eCommerce Theatre - June 17th, 15:00-15:30 Content marketing is exploding and increasingly ecommerce marketers are turning to content for driving online engagement and sales. Attend this session to find how to create an effective content marketing strategy for your ecommerce site.

1. How to Drive E-commerce Sales with Content Marketing
David Bowen

3. Where Content and Commerce Collide
• Techniques to support content marketing activities
• Resources you should consider covering in-house
• Where other ecommerce teams are focusing their
efforts in 2014

4. UK Marketers - Owned media budget
Source: blog.seven.co.uk

5. Engagement with content is increasing

6. Content production

7. In-house teams
• Dedicated in-house resource for content marketing is
standard practice amongst all the ecommerce
businesses interviewed
• Structure of the team and the scale of the resource
varies significantly, largely driven by what the business
focuses on to realise its digital brand vision

8. In-house teams
• Number of specialist content marketing roles is
increasing:
– Writing team – Product copy, blogging and buyers guides
– Photographer – Product imagery and graphics for the
website
– Videographer – Product videos and guides
– PR executive – PR and social media
– Full-time staff writer for other markets

9. Investment in content marketing in 2014

10. Primary drivers for content marketing

11. SEO
• Online search still dominates buying journeys - Original
and unique content for your audience to stay ahead of
the competition
• Schuh - Major focus on SEO as part of its overall
business roadmap
– Permeates through the ecommerce team, including editorial
and product content as well
– Ensures content marketing is supporting SEO

12. Connected Customers are on a
continuous path-to-purchase

13. FORMULATION: Consideration
• Self-identified need
• Provoked need
PRE-COMMERCE:
Evaluation
• Value Proposition/PODs
• 1:1 relevancy
COMMERCE:
Transaction
• Self-actualization
• Validation
POST-COMMERCE:
Express
• Experience evaluation
• Advocacy and loyalty

14. Provide the whole picture and elevate
your offering.
CONTENT + COMMERCE

15. Ownership of content marketing

16. Customer Engagement or Sales tool?
A leading men’s fashion retailer
– Editorial content is used to drive sales and to be reactive to
trade patterns - Targeted features within 1-2 days of previous
week’s trading
– Align with the merchandising goals of the ecommerce team -
Pushing poor performing categories or highlighting under-
performing products
– Coordination with the stores - Review offline sales, then
highlight through content spots if it’s not performing as well
online

17. Rise of Editorial
• Brands have identified the need to engage customers
around lifestyle elements such as interest areas, not
just sell them product, and content is playing a vital
role
• The story of the product can be as important as the
product itself and content is used to educate, inspire
and even seduce.

18. “…Understanding the customer and
the type of content they are looking
for is crucial…The Journal provides
this information in an informing and
engaging way.
Yes, it’s about selling product but
more so about inspiring consumers.
Content helps build trust with
readers and customers; it provides
context for the brands they engage
with on the site and for the products
they are interested in. Nowadays
customers expect for a luxury
retailer to create an experience
beyond shopping.”
Director of Sales & Marketing

19. • Dedicated editorial team -
Editorial Integrity
• Best names in journalism
and fashion – Ensures
features, shoots and
interviews are topical and
engaging
• Operates closely alongside
marketing and buying
functions - Editorialise
forthcoming launches and
initiatives

20. “The site is curated, edited and
served by an independent world-
class team”
John Brody - Editor in Chief
(Previously at GQ)

21. “I’ve worked on other websites where
content ghettos have been created,
where you go left to read and right to
buy. We wanted to avoid that
separation so throughout the
customer journey, whatever your
landing page or the marketing
campaign you’re viewing, the editorial
focus is both contextual and relevant.”
Director - M&S

23. Central Control – Local Delivery
• Manage content via a central team
– Multi-channel – Local bricks and mortar customer experience is
different
– Central planning - greater control over what content is delivered
and how
• Flexibility for local markets
– Some content delivered by local freelancers who have specialist
knowledge of the area
– Local customisation to tailor content marketing and support the
central content team

24. • 5 Markets with localised
content
• 2 Markets with retail stores
• Expert advice and guidance
content

25. RS Components
• 28 countries
• 500,000 product
catalogue items
• Content and assets
translated for local
markets
• Local SEO and social

26. External Resource
• Content marketing partners for strategy and planning
support
• Tactical execution delivered through internal teams,
supported by freelancers (copywriters most common)
• Producing high quality, unique content, rather than
churning out volume
– Google updates like Panda - focus on quality and penalising
thin content has sharpened the focus on content quality and
integrity.

