content Ð - fitforcommerce · content Ð engaging, high-quality content can be one of the most...

Content–

Engaging, high-quality content can be one of the most powerful assets for brands and retailers. Content is a key differentiator in digital marketing, onsite, and throughout the overall shopping experience. There are many different types of content, and they are typically divided into two main categories – product content and brand/editorial content.

Content | 28 © 2019

BURNING QUESTIONS

• Does content really matter in commerce?

• What’s the big deal about personalization anyway?

• How do I manage all content assets across the organization?

Creating a good content strategy requires diligent evaluation of how customers navigate through the decision-making process and identification of the interaction points where relevant and personalized content will inspire and drive conversions. The content mix depends upon the customer characteristics and products sold but will, in most cases, include different types of content at different stages – from driving awareness and traffic, to the actual purchase, and beyond.

TOOLS AND TRICKS OF THE TRADE

According to a recent study, when it comes to content, marketers are focused on developing more original content, more visual content and optimizing content across devices.13 When supported by the right technology solutions, retailers can improve the content creation process, streamline the management of content assets and enhance content distribution.

Between different content types and multiple channels and customer touchpoints, creating, managing, and sharing content across an organization can be a headache. For a solid content strategy to work, all content assets need to be readily available to the relevant stakeholders throughout the organization, including creative, merchandising, marketing, ecommerce, and individual stores as well as externally with partners, wholesalers, and others.

OUR TAKE: While content is king, context is queen

We all know queens really rule the kingdom. With the right data, content assets, and technology in place,

you can determine the personalization strategy that is right for your customers – and for you!

CONTENT TOOLS

1. Personalization

2. Photography/Video

3. Lifestyle/Editorial

4. Content Management

5. Product Information Management

6. Digital Asset Management

7. User-Generated Content

8. Augmented Reality/3D Visualization

Content | 29 © 2019

Unfortunately, retailers too often work in silos, using disparate systems with content assets stored in multiple locations, hindering efficiencies and making it very difficult to ensure brand consistency across all customer touchpoints, both offline and online.

Smart organizations invest in tools that enable them to streamline content creation, centralize content assets, collaborate across the organization, and capture and leverage data to personalize customer acquisition and retention strategies, and the overall shopping experience. This allows retailers to maintain control of brand and merchandising consistency while ultimately saving time, removing friction, and eliminating margins of error.

Personalization

It is impossible to talk about content without focusing on personalization. Content is only effective if it is personalized and relevant to the shopper. Essentially, that means delivering the right content to the right person at the right time.

By combining historical, behavioral, and customer profile data, it is possible to deliver relevant and tailored experiences through content that meets individual needs. Effective personalization includes featuring content that is specific to an individual shopper at different points of interaction during the purchase journey, including email marketing, on the homepage, search results, products pages, and so on.

EXAMPLES OF CONTENT PERSONALIZATION TACTICS

Videos and how-to’s based on products viewed

Wishlists and favorites lists

Real-time content updates in response to consumer intent

Targeted alerts and offers

Gender-based homepages and landing pages

Filter and search options throughout

the site

PERFORMANCE BOOST WHEN PERSONALIZATION IS USED

Frequency ofcustomer visits

Customer lifetimevalue

Average transaction size

Content | 30 © 2019

When content is personalized and contextually relevant, it strengthens engagement and increases the likelihood of turning a browsing visitor into a buying customer.

Some digital commerce platforms may offer some content personalization features to dynamically serve relevant content throughout the shopping experience. But, to fully embrace personalization across channels and customer touchpoints, organizations should consider investing in a third-party AI-powered personalization solution with data analytics, onsite personalization, and digital marketing capabilities.

Photography/Video

It is true what they say: “A picture is worth a thousand words, or more.” When it comes to digital commerce, the importance of good photography cannot be overstated. Online shoppers cannot touch and feel products.

SEEN IN THE FIELD

Williams Sonoma cleverly injects relevant

content into multiple areas on their site to

engage, inspire and persuade shoppers.

For instance, shoppers will find recipe

suggestions on product detail pages,

guides for selecting the right type of

products, background stories about brands

and much more.

Content | 31 © 2019

So, it is up to retailers to provide the most authentic product representation possible. Beyond detailed product descriptions, high-quality photography is a must, and videos go the extra mile.

