyword research & SEO tools

While there are many free SEO and keyword research tools out there, they tend to have limited capabilities.

If you’re serious about search engine optimization, check out robust tools like Semrush and Ahrefs. These go beyond keyword research to include features for competitive research, link building, on-page SEO, and technical SEO.

Content ideation tools

Sometimes coming up with ideas can be the hardest part of creating a content strategy. Content marketing tools like BuzzSumo make it easy to find trending ideas online, and Answer The Public offers you insights into what questions people are asking online.

Analytics software

The only way to understand what’s working and what isn’t is to look at the data. Tools like Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, and HotJar help you collect data about how consumers use your website so you can optimize and improve its content and format.

Influencers & affiliate marketing tools

Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing are two excellent ways for ecommerce brands to increase their reach and attract new customers. Upfluence is an influencer and affiliate marketing program that makes it easy to find and work with influencers.

9. Format your content for impact

How you format your content can vastly impact how people engage with and perceive your ecommerce business.

Content formats can significantly affect whether people stay on your site, or lose interest and bounce away.

It’s important to ensure your formatting is optimized for SEO as well.

Here’s how:

• Use compelling, catchy titles
• Break up your content into sections with headings and subheadings
• Use informative title tags and meta descriptions — be sure to infuse targeted keywords here
• Include alt text for images
• Make ideas actionable and easy to read with bullet points and lists

Overall, your formatting should be consistent and identifiable.

Take this blog post as an example. We start every article on our blog with a bullet list of exactly what the reader will find in each piece. This creates cohesion across all our blog content and improves the user experience.

10. Measure your results

The only way to know if your content marketing works is to track your results. Start by taking a benchmark of where you are now. Then, measure your progress each month.

The key performance indicators (KPIs) you measure will depend on your goals. For example, if you want to sell more products, you can measure conversions and revenue increases.

Remember, revenue and conversions aren’t the only metric. Some content isn’t meant to sell products directly. It may be to engage your audience or educate them. In that case, measure social media shares, link clicks, or downloads.

“I measure success based on user engagement metrics like time on site, pages per session, etc. Ultimately the most important KPI is ROI – comparing content marketing expenses to any increase in leads, sales, or revenue that content drives. Tracking affordable content’s effects over months/years shows its true value.” Carl Broadbent, Professional Affiliate Marketer & Digital Marketing Expert

At HawkSEM, we use ConversionIQ, our groundbreaking, proprietary software that organizes our client’s digital marketing data in one user-friendly space. It gives us comprehensive data into predictive trends and the entire buyer journey, from when a person first shows interest to when they buy (or fall off).

With all this juicy data at our fingertips, we have everything to optimize your digital marketing campaigns. And when you partner with our content marketing agency, we’ll leverage that data to boost your results.

7 expert ecommerce content marketing tips

You’ve got your content strategy for ecommerce done. Now what?

It’s time to implement all the great ideas your team came up with. And who better to guide you than ecommerce marketing pros who’ve spent time in the trenches?

Here are our top 7 ecommerce marketing tips with examples from the pros:

1. Create visually appealing content
2. Use video to tell your brand’s story
3. Create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey
4. Add social proof to your website
5. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)
6. Partner with influencers and experts
7. Optimize your web content for organic search

1. Create visually appealing content

Visual content doesn’t necessarily have to be a YouTube or TikTok video. Brainstorm ways to present your information visually for your audience to enjoy.

“We launched a video podcast for our 3D printer reviews that boosted both direct and organic video traffic, moving viewers naturally from watching on YouTube to exploring our website for deeper dives.This success even caught the attention of brands, who started reaching out for collaborations like sponsored reviews and banner placements.” Paul Chow, CTO of 3DGearZone

Rather than film a talking head YouTube video, 3DGearZone chose to launch video podcasts. This format allows the company to show its expertise and build authority around industry topics.

Not to mention, the podcast format is often easier to plan, film, and edit than a video with a script and B-role.

2. Use video to tell your brand’s story

Given the visual nature of physical products, it’s no surprise that ecommerce brands often lean on video to tell their brand’s story and show off their products.

Whether it’s a long-form YouTube tutorial video, a bite-sized TikTok about a specific product’s features, or something in between, creating video content can grab the attention of your audience and easily get across the value of your products.

Unboxing videos are a popular trend, because who doesn’t love opening a package they’ve been waiting for? And for ecommerce brands, unboxing videos offer fresh video content and authentic user-generated content (UGC).

