Creating an effective content strategy for the digital shelf can have an impact on your ecommerce sales as well as your brand’s overall market share. Overall ecommerce sales will continue to grow, with 16% YoY increase in 2018. Even more significant is the influence that digital screens are having on all sales. More than 80% of shoppers check the internet before deciding where and what to buy.
In the coming year, your digital content strategy must work even harder to help your product stand out from your competitors.
Goal 1: Deliver a product experience that’s consistent with your brand, everywhere.
Consumers expect a rich and meaning experience with your brand as a standard. From the relevance of the content and ease of use on your product pages to receiving the expected item on-time, at their door step – delivering a seamless experience requires your entire organization to a system of product information to trust and coordinate around.
Ultimately, every successful brand product manager, marketer and merchandiser needs the capability to create and manage content that is customized for specific sales channels, market segments, or shopper profiles. Our advice is to centralize the product information into a centralized source of truth that is accessible to each stakeholder within your organization and commit to a standard of product content.
Our customer research found that 78% of consumers are more likely to buy when they are shown product pages that have personally relevant product content. When a product has demonstrates trustworthiness, buyers are willing to spend more on that brand.
Goal 2: Optimize your product pages with data-driven insights about your audience and marketplace.
The new advancements in data analytics, machine learning and AI combine to help companies make better merchandising and marketing decisions. The retailers and distributors that you work with are already putting this logic to use to choose what to stock – Amazon is the most notorious for relying on algorithms. Put these same insights to use for your product’s footprint or risk falling behind your competitors.
Look regularly at your product page search rankings to understand share of search your product page receives. Turn to AI insights to identify where content improvements can drive better conversion rates and help you win the buy box on Amazon and other retailers. And ultimately, ensure that you are monitoring what market share and sales rank is within your most critical categories.
The pace of change online is driven by consumer demands. Applying machine learning and other insights can help you optimize product content in a way that can make a different to your buyers.
Goal 3: Expand your product’s reach by improving search bar visibility and listing on more your third-party sellers.
Every brand has its list of key sales channels. Whether it’s your own DTC web site or salesforce or the most prominent retailer in your vertical, it’s likely there’s a very short list of sellers that get most of your team’s focus and attention. This means that any additional third-party sellers are getting standard copy or left to list your products based on outdated information or inventory counts.
Implementing a system that can quickly update any third-party retailer with the latest, relevant product information and content is a great way to equip these partners to sell for you. By arming them with a relevant product content catalog, you can seamlessly set them up for success while leaving yourself time to focus on your biggest players.
There’s no way to fully predict everything that retail will face in the coming year, but it’s certain to involve an increasing need for digital optimization. Setting your organization up correctly with a centralized source of truth, reliable syndication, and actionable insights will help improve your sales and grow market share.