It is important to carefully select photographers and vendors that specialize in ecommerce product photography and video, as opposed to lifestyle or editorial content. Beyond product photography, however, it is wise to include lifestyle and editorial content to augment the shopping experience and make the experience feel more relatable. The goal should be to delight and inspire shoppers through vibrant imagery with which they can relate.

SEEN IN THE FIELD

American Eagle shows off products

from multiple angles both on and off

model to help shoppers visualize what

the product looks like. The company

also features custom images by color

selection. In addition, they offer a

‘frequently bought together’ module to

show outfitting options, driving upsells.

OUR TAKE: Show off your products

Don’t cut corners around product photography. Good photography can make all the difference when

it comes to convincing a shopper to make a purchase. Be sure to include multiple rich photos, detailed

imagery, swatches, and even video when appropriate. It is worth the investment.

Content | 32 © 2019

Lifestyle/Editorial

While good product information and specifications are always critical, content should be used to promote products, inspire, educate, and ultimately, move the shopper from discovery to purchase. Blogs, How-To guides, and instructional videos represent examples of how to provide genuine, helpful content to inform and inspire. Combined with third-party expert- and user-generated content incorporated on homepages, category listings, product pages etc., retailers can further establish themselves as trusted advisors and build loyalty. While many have invested and adopted content marketing into their overall strategy, many still struggle to properly integrate content into the purchase path. To ensure that content is most effective, it should be integrated into product pages and lifestyle and editorial content in blogs; other areas should incorporate merchandise with shoppable functionality (add-to-cart or “save for later” lists).

SEEN IN THE FIELD

Part inspirational destination, part

self-help, Home Depot has created

an entire section dedicated to ‘DIY

Projects & Ideas for common issues

their customers need to solve.

OUR TAKE: Kick it up a notch

Product descriptions and catchy headings are no longer enough. Organizations need to create more

engaging, visual, and personalized content to capture the attention of an ever-fleeting audience. But don’t

forget to keep SEO in mind when developing content – make sure it is Google friendly.

Content | 33 © 2019

Content Management

Many digital commerce solutions include some content management features, but they are typically highly focused on transactional content. Some companies opt to augment their capabilities with solutions that offer automated content management functionality with a friendly interface for business users. The combination of content and commerce has proven so effective that some content management systems are now also offering commerce functionality.

Product Information Management (PIM)

Product Information Management systems (PIM) are designed to help manage all the information needed to market and sell products through a myriad of distribution channels. The PIM solution provides a central set of product data including attributes, copy and taxonomy that can feed websites, in-store knowledge bases, print catalogs and data feeds to partners. PIM solutions become even more important to organizations expanding to international distribution, which can require localized information, pricing and multiple languages.

Asset Management

Digital asset management tools (DAM) provide a centralized library to store, organize, find and share digital files, including images, photos, creative files, video, audio, documents and more. Digital asset management solutions are often used by creative staff and other stakeholders across the organization, as well as external partners. These solutions allow for easy and controlled access to all digital assets. More advanced digital asset management solutions resemble content management and offer capabilities including cloud storage, version control and brand management features enabling creative workflow automation, usage tracking and more.

OUR TAKE: Make it sharable

Make sure that all that great content you create is easy to share. The more your customers share, the more

likely you will see more shoppers visiting your site. At that point, it’s up to you to close the deal.

DID YOU KNOW?

26 percent of content marketers leverage

a digital asset management system

(DAM). These systems are expected to

become more popular as AI strengthens

and improves the technology.14

Content | 34 © 2019

User-Generated Content

Besides pushing relevant content through social media channels, savvy organizations leverage social media channels and tools to encourage customers to create and share unique content, which they can pull into their digital channels, in stores and even print media. Featuring products “in action” such as customers using or wearing products on homepages, product detail pages and in marketing materials, is a powerful tactic to increase conversions, providing context to the products shoppers are considering as well as providing assurance in the purchase decision.

Influence the Influencers

Leveraging influencers to market brands and products has proven highly effective for many brands, but it does not come without its challenges. According to a recent study, retailers struggle with determining the ROI of influencer marketing programs and the amount of time it takes to manage these programs.16 Retailers are

DID YOU KNOW?

