Ecommerce Content Marketing: What It Is + How to Build a Stellar Strategy

Ecommerce content marketing involves creating high-quality, valuable content like blogs, product guides, and videos. This strategy helps online stores build trust with potential customers, drive traffic, and boost online sales.

Ecommerce is a highly competitive industry with over 28 million ecommerce stores globally.

With the right content marketing strategy, online stores can reach a wider audience and turn shoppers into loyal customers.

In this guide, we outline the basics of any successful content marketing strategy — including expert insights from 11 ecommerce marketing pros who offer guidance on how to stand out online.

What is ecommerce content marketing?

Content marketing for ecommerce is a strategic marketing approach that involves creating valuable content, such as blogs, product guides, videos, social media content, and landing pages.

The goal is to attract, convert, and retain ecommerce customers by answering their questions and guiding them toward a purchase through high-quality content.

Why content marketing is important for ecommerce

Content marketing helps ecommerce businesses reach and influence consumers across the buyer’s journey.

Here are some of the key benefits of content marketing for ecommerce:

• Builds trust: Shoppers are more likely to trust a brand that shares helpful content that provides value.
• Increases 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.
• 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 buyers feel supported throughout the buying journey and beyond.
• Fosters customer loyalty: Post-sale content (like how-to guides and support documents) makes customers feel valued and more likely to purchase from your brand again.
• Improves user experience: A content strategy will inform a well-organized, easy-to-navigate, value-packed website, which is more enjoyable to scroll through.
• Improves conversion rates: When you position your brand as an authoritative, trustworthy resource, people are more compelled to buy your products.
• Boosts ROI: Publishing high-quality, helpful content consistently yields a higher return on investment — it’s how we increased sales by 279% for Grasyon Living, doubled conversion rates for Nike, and catapulted 686’s revenue by over 562%.

Different content types for ecommerce

There are many different formats used in content marketing; however, some of the most effective content types for ecommerce are included below:

1. Blogs

Blogs and articles serve a dual purpose: They help educate shoppers and answer high-intent search queries while also improving organic visibility to attract new customers.

2. Buying guides

Similar to blogs, buying guides are deeper dives that help shoppers choose the right product. Buying guides are especially effective for high-ticket items (like electronics and furniture) or more complicated buying decisions (like personalized skincare).

3. Video

Video content can be used almost anywhere on an ecommerce site — product pages, about us, homepage, blogs — as well as on social media platforms and email marketing campaigns. Ecommerce videos can include product demos and how-to guides, unboxings, tutorials, and behind-the-scenes content.

Further reading: Video Marketing Strategy 101: A Step-by-Step Guide

4. Social content

Whether TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, social content can help boost brand awareness and drive engagement. Common social content for ecommerce brands includes short-form videos, carousels, lifestyle photos, influencer collaborations, and user-generated content (UGC).

5. User-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content is content created by real people — whether customers or paid partners — to highlight a brand’s product. This can be done through reviews, videos, photos, testimonials, social posts, blogs, or podcasts.

UGC builds trust and lifts conversion rates by promoting more authentic content.

Further reading: User-Generated Content: Complete Guide + Examples That Work

6. Case studies

Case studies are often underutilized in ecommerce, but can be a powerful content marketing tool to showcase how real customers use your products and their results. This content type builds trust by providing proof of value.

7. Landing pages

Landing pages are typically created to be the page users land on after clicking on paid ads or a call-to-action from an email, blog, or social media post. These pages promote one product or have one primary goal and help boost conversions.

Further reading: How to Create Landing Pages that Convert: Examples + Pro Tips

8. Interactive content

For ecommerce businesses, interactive content like quizzes, fit finders, and self-service tools can personalize the shopping experience, capture zero-party data, and help drive sales.

Further reading: 7 Types of Content Marketing to Grow Your Audience

How content marketing works: The buyer’s journey

Content marketing helps guide shoppers through each stage of the buyer’s journey by giving shoppers the information they need.

