Content Strategy to Double Your Boutique Traffic
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is defined as creating content for the purpose of sharing information with your tribe with the goal of generating more leads, building your brand & driving more customers back to your online boutique.
Content marketing is NOT just limited to your ecommerce website & blogs, but also includes social media marketing.
Creating strategic content is essential in today’s time for social media. You can not push your products in every freaking post in hopes of your customers buying from YOU.
You’ve got to be smart & strategic when it comes to creating your social media strategy by educating your tribe, entertaining them, talking about topics that spark their interest & helping them switch on their creative mind so they can imagine how owning the product feels!
Content on social media platforms helps you bring your tribe back to your website. Regardless of what niche you are selling in, having a strong marketing plan helps you get ahead of your competitors.
But what should I write about?
I often get this question from boutique owners who are confused or not sure what they content they should be creating to post on social media besides sharing their products or services?
Let’s talk Content Strategy to Double Your Boutique Traffic
The biggest challenge being faced by a lot of boutique & e-commerce store owners is deciding what content to create for their social media channels.
Start by answering the most important question — What problem am I solving for my customer?
Once you identify with that, you can create free content that helps them solve their problems thereby giving them confidence to choose you when it's time for them to invest.
How can you solve your tribe's issues, challenges & hurdles with high quality content in a format that they are most likely to consume?
If in the end you still NOT sure what to write...
+ ASK YOUR AUDIENCE -
Do a poll on your social media channels like IG stories or Facebook Pools & ask your audience about their biggest challenges. You can also scope through the content on various Facebook Groups, ask Qs, interact with your audience & use those ideas for future blogging or social media content.
+ RESEARCH YOUR COMPETITORS -
What questions are your competitors answering? What platform are they using to deliver their content? If your audience is interacting on your competitor’s content, it only goes to show that they are interested in that particular content.
Use that as a point of reference for creating your OWN content marketing strategy. Note - DO NOT COPY & PASTE THE SAME THING.
+ DIG INTO YOUR EXPERIENCE -
Why did you start your own online boutique? What issues were you facing? Not able to find pants because you are tall? Affordable cute tops? Couldn't find clothes that resonated with you?
Dig into your experience & find a way to create content that showcases it.
with that being said.. . Let’s break down the process of CONTENT creation
You can not create or publish an unplanned, unstructured content for your website or your social media channels. If you are NOT providing value or just creating content for the heck of it, you are going to be in for a HUGE disappointment.
No value = No audience interest = No views = No interactions = No sales.
Therefore in order to get the results you want, it’s essential to invest in content marketing or content creation strategy. Here are 3 simple steps to creating a successful content marketing plan —
Step 1 — Set an intention
If your current social media strategy includes posting about the products & occasional inspirational quotes from Pinterest on your social media, it'll either push your tribe to buy from you (highly likely but hopeful!) orr they'll be bored with your icky posts & un-follow you. That's called hope marketing. A better way to that is what I call - intentional marketing by identifying the purpose behind your post.
What do you want your audience to take out of it? Do you want them to feel inspired? Joyful? Educated about a certain topic? What’s your intent?
Your post intent can be divided into 2 categories —
+ Entertainment — Where you share posts that entertain your tribe; like — quotes, fun facts, inspo, outfit ideas, TikTok videos etc. depending on your niche.
+ Education Posts — Where you are educating them about your products, new addition, sales & promotion, policies etc. This also includes your Shop now posts.
Now that you know the intent, let’s create your content marketing plan!
Step 2 — Creating social media post
The next step is identifying — What social media platform are you going to use to push your content? or In what form are you going to deliver your content?
A successful content marketing strategy is a mixture of various different type of content from blogs to social media, reviews, video content, audio & more. It also boils down to what type of content your audience prefers?!
Pick a type of content, a topic & create your marketing plan!
Ex — Today I’m educating you (my tribe) on content creation via BLOG & video training & will further re-purpose it to share on my social media platforms.
Step 3 — Make a Calendar & STICK TO IT! Schedule posts if you have to.
A successful social media content strategy is a consistent one. It doesn’t matter if you post once a day or 10 times a day unless you are consistent with what you doing. And, the easiest way to stay consistent is by planning your content in advance.
Personally, I love to set themes for each day of the week like — Motivation Monday, ThirstyTuesday, Throwback Thursday etc. and create content using these prompts. You can do the same if it fits in with your boutique niche or have a different marketing plan… it’s entirely upto you.
Having a theme helps you stay consistent (as you don’t have to worry about what to post) & gives you audience something to look forward. Ex - If you have a clothing boutique & you share a date night tip every Friday, your audience will get used to looking forward to them if you stay consistent; thereby leading to a successful social media strategy.
Note — When creating a marketing plan to promote your products, have a 80-20 approach. 80% sharing, entertaining & educating + 20% selling & promoting your products.
SHARING YOUR CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS
Now that you have the content done, it's time to share it with your audience on social media platforms.
Start by identifying where your tribe/customers spend the most time on and start showing up there! And most importantly, CREATE content that your audience is searching for.
Example - If you are a home decor brand posting about your new pillow collection and your customers are searching for how to have a good night’s sleep you won’t show up in front of them! But if you knew, you’d not only be creating content around how a good pillow can help you with a restful sleep, you'll be able to drive leads back to your ecommerce website & convert them into sales; day after day without being salesy or icky.
Having a well planned content strategy can take you from getting zero traffic to double the foot-fall on your e-commerce website.
Done with hit & trial? Ready to master your content strategy with tried & tested techniques? Check out the