How to Write an Effective Content Marketing Strategy for Your Retail Store

2 min read

by Dominic Beaulieu

Retail markets today are highly competitive. To stay ahead you need to have the attention of your existing and potential customers and provide them with relevant content. However, customers are now more aware and prepared. Customers now shop having a better understanding of a product or service quality, price, and competitors.

So there’s a need to move from traditional marketing that focuses unabashedly on making money. You need a strategy that focuses on building your brand values and establishing a relationship with customers that can lead to repeat customers and referrals. One way to achieve this is by developing an effective content marketing strategy. 86% of B2C businesses and 91% of B2B businesses use content marketing as a part of their marketing strategy. If you’re not a part of the statistics or you’re looking for new ways to write an effective content marketing strategy for your retail store, then read on.

Research Your Audience So You Know How to Approach Them

An effective content marketing strategy should be written to address your target audience's needs through the right channels. Therefore, to engage your target customers you need certain information about them. Details like their age, location, occupation, income, marital status, buyer behavior, etc. come in handy. With such information, you can create targeted and personalized content for your audience.

For example, if you operate a children's clothing retail store. And from your customer research, you realize 30% of your audience have kids below 9 years and 90% have kids that are 9 to 15 years. It gives you a better idea of the clothing to stock and the best channel to share your content. For kids aged 9 to 15, they are often on social media. So you know using the several social channels available is an excellent way to engage both kids and their parents.

Furthermore, you can make use of tools like Google Analytics. It helps you measure which content ranks higher among your audience. Also, it analyzes who’s reading what, when, and where. Thus, it’s easier to figure out what topics and formats your content needs to feature. 

Create Helpful Guides on Your Product or Service 

Providing a how-to guide for your product or service is important. It provides your customers with guides to what you’re offering. The format of your content can be written as a blog, social media post, YouTube video, etc. The end goal when writing such content is that it should add value to shoppers. For instance, if you create a video tutorial or step-by-step guide to your product, it tells the audience exactly what you sell. Also, it gives your shoppers added confidence in making a purchase.

Additionally, you can create content around topics that relate to your product or service. For example, if you run a credit card processing software, you can write on topics like “how to save money,” how to keep your online banking details safe,” etc. You can find ways to do this for your retail business.

Infuse Interactive Content around the Features on Your Website

Your website comes with several features like landing pages, title page, product pages and description, blog, etc. A way to boost these features is to write informative and interactive content. Since shopping requires a clear interactive process. While this can be easily done in a traditional retail store, it’s trickier for an eCommerce store. You’ll need to keep your shoppers' attention using well written and visual content via the features on your website.

For instance, you can add a virtual fitting room to your online store. These are 3D fitting rooms that let shoppers try on items for fit and size. Being able to first see yourself in an item before you buy it makes a customer feel more confident to purchase. You can begin by looking into customer challenges when they’re shopping in your store. It gives you a better idea of the kind of content to create and what could improve their shopping experience.

Write a Story around Your Brand Values

Telling your brand's unique story is one of the best ways to stay ahead of your competitors. Your target audience engages with you better when you tell a relatable story. Start by telling them the story of why you got into the business, your growth, and your goals. Let the reader feel like they are a part of your story.

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Also, encourage your shoppers to share their stories. This could be in the form of comments on your blogs or social media posts. You can likewise create a social media challenge and ask your audience to join in.

It will make them feel valued and build a community of loyal customers that can greatly improve your brand loyalty. Tell a short and clear story and then round it up with a call-to-action.  

Include Visual Content

Content creation has gone beyond long texts. To grab the attention of your target audience for a longer time, you need to add visuals. And visuals are not only restricted to images. It includes videos, slides, infographics, gifs, memes, etc. Rather than spend so much time reading a post, shoppers are more interested in videos and images. They want something they can easily skim and scan to get the information they need.

Before you begin posting, try to curate your visual content goals. Rather than having a bunch of incohesive visual contents all over your retail business page, having a clear idea of your brand development and marketing strategy helps. It is best if you make use of clear and minimal visual content.

The content should be relevant and informative. So you can't run a candy store and then 80% of your visuals are flowers. When retail businesses use related pictures for their content, they get 94% more views than those that use inappropriate images.

Conclusion

The changing landscape in the retail business, also calls for a change in marketing strategies. Your customers are looking for a more personal experience and armed with more product information. Thus to engage them, you need to know a lot more about the customer. With that information, you can create content that is relevant to your customer.

Remember that several other brands just like yours are all vying for your target audience's attention. Your content needs to be strategic. Use clear visuals and share a relatable brand story. Of course, you can also spread your content across various social channels, blogs, and websites. Using these tips you can deliver the right message at the right time, to the right customers.

About the author

Dominic Beaulieu is an expert writer who specializes in creating various training and professional upgrade courses, materials and manuals. He mainly writes on development, digital marketing, design, business strategies, etc. This breadth of specialization allows him to write expert columns on the most pressing topics in today's society and create writing reviews in  all top reviews .