• Awareness: Potential customers are just becoming aware of their problems, challenges, or opportunities. They seek answers, education, resources, and insight into these challenges and discover your brand through blogs, SEO articles, social content, videos, and guides that answer those early questions.
• Consideration: At this stage, people can articulate their challenges and consider which solutions work best for them. As shoppers compare options, providing more detailed content, like buying guides, comparison pages, and case studies, helps them further evaluate your products.
• Decision: Once they’re close to buying, decision-focused content like FAQs, demo videos, and UGC gives them the confidence to purchase.
• Post-purchase: How-to content, step-by-step guides, and lifestyle content help customers get more value from what they bought, increasing satisfaction and repeat purchases.

How to build a successful content strategy for ecommerce

At the heart of a great content strategy is the desire to help your audience. With that in mind, let’s walk through each step to building an effective ecommerce content marketing strategy:

1. Audit your existing content

A content audit is the process of assessing your entire content library to determine 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.

To conduct a content audit, check content performance data to identify:

• Declining traffic and high-performing pages
• Broken or insufficient internal links
• Thin, low-quality content
• Duplicate posts or content
• Outdated information

Performing regular audits 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.

Further reading: 9 Steps to Conduct a Content Marketing Audit

2. Conduct a competitor analysis

A competitor analysis is the process of evaluating your competitors’ content, keywords, and strategies to understand what they’re doing well and opportunities to outperform them.

First, identify your main competitors. See what types of content they create and what topics they focus on.

As you do your research, highlight their most popular pieces of content, take notes on their approach, and look for 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 by providing search data on your main organic competitors so you can see behind the scenes of their SEO strategies.

Further reading: How to do an SEO Competitor Analysis: 5 Easy Steps +Top Tools to Use

3. Do topic research

Map out the themes your audience cares about — pain points, questions, product comparisons, and lifestyle content that complements what you sell.

“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

Use search data to validate topics and find high-intent queries shoppers are actively searching for, from every stage of the marketing funnel.

Keyword research tools help you find long-tail and short-tail queries according to search volume and difficulty — and also help you find related terms to reach a wider audience.

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

Further reading: How to Do Keyword Research: Tools to Use + Proven Tips

5. Identify the best 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.

“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

6. Establish content goals

Your content goals should align with your overall business goals. Try to clarify what metrics you want to move the needle on.

Common content goals include:

• Increase web traffic
• Boost engagement
• Grow brand awareness
• Increase your conversion rates
• Earn more backlinks

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

“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 itself from competitors.” Rambod Yadegar, President of HawkSEM

7. Create a content calendar

Organize your topics, formats, owners, and deadlines with a content calendar. A calendar keeps content creation consistent and ensures you cover every stage of the funnel.

(Image: HawkSEM content calendar)

Further reading: What Is a Content Calendar? (+ How to Create One)

8. Use the right content marketing tools

There are tons of online tools that make refining your ecommerce marketing strategy easier than ever.

Keyword research and SEO tools

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

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

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 and affiliate marketing tools

Upfluence is an influencer and affiliate marketing program that makes it easy to find and work with influencers.

9. Format your content for AI and AEO

With the rise of answer engines and generative AI, formatting your content for AI is essential for visibility across search platforms.

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the process of improving and formatting content so it appears in answer boxes, voice search results, and AI-generated responses in search engine results.

Further reading: What Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)? A Complete Guide

10. Monitor and 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.

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, click-through rate (CTR), 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

7 expert ecommerce content marketing tips

You’ve got your content strategy for ecommerce. 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

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-roll.

2. Use video to tell your brand’s story

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

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. 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 why 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:

4. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)

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

• It’s often free or affordable. Unless the brand is paying a creator or exchanging products for the content, it’s free content they can use on their channels.
• 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.

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

5. Partner with influencers and experts

Influencer marketing allows ecommerce businesses to tap into a new audience and borrow credibility from the influential person creating and sharing 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

Further reading: Influencer Marketing: How to Do It Right (+ Pitfalls to Avoid)

6. Optimize for organic search

Optimizing your website content for organic search increases visibility on search engines and boosts organic traffic. 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.

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.

The takeaway

From blog content and video to buying guides and quizzes, content is an essential component of marketing for any ecommerce brand.

If you aren’t ready to tackle content marketing alone, we’ve got you. HawkSEM offers content marketing services along with a suite of ecommerce marketing channels — including PPC, SEO, and paid social media marketing.

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

This article has been updated and was originally published in May 2024.