“I’ll never forget the first time a customer shared a heartfelt unboxing video with us. She was thrilled with the fast delivery and safe packaging. We highlighted it on our site and saw a huge increase in conversions, showing the power of real customer journeys.” Diana Zheng, Head of Marketing at Stallion Express

Stallion Express shares user-generated videos on its Instagram. Customers shout out the company because they love the quality, and it uses this as an opportunity to share social proof in a video format.

3. Create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey

Not everyone is ready to buy the first time they encounter your ecommerce brand. If you want to capture consumers at every stage of the funnel, create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey.

The buyer’s journey has 4 stages:

• Awareness: People are just becoming aware of their problems, challenges, or opportunities. They seek answers, education, resources, and insight into these challenges.
• Consideration: At this stage, people can articulate their challenges and consider which solutions work best for them. They’re doing serious research about your products.
• Decision: At the decision stage, people know what type of solution they want to buy. Now, they’re just trying to figure out which brand to choose.
• Post-purchase: The buyer’s journey doesn’t stop after checkout. Those in the post-purchase phase want to get the most out of their purchase. This is your opportunity to influence retention and repeat purchases.

If you want to appeal to potential customers at every stage of the journey, create content around their thoughts, feelings, and challenges in that stage.

4. Add social proof to your website

People are more likely to purchase something when it’s been recommended or endorsed by another person. That’s where social proof comes in.

Product reviews are a type of social proof that can influence a new purchase. In fact, 97% of customers read reviews before buying, and online product reviews can increase sales conversions by 270%.

Many online retailers include a review section of their product page so that the social proof is in the same space where the customer would add the product to their cart.

Here’s an example from Gap:

User-generated content from customers and influencers is another social proof type that ecommerce brands often use. These types of content often show the actual product in use, which can go a bit further in influencing conversions than the typical review.

5. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is one of the best forms of ecommerce content marketing for a couple of reasons:

• It’s often free. Unless the brand is paying an influencer or exchanging products for the content, it’s free content they can use on their channels that they didn’t have to do any work to put together.
• It’s more authentic. When consumers go through the trouble of creating content about their favorite brands, it’s far more authentic than a scripted ad or highly-produced marketing campaign.
• It connects with consumers. Consumers are more likely to relate to someone who’s using a product than the company that sells it. With UGC, they can better imagine how the product fits into their lives.
• It offers social proof. UGC is another form of social proof. Rather than writing a quick sentence about their experience, customers are providing a lot more detail about what they love about the product.

User-generated content can be anything from snapping a quick photo of the product in their home to a detailed product review on a blog or YouTube. Sharing UGC on your company’s social media channels and website is a great way to get more eyes on this authentic marketing content.

“For my hiking backpack store, I partnered with influential hiking bloggers and offered to provide custom photography of backpack models in outdoor settings in exchange for reviews. This authentically showcased our products while enabling us to tap into large, targeted audiences through trusted voices in the hiking community. The in-depth reviews and high-quality usage photos helped drive conversions and affiliate sales. The campaign generated a 350% ROI in the first 2 months and became an ongoing stream of passive marketing.” Connor Gillivan, Founder & CEO of TrioSEO

6. Partner with influencers and experts

Influencer marketing is popular among ecommerce brands because it allows these busiensses to tap into a new audience and borrow credibility from the person creating the content.

Influencers have worked hard to grow their audience and build trust. When they recommend a product, their followers are more likely to listen to their thoughts and opinions because they know, like, and trust them.

Influencer marketing also allows brands to showcase what their products look like when in use. Rather than seeing a static photo of the product, consumers can see the product in action and get a better idea of the user experience.

Fenty Beauty is a great example of an ecommerce brand that often partners with influencers to showcase its beauty products. Recently, beauty influencer, Golloria shared her experience with Fenty concealer on her Instagram page.

Fenty Beauty then shared its video on their Instagram account:

In the video, she not only talks about why she loves the product but uses it on camera to show what the experience is like. And from the engagement this video got, it’s clear that consumers connected with the content.

“One marketing tactic that’s really paid off for us is teaming up with online influencers to create custom t-shirt designs. In exchange for free artwork, they would post about it on their social channels and link to our site. The influencers were stoked to offer their networks something fresh and unique while we benefited from the new eyeballs. Over the course of a month, their posts drove a major surge in traffic and sales each time. It was a win-win setup that required barely any investment from us beyond some graphic design time.” Josh Neuman, Founder of Chummy Tees

7. Optimize your web content for organic search

Optimizing your blog and website content for organic search increases visibility on search engines. In addition to creating content around the keywords you’ve identified in your content strategy, you’ll also want to pay attention to on-page SEO and technical SEO.

Creating valuable, optimized blog content is one of the best ways to improve your chances of ranking on search engines for relevant keywords. In addition to high-quality written content, you’ll also want to include visuals like product images and videos to enhance it.

