Content is king. It was true when Bill Gates penned those words all the way back in 1996, and it’s still true today. Content for drop shipping businesses allows you to separate yourself from other retailers selling the same products. It helps you build trust and showcase your products and brand in different ways.
And when you have a well-developed content strategy to guide you, you have a better chance of connecting with your target audience and making sales.
The first step: deciding what should go into your content strategy. Let’s look at some of the most effective content formats and tips for drop shipping businesses to turn traffic into sales.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of content marketing, ask yourself: is content marketing even right for your business?
Let’s look at the facts:
● Content marketing creates 6x higher conversion rates compared to other forms of digital marketing.
● 74% of companies say content has increased the quality and quantity of their leads.
● Content influences buying decisions and can turn someone who is on the fence into a paying customer.
Content helps drop shippers create more interest in the products they sell. You’re giving your audience more reason to stick around and keep them coming back. This gives your business more visibility compared to a drop shipper that isn’t using content marketing, which can help improve your SEO and website traffic.
Plus, great content positions you as an expert in your niche. You’re not just selling commodity products, but rather showcasing your products in ways that will resonate with your audience.
When you use content marketing to build up your brand, your brand becomes more valuable. People start to know and trust your brand, which can go a long way in getting people to buy from you instead of a competitor.
That said, creating content for the sake of content just doesn’t cut it anymore. This used to work several years ago because content marketing hadn’t yet become the powerhouse in marketing it is today. But because content marketing has grown in size and scope and so many online retailers are relying on it, brands need to be strategic in the content they create.
Let’s look at some of the areas where your time and money investment will pay off the most:
Unique content is anything created by you or your team that other sellers of that same product don’t have access to. This might be taking extra product photos beyond the stock photos provided by the supplier, videos of the product being unboxed or used, or a product review, for example.
The advantage here is that even though other people might be selling the same product, you are marketing the product in your own way. Content provides more value over a basic product listing and description on your website. It helps to bring a product to life, show how it’s used, talk about the benefits it delivers, and put it in perspective for your audience.
The downside for drop shippers is that you usually don’t keep inventory on hand, which can complicate unique content development. If possible, work with your suppliers to get your hands on sample items so you can take your own photos, create videos, do live demonstrations, and augment your content creation efforts.
The good news: you don’t always need to have the product on hand to create engaging, original content. One option is to let your previous customers do your content marketing for you.
User-generated content is content created by your audience, not your brand. For example, if you are a clothing drop shipper, then one form of user-generated content might be a photo of them wearing their new outfit.
User-generated content can take multiple forms, including but not limited to:
● Unboxing videos
● Recipes
● Instructional videos or wikis
● Social media posts using specific hashtags
● Photos of themselves using a product
● Product reviews
● Customer testimonials
● Online star ratings and reviews
Sometimes, user-generated content happens on its own. Fans of your brand or product will create content simply because they want to. In many cases, though, you’ll need to ask for their help.
For example, you can get in the habit of asking every customer to leave a rating and review on your website. Reviews are digital gold because they give direct insight into your customers’ experiences with your products and business. They help to build trust and encourage other people to buy from you.
As an added bonus, reviews can help you identify potential issues as a business owner. Consistently bad reviews on a product might influence the products you carry in your store and the brands you work with in the future.
You can run campaigns to drum up different types of user-generated content. For example, you might create a hashtag for your business and ask users to tag you in their photos using the hashtag. Having social proof like this can be a huge trust builder. It shows other people are ordering from you and loving their products, which could create more urgency to buy.
Blogging remains one of the most effective forms of content marketing for drop shipping businesses, for many reasons.
For starters, blogging gives you a way to highlight your products in new and interesting ways. You can do round-up style blog posts, where you feature multiple products in a certain niche or them (think gift-giving guides, etc.). You can also do a deep dive on a single product and talk about its features, benefits, how it works, and other key details. This content can live on your own online store, or you can write guest blogs for other websites and link back to your products.
Also, blogs are rocket fuel for website backlinks. As you’re writing about your different products, you can link to them on your product sales pages so users can easily find them. Linking is an essential part of SEO, which helps you rank higher in search results.
Also for SEO purposes, blogging can help you work more keywords into your content. Keywords are the terms users are most likely to type into search engines when looking for a product or asking a question. Doing keyword research can help you create blogs around terms that real people are using so you can start ranking for those terms.
No matter what you dropship, email marketing remains an effective way to keep the conversation going with customers and prospects.
Periodically send out announcements about new products, sales, and promotions, or updates about your company that are worth sharing. Include a call-to-action in each email to encourage users to visit your website and make a purchase.
Email marketing can also help you recover abandoned carts. You can automate this process by emailing users who add items to a cart but don’t complete the checkout. The average conversion rate for abandoned cart emails is over 18%, which can make a noticeable impact on your sales.
Video has become a particularly useful tool in selling products. It gives users a better idea of a product’s size and helps them understand how the product works. In fact, 94% of consumers say a video has helped them learn more about a product or service and influenced their buying decision.
This is hardly surprising: people don’t buy products they can’t understand. Videos put products into perspective and help shoppers set the right expectations before they buy. Adding a product video to a landing page may increase conversions as much as 80%!
In addition to sharing your video content on your website, consider starting a YouTube channel to support your brand. Your channel can serve as a hub for all of your video content. It allows you to become known for producing a certain type of video if you’re focusing on a particular niche or style. Even people who have never visited your online store before can find you on YouTube and get to know your brand.
Influencer marketing is a surefire way to add credibility to your brand and products. Using influencers, you can expand your own reach by tapping into someone else’s audience. You get your products in front of more people, which gives you more potential to increase sales.
Best of all, you don’t have to work as hard to earn their trust. The influencer has already earned the trust of their audience, and having them promote your products makes you look credible by default.
The key to making influencer content marketing work is pairing with influencers whose audience mirrors your own. This way, you get in front of people who are most likely to buy from you.
If you’re looking to expand your drop shipping business, Doba is here to help. Take us for a free test drive today!
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