Practical Ways to Use Blogging to Improve E-Commerce Sales
If you want to drive more online sales, starting a blog is a good way to go.
And it is not only because some recent stats show that companies with winsome blogs enjoy up to . It is also because acquisition, conversion, and retention need you to engage with your customers and to keep them engaged until they can no longer resist coming back for more.
In
Before you dip into practical tips and tricks for making it work, don’t forget to actually start a blog and add a shopping cart to monetize your content.
1. Show How Your Products Can Affect People’s Lives
The first rule of rule of learning how to start a blog has always been, and always will be relevance.
It’s only natural that what you post on your
Besides relevance, another blogging pillar is evergreen content.
And what’s more evergreen than people’s everyday problems, worries, and nuisances?
So, write about that. You should already have a list of pain points for every solution that you offer, and each of them can make a solid blog post that’s both engaging and informational. All great products affect people’s lives in one way or another, and it’s on you to elaborate on that effect.
All great products affect people’s lives in one way or another
2.Weave an Engaging Brand Story that Makes You Irresistible
When two companies offer the same solution, what are their unique selling points?
A USP always reflects a company’s mission statement, a proposition value that’s different from all other contenders in the same niche. Your company has it too, and if it hasn’t been done already, why not create a compelling story around it now? Or if not a story per se, then a mood, a tone or a message?
These are all elements of the brand narrative, the unique identity of your store.
In blogging, this is achieved with many different elements that must come together to invoke a certain emotion in prospects and customers, similarly to brand positioning and awareness. It should include everything from design and imagery to content type and format to the language and tone of writing.
Needless to say, this must not affect the accuracy of the information in your posts. It should only provide a different feel, which will be unique to your brand and
Highlight your mission statement
3. Create Lots of Unique Outside-the-Box Ways to Use Products
If you’re selling light bulbs, your customers will hardly be interested in reading about how they work. They already know how to use them too, so there’s really nothing special or innovative to write about, right? Well, that depends on your approach and creative curiosity. It depends on your ability to inspire.
Even before it burns out, a light bulb can be used in many different creative ways, though its purpose is always the same. There’s a juicy headline for your next post — 5 Unusual Uses for Light bulbs. And, after it finally burns out, the ingenious, though mostly decorative ways to repurpose it are numerous.
Always think outside of the box, whether you’re creating a new product or trying to sell it.
In terms of blogging, this is very, very important. Because there’s only a handful of topics for every product, you have no other option but to put on your thinking cap, tap into your creativity and reinvent the wheel just one more time. And when you’re short on ideas, reach out to your customers for help.
Inspire your audience to use your products
4. Use Lists of Product Combos for Different Scenarios to Cross-Sell
If you’re selling clothes instead of light bulbs, you’ll admittedly have a much easier job. Still, every
These products make a brilliant material for longer blog posts and listicles.
It’s easy to write a spring fashion guide that reviews products ranging from clothes to hair jewelry — they all belong to the same fashion line, and were designed to make a great outfit. But you can always make a twist, suggest something fresh and quirky, and pair items that typically wouldn’t go together.
A Fashion Guide for Business Travellers, for instance. It would include sleek suits and dress shoes, but would also offer comfy slippers. And business travelers need both.
Connect the dots to
5. Sell an Appealing Lifestyle and Community Through Your Content
You can write about your cosmopolitan experiences all you want, but there will still be at least one doubting Thomas who will find it hard to believe. Selling a lifestyle that people want to buy is not without its difficulties, but there’s an alternative — something authentically posh, but still convincing.
It’s called influencer marketing.
In blogging, it works like this — you reach out to a celebrity or an influential social media star that reviews and recommends products from your niche and send them a sample. If they like it, invite them to write a guest post for your blog. In return, offer outbound links or join them in an affiliate program.
Reach out to a celebrity for a product review
6. Use User-Generated Content to Create a Buzz around New Products
If there’s anything better than influencer marketing, it’s
In fact, 92% of consumers turn to people they know for referrals above any other source, while 88% of them trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from their personal contacts. When you’re buying something online, you need to make sure it really works.
Starbucks regularly encourages its customers to post shots of their coffees
It can be successfully used for new products as well, to create buzz and reassure buyers that they’re worth trying them out. If you send samples to a number of your loyal customers, you can generate and publish this content prior to launch, thus rewarding loyalty and driving sales at the same time.
Whenever in doubt, start a blog. When it comes to
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