The ability for customers to upload

customer photos online is offered

by 46 percent of retailers, 31 percent

pull Instagram photos into the online

experience; leveraging those photos to

enhance the in-store environment is done

by only a few.15

SEEN IN THE FIELD

Rent the Runway and Lulu’s are seeing

great benefits from using customer photo

reviews: pictures the customer posts of

themselves wearing the item, usually with

the size purchased and the customer’s

measurements posted alongside the photo.

Content | 35 © 2019

increasingly focusing their influencer programs on leveraging multiple types of influencers such as a mix of celebrities, bloggers and micro-influencers. There are many influencers who are eager to work with brands but it is important to ensure brand alignment when selecting the right advocates with which to partner. An influencer’s reach and audience is of utmost importance, as is the type of content the influencer currently shares with followers. More and more retailers are using influencer content to improve the performance of other channels and integrate influencer content with ecommerce to drive product sales. It is recommended to allow influencers to create unique content, not merely repost an organization’s original content. That way, is it possible to also leverage their content on an organization’s own social media channels, websites and other marketing vehicles.

Augmented Reality and 3D Visualization

Some organizations innovate with new augmented reality capabilities, from Augmented Reality (at Home Depot and Sephora), to reinvention of 3D visualization (at retailers like Wayfair and Blue Nile) to help shoppers visualize what a product looks like on or in a home setting.

DID YOU KNOW?

• More than half of brands think influencers are

“vital” to their social efforts17

• 89 percent of brand marketers agree or strongly

agree that influencer marketing could positively

affect brand perception18

OUR TAKE: Make your content social-friendly

• Allow content to be shareable to increase its

reach and likelihood for recommendation.

• Provide a way for users to share or upload their

own content onto your site when it features your

products.

• Enable UGC wherever possible, particularly

within product detail pages.

SEEN IN THE FIELD

Ikea Place allows users to place virtual Ikea furniture into their own home to see how everything might

look once assembled. Shoppers can also share pictures or save them, and use the app to price and

reserve the items (and eventually buy).

Content | 36 © 2019

SPOTLIGHT ON DATA

Data is at the foundation of personalization and content is at the core of delivering personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints. Retailers can, and should, leverage data to better understand shoppers throughout the customer journey, and use those insights to create and deliver the content that will drive the best results. Data, supported by personalization technologies, enables retailers to deliver highly relevant and personalized content to the right people, at the right time and place.

Successful retailers continuously evaluate how different content assets perform by analyzing key data such as views, interaction points, click-throughs, engagement and more.

In addition, data and AI is starting to have a impact on digital asset management, partially automating processes and reducing errors. In fact, almost 60 percent of marketing leaders believe AI will have a substantial impact on digital asset management technology over the next few years.19

THIS REPORT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY–

OUR MEDIA SPONSOR–

ChannelAdvisor has been on the front lines of e-commerce since 2001, helping retailers and brands connect with customers, optimize operations and grow sales channels. We’ve grown from a small company in a young industry to an industry leader at the forefront of a global revolution — with thousands of clients and billions of dollars in transactional revenue flowing through our platform every year. For more information, visit channeladvisor.com

Adweek is the leading source of news and insight serving the brand marketing ecosystem. First published in 1979, Adweek’s award-winning coverage reaches an engaged audience of more than 6 million professionals across platforms including print, digital, events, podcasts, newsletters, social media and mobile apps. As a touchstone of the advertising and marketing community, Adweek is an unparalleled resource for leaders across multiple industries who rely on its content to help them do their job better.

Adweek is part of the Beringer Capital portfolio that also includes BrandShop, a leading full-service partner that works with major consumer brands to employ digital commerce to increase sales, gain valuable consumer insight and create the type of end-to-end experiences that build loyalty and keep brands ahead of the competition. Learn more at adweek.com and brandshop.com

http://channeladvisor.com

http://www.adweek.com

http://www.brandshop.com

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FitForCommerce is a leading boutique consultancy that helps hundreds of online and multichannel brands and retailers make informed digital, ecommerce and omnichannel retail investment decisions. Leveraging years of experience, state-of-the-art tools, strategic diligence and tactical planning, FitForCommerce helps brands and retailers define strategies for growth, improve the customer experience, plan and hire the right organization, and find "best fit" technology solutions. | www.fitforcommerce.com

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