If you head over to Shopify’s website or the Shopify app, you’ll find snappy blog posts about success stories from entrepreneurs not altogether unlike yourself. Shopify boasts about how for “every $1 of revenue Shopify makes, our merchants earn $40.82” while pointing to people from all over the world who use their services.
It’s a powerful message to be sending to business owners, one that radiates hope and prosperity. The real question, though, doesn’t rest in whether some people find success using Shopify, but rather, how you can use Shopify to find success.
From our perspective, a great content marketing strategy can really complement what Shopify has to offer your business.
The Groundwork: Content Marketing, Shopify, and Your Business
First, let’s begin by ensuring we’re all on the same page.
At okwrite, we specialize in helping businesses with their content marketing needs. There are various reasons for relying on our team to help you create lively, informative blog posts, the foremost of which is that our formula has proven to increase sales.
As okwrite’s Tom Heigh explains, “Blogs shouldn’t simply be promotional tools or 200-word posts. They need to offer value to the reader. A blog that is researched and well-written helps move customers along the buyer journey and helps them make informed decisions.”
Therein lies the key, folks: great blog content will not only bring people to your website but also help nudge them toward actually making a purchase – turning a reader into a customer and creating loyal customers by prioritizing customer retention. Indeed, Heigh goes on to suggest that top-notch blog content can often function as “the final piece that gets someone to the point they’re ready to purchase.”
Think of it as okwrite getting the assist on the big goal. Our content marketing helps set you up, and Shopify allows you to score. Shopify is a great site to showcase your product page, build brand awareness, and upsell customers by suggesting similar products that you sell that pair well with their original purchase.
At the end of the day, the objective is to ensure that you’re the one who wins. Shopify analytics helps you track your progress with everything from website traffic to Google ad campaigns, Facebook ads, and other social media options. Shopify online stores also have Shopify SEO built-in features to help you optimize your search engine results to make it easier for a potential customer to find your page.
To be clear, Shopify alone certainly can be a great tool for your business. There’s a reason why their website boasts about having nearly 450,000 business owners who use their service.
That being said, there are ways that you can supplement what the Shopify brand has to offer to ensure that your online business reaches its full potential.
You need a Shopify marketing strategy and a content marketing strategy. Offering great written content that can pique the interest of prospective clients is an important step in the process.
At this point, you might be wondering how you can know the kind of content is of interest to your clientele. Well, that’s a great question, so let’s take a few moments to explore.
Knowing Your Target Audience
It’s important to know your audience. If you have a thorough understanding of what people are searching for, you can ensure that you’re offering exactly what they need.
Don’t waste your time marketing your product to people who have no interest in what you have to sell. If you’re in the dairy industry, don’t spend too much time beckoning the lactose-intolerant crowd. If you’re selling equipment to baseball players, don’t focus your attention on folks who think the term balk actually refers to the famous composer.
The examples go on, but you get the point.
Instead, spend your energy on figuring out what your consumer base wants and devote yourself to offering content that meets these desires. It sounds simple enough, but creating finely-tuned content can be a difficult task.
The Importance of Answering Questions
One of the simplest ways to generate increased traffic to your website rests in establishing yourself as an authority in your geographical region. Did you know that a 2019 study found that the mobile questions “where to buy” and “near me” rose by more than 200% over the previous two years?
Now, I recognize that part of the beauty of online shopping rests in the fact that it’s, well, online; someone doesn’t need to be in your local community to access your virtual shop.
Be that as it may, it’s still worthwhile to note that people are increasingly asking search engines for guidance on stores that are in their area. It’s important, then, to ensure search engines know that you’re among the leaders in your industry in whatever locale you find yourself in.
If we go back to our earlier examples, we can confidently say that it’s important to distinguish yourself as the preeminent option for the dairy industry or baseball equipment in your area—ditto for essentially any other business. Consistently putting out quality written content can help set you apart as the leader in your region, making your business more likely to appear in online searches.
If you run that baseball business, ensure your website is uploading content that baseball players, coaches, and fans want to read. Doing so helps give your brand authority (as Google and other search engines better understand what your business is all about) and makes you a trusted spot for baseball equipment. When they search for “where to buy” baseball bats “near me,” people will be much likelier to find your store.
Eliminating the Time Stamp
Evergreen content, according to the folks over at Ahrefs.com, refers to “content that doesn’t go out of date. It revolves around a topic that’s always relevant to readers, regardless of the current news cycle or season.” Allow me to clarify further why this type of content is so valuable for your business.
Creating content (or, better yet, getting a company to develop top-tier content for you) that doesn’t have an expiry date gives your business the potential to turn one post into a long-term money-making opportunity. It’s a worthwhile investment when a single post can continue generating traffic to your website and sales long after it was initially published.
The goal, then, often involves creating posts that don’t have a firm time stamp on them. This objective will help guide our decision-making as we come up with topic ideas. Again, let’s go back to our previous examples. What are questions that baseball players, coaches, and fans will be asking for the foreseeable future? If you can identify those questions, you’ll be well-positioned to put together some great evergreen content.
In contrast, it may be best to avoid spending too much energy on the latest score updates. Readers, for the most part, are only interested in the scores when they’re fresh. Very few people want to find the score update for a Dodgers game back in 2006. That kind of content can give you a good amount of clicks in the short term, but it’ll quickly fade into obscurity.
Content that covers how to turn a double play or hit a curveball will be of interest for a long time. If your site comes up consistently, you’ll be in a good position to make sales.
Invest in evergreen content.
The Next Steps
Well, folks, that’s my case for the importance of top-notch content marketing to supplement what Shopify provides your online business.
The Shopify app store can be a powerful tool, one that can allow you to make money online. You don’t have to be a Shopify expert to profit from Shopify sales. At okwrite, we can supplement what you’re already doing by contributing content that drives consumers toward your site. Our prices start low and are customizable; clients are not locked into a long-term contract.
In other words, we’re interested in empowering you to take the following steps with your business, and we’re more than happy to offer the flexibility necessary to ensure you’re fully satisfied with our product.
Be sure to swing by our site to find the plan that works for you, and don’t be shy about contacting us if you have any questions.
