Shoppable Content: Content Marketing For e-Commerce Brands

(Note: This is a guest post contribution by Alice Herman. Read more about her from the author’s bio)

Digitalization has shifted the focus of brands more on Content Marketing, and if we evaluate its true value in terms of today, content is the ‘King’. If we explain to you in simple words, new-era customers just don’t want to buy goods or services. Instead, they want to buy stories & relations. This is why marketers have started planting magic into content & cultivating a new crop of customers. Viewed as a major reason affecting the purchasing decisions of customers. Content is getting the attention of more and more e-commerce brands.

Brands mainly leverage shoppable content or shoppable user-generated content to build brand trust, boost engagement, increase sales & conversions, deliver seamlessly exciting shopping experiences, and much more. One of the newest forms of digital content is Shoppable Content which is definitely a need of the 21st century.

Introduction to New Age Shoppable Content

As the name suggests, Shoppable Content (i.e. videos, articles, images, etc.) has become a significant part of today’s e-commerce marketing strategy for brands. If you break this term, you’ll find two separate terms i.e. Content & e-Commerce. Popularly emerged as the social commerce platform of new-age, shoppable content can also be said as user-generated content. Brands leverage this form of content by tagging products with checkout links, prices, details, etc. The whole behind doing this is to let users shop the product instantly & directly from the particular feeds. This is one of the reasons why content marketing is just not confined to educating the audience but to entertaining them before they make a purchase decision. To make content more interactive, videos are taking over making the content rapidly shoppable.

Types of Shoppable Content Be it a video, images, or user-generated content, brands are constantly focusing on ways through which they can make content shippable. The main types of shoppable content are mentioned below!

#1 Shoppable Images

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. are loaded with images. So making images shoppable is an obvious way to go. For instance, every single minute over 2,00,000 Facebook images and nearly 30,000 Instagram snaps are uploaded.

Taking advantage of this factor, brands have started leveraging more on Shoppable Images to lead the user to a product page. If simply put, shoppable images result in converting your visitors into your customers.

#2 Shoppable Videos

Bridging the gap between visual content and e-commerce, Shoppable Videos are becoming increasingly popular. Almost every industry, especially fashion, lifestyle & design is getting dependent on visuals to increase audience engagement as well as to inspire purchases. For instance, urban clothing labels effortlessly leverage shoppable videos & content, as it builds a seamless connection between video and commerce. As video in itself is a powerful storytelling tool, brands can create interactive and engaging shoppable videos. In short, Shoppable Videos creates a seamless buying journey for customers by allowing them to explore & buy a product from a video.

#3 User-Generated Content

Said to be the most trustworthy, authentic & reliable form of content. User-generated content is created by unpaid contributors on social media. This cost & time efficient way not just gives your brand a personalized touch but also bridges the gap between you and your customers. For instance, ASOS’s #AsSeenOnMe campaign is one of the best examples of shoppable user-generated content. By encouraging existing customers to share their products bought from their official website. The brand asked them to share it on social media with Hashtag #AsSeenOnMe.

Later all the user-generated pictures were displayed on ASOS’s website with an added option of “Shop the look”. This means, by encouraging customers to tag their products with the relevant hashtag, brands can also generate user-generated content easily.

#4 Shoppable Social Media

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. have also not been left untouched by digitalization. Speeding up the customer buying journey, social media platforms have made it easier for brands to make social media content (images & videos) directly purchasable. Customers can just click directly on the ‘Buy Now’ option available on social media content that includes a direct product link.

#5 Shoppable Articles

Providing a “Buy It Now” option with every product image (be it a photo or a gif), shoppable articles allow the user to add the product to the cart directly without interrupting the reading experience. This form of shoppable content instantly makes customers fall in love with the products they see and give them a feeling of buying them right there and then.

THE TAKEAWAY

With this content marketing strategy, brands can unify the two parallel worlds i.e. content & commerce. In short, the very engaging, informative & result-driven shoppable content brings the point of inspiration and point of sale at the same place. This directly helps the brands to generate more sales and at the same time, reduce their marketing costs & investments, leading to higher returns. So, get started now by magnifying your content marketing strategy through Shoppable Content.

Author Bio:-

I’m Alice Herman and I’m a digital marketer and technical writer. I’m passionate about exploring and writing about innovation, technology, and digital marketing trends.

© 2020 Digitaldimensions4u.com The content is copyrighted to Reji Stephenson and may not be reproduced on other websites.