For five years I worked in the ecommerce (and catalog) world.
This time of year always brought a little excitement to the office.
Consumers have been programmed over the years to buy lots of things during the holiday shopping season. Stay at a hotel by the mall one year when visiting family for Thanksgiving. Look out the window on the Friday after the holiday and you’ll see just how crazy people get for holiday shopping.
One big part of the holiday shopping season is discounting. People go crazy for it. There is a segment of the population that just loves the idea of marked down prices even if the original price is inflated.
As an ecommerce manager you probably already have your holiday plans in place. I know we always did. In fact, planning for holiday started the previous January, picked up again over the summer and really picked up in September and October.
But have you thought about an ecommerce holiday blogging strategy?
Can Blogging Really Attract New Customers?
Yes.
Here is one example of how a cruise company increased sales to consumers with a blogging strategy.
The point of blogging is to increase your reach to new audiences of potential customers. A blog will bring traffic to your website and attention to your business through search and social traffic in the short and long run and you’ll also get referral traffic in the long run and maybe in the short run if you are good at promoted your blog content.
During my time in ecommerce we always put together a blogging strategy. Over the years we tried a few different things based on what had worked in the past and what had not worked.
I’ve also always looked at what seems to be working for other ecommerce companies.
Here are some of the strategies for ecommerce holiday blogging that I’ve seen work.
Shopping Guides
You see these in all shapes and sizes during the holidays. You can create them with blog posts or you can create dedicated pages. In both cases you’re creating the same type of content.
A shopping guide can be done in different ways, but each has a few basic things:
- Target customer
- Target buyer
- Product information
- How to use information
- Reviews
If you can, get together with the merchandisers or product experts at your company and mine their brains for information on products. Connect with the customer service team and ask them if they’ve talked to any customers that have ordered this product. Scan the reviews and see if you can find some great customer stories for how people are using your products.
All of this information can be used to create amazing blog content.
Trends
People are busy these days.
There isn’t a lot of time to pay attention to the headlines in the ecommerce world when it comes to buying gifts. The kids will usually let you know exactly what they want, but if you want to get some sweet gifts for other family and friends you’re usually too busy to think about it until it’s too late.
Help these folks out by discussing the biggest trends out there in the gift world.
There are usually some big trends in the home decor world, but there are also gizmos and electronics that are popular along with electronic content like ebooks, games and other items that follow trends.
I’ll let you know a gift that worked out well for me last year – a nice cutting board. I got it on Etsy after reading a piece of content somewhere on trends for getting gifts for multiple family members.
Helpful Planning
Finally, some of the best blog posts are often helpful. They provide tips and how-to information that simply helps people.
It’s the pay it forward concept. You provide help to people without any expectations. It’s simply human nature that people will appreciate others that help them out with something.
Consumers are looking for all kinds of information around the holidays. They’re looking for gift ideas, but they’re also looking for travel tips, health tips and stress tips.
Do what you can to provide help for the things your customers are struggling with this holiday season.
Talk to your service staff and see what the common questions are. Send out a survey via email and ask the vague question, “What are you struggling with this holiday season?”
Provide the answers via blogging and you’ll attract potential customers to your blog.
That will lead to increased sales this holiday season.
Image: Sharon Hahn Darlin