Improving SEO isn’t just about creating as much new content as possible. Your brand will also need to monitor its search performance over time and continue to optimize its product pages, site pages, and blog posts.

“Facing a six-month slump in clicks and rankings, our men’s apparel ecommerce client needed a boost. To revive their presence, we employed a multi-pronged approach, with content marketing at its core. We optimized existing pages for SEO and crafted 5 in-depth, 3,000-word articles targeting relevant long-tail keywords. Not only did traffic surge, but conversions also saw a significant uptick.” Scott Gabdullin, Founder of Authority Factors.

Why is content marketing important for ecommerce?

Ecommerce companies use content marketing to reach and influence consumers across the buyer’s journey. Whether it’s a product page on an ecommerce website or a video posted to a social media platform, every piece of content can make an impact.

Here are several benefits of content marketing for ecommerce:

• Builds trust: Helpful and engaging content helps ecommerce brands build trust with leads and new customers.
• Grows brand awareness: The more content ecommerce stores create, the more opportunities they have to reach a wider audience and get their brand name in front of new people.
• Boosts SEO performance: The more optimized content you create for your ecommerce site, the more opportunities your brand has to rank online for relevant keywords.
• Improves customer experience: Helpful content like FAQs or tutorial videos helps improve the customer experience by helping buyers get more out of their products.
• Fosters customer loyalty: Content marketing isn’t just for leads. Creating content that engages, entertains, and enhances the lives of your customers helps you build an audience of loyal customers.

Why ecommerce brands need a content strategy

Think of your ecommerce content strategy as a sturdy thoroughbred. It needs resources — careful planning, research, and execution — to win the race.

And champions aren’t born overnight. They’re built over time using skill, experience, and discipline.

Benefits of a content strategy for ecommerce

Ecommerce companies want to get more traffic, convert that traffic into customers, and keep those loyal customers returning for more.

At the heart of companies achieving these goals? A rock-solid content strategy.

Publishing informational, helpful, valuable content consistently via long-form blog posts, case studies, white papers, infographics, and educational videos yields serious marketing results.

It’s how we increased sales by 279% for Grasyon Living, and doubled conversion rates for Nike, and catapulted 686’s revenue by over 562%.

Here’s how a content strategy for ecommerce generates mega results for your brand:

• Increased brand awareness and visibility: Strategic digital marketing helps your ecommerce business reach a wider audience and gain more traction in organic search results and on social media.
• Improved user experience: A content strategy will inform a well-organized, easy-to-navigate, value-packed website, which is more enjoyable to scroll through.
• Higher SEO rankings: Publishing quality content on your ecommerce website helps your website rank higher on search engines. If your content is valuable, you’ll likely convert that organic traffic into new customers.
• Better conversion rates: When you position your brand as an authoritative, trustworthy problem solver, people trust you and feel more compelled to buy your products.
• Skyrocketed ROI: While you’ll have to shell out marketing funds on labor or contractors, the fruits of that labor will flourish exponentially via more visitors to your site and, in turn, more revenue.

Results of a weak content strategy for ecommerce

Now that you know why you need a content marketing strategy for ecommerce, let’s look at what might happen if you don’t build a solid content strategy before you start creating content:

• Inconsistent branding: Without a well-defined content strategy, your messaging and branding can become scattered, leading to unclear brand identity and confusion among your audience.
• Poor user experience (UX): Inadequate or irrelevant information, inconsistent messaging, and poor navigation can all stem from a lack of content strategy. This frustrates people, turning them off and potentially sabotaging conversions.
• Low SEO rankings: Quality content and SEO go hand-in-hand. Ecommerce sites are no exception. If you want to rank on Google, your content needs a strategy behind it.
• Wasted resources: Pumping out content that does nothing to boost engagement, establish authority, drive traffic, or increase sales wastes time, money, and effort.
• Lack of engagement: Lackluster content won’t spark interest or inspire action, resulting in lower conversion rates and revenue. Not to mention losing out on new customers.
• Lack of differentiation: Without a well-defined strategy, your business will blend into the sea of competition.

There’s no silver lining to neglecting your content marketing strategy, and there’s no mistaking its advantages.

The takeaway

Creating killer content marketing for ecommerce isn’t simple. But with a well-researched and documented content strategy as your guide, it’s much easier to get amazing results from your content.

Pair the content strategy for ecommerce with the expert tips we’ve covered here, and you’ve got a recipe for success.

And if you aren’t ready to tackle content marketing alone, we’ve got you. HawkSEM offers content marketing services, including SEO services and social media marketing.

Reach out to see how we can help you get better results with your ecommerce content marketing.