In a content-driven landscape, it’s not enough to just develop a successful e-commerce website. Customers want to read things, gain tips and information and learn new things. So in addition to your website, it’s good business acumen to have a blog too.
For starters, a blog is a humanising tool. When hidden behind the wall of a business or brand, customers can struggle to engage with you. Brand loyalty is so important in an ever-competitive market and it’s this more human persona which will develop that.
A blog is also a great cross-selling tool. Sure, your website visitors will see the products you have on offer, but it’s a blog post giving tips on how to use it or the number of different purposes it has that can really make it a must-have in a customer’s eyes. A blog also makes for a more organic selling tool. Instead of red, flashing “buy it now” lights, a blog allows you to cleverly weave your products in to posts that at first glance, don’t seem like sales pitches. This means you can hook your audience with your content, and if it’s high quality then they’re more likely to buy into the softly-softly approach.
A large part of your marketing strategy is probably centred around social media (given the current digital focus) but content, when just produced from your website can become stale quickly. If you have a blog, it will generate content that you can share across your social channels, increasing brand visibility and engagement. The comment functions on blog platforms like WordPress also give the audience an interactive experience that goes down well.
Of course, the main goal of most websites is to increase web traffic that can then be converted into sales leads. A blog will help you do this, as well as to better your SEO (when done well) so that more people are likely to pick up on your brand than if you were to function on a website alone. Make sure you publish high quality content, be it tips, articles, personal experiences, videos or products and your audience is sure to increase.