Over the River and Through the Woods: Creative Content and the Effects on the Ecommerce Customer Journey
Jessica is an integrated marketing leader specializing in strategic B2B and B2C enterprise solutions.
Take your customers on a literal journey. With the click of a trackpad, a shopper perusing an outdoor brand’s site can be transported to another domain away from their computer screen and onto a hiking path surrounded by thick woods. They enter your website, scroll over the animated river graphics, and through your dynamic site photography to continue on the digital trail you created on your homepage which features your state of the art GPS and trail technology. Wanting to know more about your company, your buyer views exclusive hiking boots, water packs, and grappling hooks displayed on your company’s Instagram. They return to your website to view an embedded video panning the summit of a mountain insurmountable without your outdoor products. This is the impact creative content generates on an ecommerce customer’s journey. From an ecommerce marketer’s perspective, dynamic content serves to gain traction, heighten a viewer’s experience, and sustain customer growth by nurturing relationships between companies and consumers. When this media is successful, content connects, engages, and converts views to purchases. Understanding and analyzing who your audience is and what their personal behaviors entail allows you to not only attract customers but also formulate a buyer’s journey. Being able to visualize this consumer enables you to personalize an ecommerce customer journey specifically tailored to your products or services. For instance, outdoor gear brands will customize their media and content to illustrate how their products will enhance a customer’s hiking or biking experience. Considering the customer's needs, wants, and emotions constructs seamless alignment between content and customer journey. Understanding your company’s goals allows you to refine your publishable content. Avoiding content gaps like inconsistency across media channels is pertinent to have a clear and concise brand image. For instance, if your blog illustrates outdoors adventures while your case studies are focused on the environmental impact of big businesses, this may misconstrue your company's intentions
. Furthermore, not all two pieces of content are the same throughout the ecommerce customer journey. With the five stages of this journey – awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy – specific types of creative output are tailored to every step of the consumer process. Within awareness, dynamic blogs, creative advertising, and lively social media entice prospects to become familiar with your brand. Once your presence is known, your audience will consider your products by reviewing consumer testimonials, how-to’s, informative newsletters, and vivid videos. When buyers are prepared to purchase, customer kits, stories, and user manuals become essential to seal the deal. Keeping up with your converted consumers through strategic email campaigns is vital to retain positive reviews and to allow for increased brand loyalty. The last and perhaps the most important stage is advocacy, which relies on your relationship with your shoppers to generate word-of-mouth accolades about your products. This stage may be achieved through incentives for referring a friend, or discounts that your customers can use towards their next purchase. By capitalizing on what makes your business unique, your creative content can increase your company’s likability, presence, and brand. All in all, with the help of dynamic and enticing creativity, your business’s content will increase buzz and demand around your brand while allowing you to stand above your competitors on the digital mountain you created.