4 Ecommerce Content Marketing Mistakes You Are Making

When running an ecommerce store, it’s important to diversify your traffic. Ads and influencer marketing offer a great starting point, but they can get expensive in the long run. A more affordable option is content marketing, but watch out for content marketing mistakes!

If you’ve been using content marketing to run your ecommerce store, but you aren’t seeing any results or if you are just about to start using content marketing and want to have the best start, then make sure you read this entire post. You’re probably making one of the four most common content marketing mistakes people make while running their ecommerce stores. Here they are – and the steps you can take to avoid them.

#1 Not using the right keywords for your blog posts

Many ecommerce store owners and content managers understand the importance of keywords. They do ample research to figure out what keywords their target audience is searching for and strategically place them in the blog post. But what they forget to do is take search intent into consideration. It’s a very common content marketing mistake.

You see, Google is smart. When people are searching for something on the site, it knows why they’re doing this.

For a specific content marketing example, when you search the term ‘running shoes for men’, Google knows you’re interested in buying running shoes, so it displays the results of ecommerce stores selling those shoes.

Ecommerce store owners forget to take this into consideration while doing their keyword research. They write blog posts and try to rank them. But Google prefers rankings product pages.

Before you select the keywords, search for it on Google to see the type of posts that rank for these searches. If you find that most of the results are products, it would be better to rank for a different keyword.

As mentioned above, the keyword ‘running shoes for men’ will result in more product results. But if you just add the word ‘best’ before it, you will see more articles in the results.

As you can see, they are all list posts. Therefore, it would be better for you to write a list post to get your article to rank.

There’s another important point to note. When you’re starting out it might seem tempting to try to rank for a popular keyword like ‘best running shoes for men’. But it’s better to avoid keywords like these as the competition will be immense.

Most of the sites in the top results will have good authority and the individual posts will already have several links pointing to them. Trying to rank for these will take a lot of time.

That’s why it would be better to shoot for a long tail keyword. These keywords get fewer searches, but the competition will be lower. So, it should be easier for you to rank. An example of a long tail keyword is ‘best running shoes for men with flat feet’.

It might not have as high a search volume as ‘best running shoes for me’, but it should be easier to rank for it.

#2 Not promoting your content

Publishing top quality content that contains relevant keywords is important, but with that you also need to promote your post. If you optimize your post for sharing and then promote it, your post will attract that initial influx of shares and traffic from social networks and forums. And some of the people who read it will link to it. This will help you drive long term traffic from search engines.

So, make sure you optimize your post for social media sharing before you publish it. There are 3 ways to optimize a post for social media content…

• Include a social media optimized headline. If your headline is optimized for social media, more people will share and reshare it. Use content marketing tools like Headline Analyzer to come up with a more shareable headline.

• Another way to get more shares is by adding visuals to your posts. As discussed here, posts with visuals get more shares on social media. So, make sure you optimize your posts for social media sharing by adding the right visuals. The three main networks you should optimize your posts for are Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
• And make sure you add share buttons. Share buttons will remind readers that the posts can be shared with a simple click of a button. So, use a good plugin like Social Snap to set this up.

Once you have optimized your posts for social media sharing, begin promoting it. Here are the three main marketing methods:

1. share the posts by yourself on social media
2. outreach (where you reach out to influencers and ask them to share)
3. ads

This will provide you with that initial influx of shares and traffic as people like sharing and resharing fresh content.

But remember to continue promoting your posts. Place an emphasis on getting backlinks.

#3 Not converting traffic to leads

Ecommerce stores like publishing list posts because it gives them an opportunity to promote their products in the post. When a site writes a post like ‘best running shoes for men’ they can link out to products in the post itself. This way people will read the post, click on the product and buy it.

But the problem with solely focusing on this is that the number of people who will convert to customers will be extremely low. Most of the traffic a website receives will not convert immediately. This is because most people who are reading the post on running shoes aren’t in any hurry to buy them.

When people look at list posts they are usually are just weighing their options before they dive in. Always have a backup marketing plan in place to stay in touch with these people. Convert this traffic into email leads and stay in touch with them via email.

Most ecommerce store owners only optimize their blogs for people who want to purchase immediately and miss out on all these potential customers. Create a lead magnet on a topic related to these list posts and promote it on your blog.

After they sign up, stay in touch and nurture them with more content and promote your products too. This way when they’re ready to buy, they’ll buy from you and not from your competitors.

You can also add retargeting (an advertising strategy) to your content marketing funnel to convert people who don’t buy immediately. Make sure to add remarketing pixels to some of the best advertising platforms to your blog and content landing pages to help augment your content marketing funnel.

#4 Not having a content marketing influencer strategy

When people think about influencer marketing they usually just focus on Instagram. But what they forget is that influencer marketing includes blogs too.

There are hundreds and thousands of bloggers writing posts on topics related to your niche and already ranking for them. Their sites already have high authority. So, instead of trying to rank for the keywords, team up with these bloggers.

For example, let’s say you sell Dutch ovens. Ranking for a keyword like best Dutch oven will take a while. So, instead, conduct a search with this term on Google and see who is ranking for it already.

Filter out the bloggers/influencers from your competitors and contact the bloggers. And ask them to add your product to the post.

To convince them to add your product over your competitors, invite them to your affiliate program and give them a higher cut from the sales they generate. Also help them by promoting the post.

This way instead of spending a lot of time and money getting your post to rank, you’ll get some immediate results. So, if you haven’t already got an affiliate program in place set one up and leverage it with influencers who are dominating your niche through content marketing.

Conclusion on Ecommerce Content Marketing Mistakes

These are the 4 common content marketing mistakes people make while promoting their ecommerce store. If you want to generate more traffic, leads, and sales from your efforts make sure you avoid these.

Are you using content marketing to promote your ecommerce store? Have you noticed any other common content marketing mistakes that ecommerce stores make with their content marketing efforts? Please leave your comments below.

For another look at the content marketing mistakes that e-commerce business make and why they fail, check out this great infographic from Geek Designs.