The Business Owner's Guide to Retail Content Marketing

Retail business owners are focused on product quality and distribution. However, few owners focus on the marketing aspects of their business, making it one of those things often forgotten about until it is too late. 

Your business may benefit from implementing retail content marketing strategies and building an online community. Retail content marketing focuses on collateral to introduce new products to an audience in an engaging, entertaining, informative, or otherwise interesting way. According to Debutify, 70% of customers prefer this type of marketing over traditional options since they feel salesy and sterile.  

Retail marketing is an important part of your business, and you can’t draw in a steady stream of new customers without it. Take a deeper look at how your business can benefit from implementing retail content marketing strategies. 

What is Retail Content Marketing? 

Retail content marketing refers to strategies where retail stores create and share content online to attract in-store and online customers. Whether it is on social media or their website, the goal is to acquire sales by providing information about products in a way customers enjoy and find value in. When done well, a strong retail content marketing strategy will drive sales and the popularity of a company far beyond what is possible through more traditional marketing tactics.  

According to the New York Times, 90% of organizations focus on content marketing as a key part of their marketing and advertising strategy. Content is the key to grabbing and maintaining the attention of potential customers. With more companies advertising online than ever, the market is noisy. The top organizations are able to not only attract the attention of their audience but also provide value, turning them into loyal customers. 

There’s a big difference between traditional advertising and retail content marketing. Traditional advertising focuses on promoting the product or service, while retail content marketing emphasizes the value of those goods or services and how they help customers.  

Retail content marketing is focused on providing value to the target audience more than anything else, which builds a community around your business. To do this, marketers focus on the four basic principles: attract, engage, convert, and retain.  

The process starts by figuring out what content attracts a large audience and engages them with this material. Through providing value to the target audience, you build up goodwill and eventually convert them into customers. Finally, once you have a customer base, you must continue to provide value to maintain their loyalty.  

Why is Content Marketing Important for Retailers? 

Content marketing is important for retailers because it is the key to building a larger customer base. With more people shopping online than in stores, your company needs a way to reach everyone. Traditional advertising fails to reach a wide online audience while cutting through the digital noise many people are used to. Content marketing, on the other hand, grabs people’s attention by providing value.  

Content marketing offers several distinct advantages over traditional advertising. For example, it is roughly 62% more cost-effective than traditional advertising, significantly reducing the customer acquisition cost. Content marketing creates more personalized interactions, which leads to a stronger customer base. In fact, personalized content is responsible for an overall 20% increase in leads. 

With more people using their phones to shop online, content marketing puts your company at the forefront of their minds. As a result, you build stronger brand awareness and drive traffic to your website and stores.  

Content marketing helps generate leads and sales from a larger pool of potential customers than you could expect to reach through traditional methods. These new connections are also deeper and more engaging since the methods used to develop effective content focus on the needs of the audience. It results in increased customer loyalty and brand engagement throughout the community.  

Interestingly, effective retail content marketing also helps your company build a reputation for skills, knowledge, experience, and expertise. By addressing the needs of your audience, people see you as an expert and leader within your industry. Becoming the cornerstone of an industry is a quick way to increase customer conversions and engagement since everyone will come to you for help.  

Developing a Retail Content Marketing Strategy 

To reap the benefits retail content marketing provides, your company needs a retail content marketing strategy. There is a five-step process to creating an effective plan to quickly build an effective marketing system for your company.  

The first step is to identify who you want to engage with. Companies who market to everyone at the same time reach no one. Instead, describe the type of person you want to reach the most. Use statistics such as psychographics, demographics, pain points, interests, needs, and more to flesh out your ideal consumer profile. This will guide the development of your assets, future strategies, and content.  

Then, define the goals and objectives of your marketing strategy. Use the SMART goal setting method to make all of your goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). By being specific about what you intend to do and how, your plan becomes easier to implement and manage. 

You’ll need to do keyword research before creating any SEO-rich content. There are keyword research tools freely available online. There are also many paid options with more features to justify the price tag.  

Once you have the right information, it’s time to start planning the ads. Choosing the right format is an important step. Make sure it works for your content and for the preferences of your audience. For example, younger audiences prefer social media or text message marketing, while older users probably prefer email newsletters. 

Finally, develop a content calendar to make sure you never run out of content to post. You should aim for one post every two weeks or one post every week if possible. Also include special posts for holidays and other big events.  

Creating Engaging Retail Content 

As you create content, remember that it needs to be engaging and promote communication and interactions with your audience. You want them to do more than watch your content; you want to receive comments, purchases, reviews, and other reactions. The best way to promote engagement is by providing value.  

Your audience knows they are being sold to, but they don’t want to feel like it. Focus solely on providing value to your audience. Be entertaining by telling compelling stories of how you solved a customer’s problems and made their life better. Answer the questions you think your audience wants to ask. Offer advice on how to use products to address problems. All of your efforts here will drive customer interactions.  

Make sure you put your best foot forward by using high-quality visuals throughout your presentation. The better it looks, the more interested your audience will be. Video content and infographics are popular options for easily conveying stories to your audience.  

No matter what form your content takes, it should be optimized for SEO, as doing so will be the key to higher rankings. Methods like keyword optimization, internal linking, and tags are among the best ways of achieving successful high SEO performance. Also, make sure your headlines are compelling and attention-grabbing. Most people begin reading by skimming through the headlines, so it's important to have strong, effective titles.  

Promoting and Distributing Your Retail Content 

Once you have a handful of retail content pieces on your calendar, start focusing on distribution. Social media marketing is an effective way to distribute content since it has the potential to reach a lot of people. Email marketing, on the other hand, has the ability to last longer and provide more information.  

Any marketing channel with a paid advertising system is worth looking into. That’s because paid ads target your potential audience without interference. Just be careful you don’t overspend! 

If you connect with influencers who would support your brand, then it is worth discussing an advertising deal with them. Influencer marketing is an effective way to give your brand credibility. You also get access to their social media network, which expands your reach even further with added credibility, since your business is being recommended by someone they trust. 

Measuring the Success of Your Retail Content Marketing 

As you begin to publish content across marketing channels, it is important to also deploy systems to track overall performance. You can’t know if a particular practice generates returns unless you monitor its performance before and after implementation. For this, you need to monitor specific key metrics, such as web traffic, return on investment (ROI), and engagement through interactions on each platform.  

Fortunately, most content marketing platforms have built-in analytics tools to simplify measuring performance. There are also third-party tools that collect data from multiple sites and combine it all in one place to make managing all of your platforms easier. Google Analytics and HubSpot are two well-known options for this.  

With access to performance data, you have feedback to customize your content for better performance that your audience enjoys. Every content marketing strategy needs adjustments, and this analytical data is the difference between a successful campaign and not seeing the results you need. All it takes is a few small tweaks to improve how your marketing strategy works and see the results you intended to generate.  

Getting Started with Content Marketing 

Content marketing is a powerful tool for retail companies, but you must understand how to use it in order to reap the rewards. With such a large potential audience online, there is plenty of potential for business growth.  

Content marketing is one of the many ways to grow your business. At Paytronix, we help companies build loyal customer bases through engagement solutions. Do you want to better serve guests who support your business for the long haul? If so, take advantage of our engagement solutions to give your company an advantage. Schedule a demo now to view the software in action and determine if it fits your company’s needs.