27. Status of company content strategy

28. Content Strategy
• Moving from a fragmentation of delivery where different
teams work on different elements of the content plan and
planning isn’t always aligned
• To an over-arching strategy aligned with core business plan
• Luxury and premium brands - sits with the editorial team
because it has a close link to the brand vision and execution
across all channels
• Primary focus is on defining the structure that will underpin
content marketing, in terms of resourcing and process
control

29. • Serve relevant content to various
member types
• “Have been providing content on and
offline for many years but in rather an
ad-hoc fashion. Part of our wider
digital transformation project is
recognising the need to pull this
together in a more coherent strategic
way.”
• Currently at the research stage -
defining a content strategy. Followed
by creating an outline plan and a
detailed content calendar

30. Content Calendar
• Marks & Spencer - Clear policy that the core editorial talent
must be in-house
• Created a structured calendar with a clear plan for each
editorial shot two months out
• Reactive to retail conditions - Flexibility to respond to short-
term opportunities
• In-house ability to photograph new editorial content quickly
is key enabler of this flexible process.
• Third-parties for some skills - reproduction to support rapid
turnaround

31. Content Calendar
• Strategic campaigns
• Tactical campaigns
• Brand messaging
• Campaign messaging
• Channel comms
• Segmented messaging

32. Content guidelines used by content teams

33. Content Guidelines
• Tone of voice documents are being used by half of the
companies - Create a consistent voice in the market
across all channels
• Tailor to the channel
– Selfridges’ digital marketing team takes the content plan and
translates it into an ecommerce plan
– Aligning the tone of voice and copy style
– Adapting to suit individual channels - social media where the
connection with the customer is more conversational

34. Implementing Guidelines
• Some companies are investing in specialist resource to help
them put clear governance policies in place around content
marketing.
• RS Components are creating their base content strategy
around three key pillars, the third of which is focused on
guidelines:
– The technology the content sits on and how it integrates
– The content
– Governance, training and people

35. Driving Commerce through Content
• Challenges:
– Adding the commercial ‘shopability’ to content on ecommerce
websites
– Ensuring the editorial or content team is in sync with
commercial production
– Platform and team to support the content marketing plan and
scale

36. Content formats supporting commerce

38. Brand experience online
• Luxury or premium products
– Content is seen primarily as a vehicle to translate the brand
experience across digital channels
– Conversion and revenue is a result of increased brand
engagement

39. The Watch Gallery
• Develop a brand - doesn’t have a
wide portfolio of stores
• Ecommerce team prioritises
engaged browsers, optimising
the site around user journeys
• AOV - £1,000

40. Multichannel campaigns
• Selfridges – The Beauty Project
– In-store booth that streams content from the campaign into store
window displays
– Live feed of latest content to the Google+ page and use of
Google Hangouts.
– Campaign video content
– Iconic photography from well-known photographer and
filmmaker
– Social conversations - #beautyproject and #hellobeautiful.
– In-store beauty events

42. Content Marketing KPIs
• Revenue and conversion
– Conversion rate (basket-to-order and visit-to-order)
– Average order value
– Revenue
• Traffic
– Total visits
– Unique visitors
– New vs. return visits

43. Content Marketing KPIs
• Engagement
– Dwell time (time on site)
– Pages per visit
– Bounce rate
– Social shares
– Comments and Likes (including ‘favouriting’ individual content
assets)
– Product reviews
– Banner clickthrough rate

44. Content Marketing KPIs
• Offline
– Visits to store (hard to track accurately)
– In-store purchases
– In-store content usage (e.g. scanning a QR code for a
product to watch a video)
– Call tracking

45. Web Analytics
• Use web analytics tools to support more detailed
reporting for content marketing
• Use event tracking for interactions with online content.
E.g. watching a video
• Segment - E.g. Compare KPIs to gauge whether
content has more impact on acquisition or retention
– New or returning visitors, device type, etc.

46. Attribution Analysis
• Not enough use of attribution analysis for content
marketing activity
• Multi-path analysis - Understand the full contribution of
content rather than relying on the limiting last click view
• Schuh digital marketing team - attribution of content to
future conversion
• Users who regularly view content have higher average
order values

47. Commercial benefits of content marketing

48. Curated product lists and editorial
• Fashion brands using data gathered from content
marketing activity to generate curated product lists.
• Marks & Spencer
– The Editor’s Pick is one of four key content formats
– Ecommerce team regularly sees products featured in this list
hit the top 10 bestsellers across the business, not just online

49. Business Results
• Increased spend
– Nearly half of companies experienced higher average order
values as a result of content marketing activity
– MR PORTER - The transactional value of visitors who read
content and then shop is significantly higher than who come
and go direct to a product page to buy. Customers are more
engaged with the brand.

50. Business Results
• Positive customer feedback
– Half the companies cited positive customer feedback as a
positive outcome of investment in content marketing.
– Visible feedback (e.g. a customer review added to the website)
– Invisible feedback (e.g. a customer telling an in-store employee
that a buying guide on the website helped them decide what
product to buy).

51. Roadblocks

52. Focus Areas

53. Deliver an exceptional experience.

59. Thank you!
David Bowen
Product Manager
@dmbowen
david.bowen@episerver.com
The Choice for Leaders in Digital