Traditional retail marketing can feel like a game of cat and mouse. It often follows the sequence of placing ads on Instagram, hoping your audience notices them while scrolling, and hoping they’ll remember your message when shopping. This outbound approach is about seeking out the customer, and while it has its benefits, it can be intrusive and costly.
Retail content marketing draws in customers by providing value and sharing insights. Instead of bombarding your audience with promotions, content marketing subtly engages and educates, creating a genuine connection.
Here’s how to use informative content marketing to build an engaged audience that has an intention to purchase from your retail business.
What is retail content marketing?
Retail content marketing is the strategic creation and distribution of relevant content designed to attract and engage a brand’s target audience. The goal is to engage customers and drive them to a purchase decision.
Retail content marketing usually involves educating, entertaining, solving problems, and connecting with a target audience on an emotional level. A thorough content marketing strategy should aim to deliver content that resonates with customers’ lifestyles, pain points, and needs.
Retailers can create a variety of content across channels like their:
- Website
- Blog
- Social media platforms
- YouTube
- Email marketing newsletters and campaigns
Content lets you gather people from various channels and bring them back to a central location: your shop.
Benefits of a retail content marketing strategy
Retail content marketing strategies offer plenty of benefits for retail brands. In addition to a potential uptick in sales, retailers can expect to boost brand loyalty, lower their marketing spend, and reach more of their target audience.
Build brand awareness
By consistently sharing high-quality, valuable content, retailers can remain top of mind for consumers. Potential customers no longer see your Instagram ad once and forget about it shortly after. Instead, your audience will interact with tailored content at every stage of their journey.
Whether they see your product demo Instagram Reel or read your blog on trending items, content helps them remember your brand when they’re ready to interact or purchase.
Grows trust and loyalty
Valuable, informative, and authentic content builds trust among your audience. This trust can lead to purchases and then develop into brand loyalty and repeat purchases.
Regular content updates give existing customers a reason to return, building an online community and following around your brand.
It’s a cost-effective strategy
Content marketing often delivers a higher ROI than other advertising methods like PPC ads. It’s a cost-effective strategy for reaching and engaging potential customers, particularly during competitive seasons like the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend.
Unlike other traditional models, where you need to pay per click or impression, you only need to invest in content production and distribution. You’re not paying extra for any clicks or purchases that happen as a result of the content.
5 steps to build an audience for your retail business
1. Create a retail blog people want to read
Blogging is still one of the easiest ways to start building an audience. More than three-quarters of B2C content marketers use a blog to distribute content, beating emails, events, and online communities.
Before you start writing, make sure you understand your target audience. Conduct market research to identify and understand your potential customers’ demographics, preferences, motivations, and buying behaviors. Then, create a buyer persona for your customers and use it to help guide your blog post topics.
To generate relevant post topics, start by asking questions like:
- What problems do my customers have? Do I have the solutions?
- What are my customers struggling with right now? What do they not know how to do, and how can I help them learn those skills?
- What questions do my customers ask that I can answer?
You can also use blog posts to spotlight select items in your store. Remember to frame your blog content according to the customer. It’s about them, not you. Explain how a customer can solve a problem (perhaps by using something you sell) instead of just writing about how great your brand or products are.
Use this quick checklist to make sure your positioning is on point:
- Is it helpful and informative? Be thorough and focus on actionable advice if you give suggestions or tips.
- Are you empathetic to your readers’ needs? Don’t push your own agenda at the expense of addressing their questions, problems, or concerns.
- Is it valuable? Always seek to solve problems, provide advice, or give information.
- Is it authentic? Write in a way that’s true to yourself and your brand. If you struggle with this, try writing the way you speak.
- Is it relevant? Keep blog posts on topic. You can tell a variety of stories, but they should all be focused or somehow tied back to what your audience finds important.
2. Develop a social media marketing strategy
A social media presence can help you boost your store’s visibility and grow your audience. It’s usually best to pick one or two platforms where your target audience spends time. If you try to grow an audience on multiple platforms, you run the risk of spreading yourself too thin and posting inconsistently.
To develop your retail social media strategy, first, identify your target audience and find out where they spend time. For example, if your target audience is urban millennials, Instagram may be a good place to spread the word about your brand and what you offer to customers. Alternatively, if you’re marketing to younger consumers, TikTok may be a better match.
Once you’ve chosen a platform, start building your online audience by sharing high-quality content regularly. Here are a few best practices to follow:
- Stick to a consistent brand aesthetic and tone of voice.
- Follow a regular publishing schedule so your audience knows when to expect your content.
- Use platform-specific tools, like hashtags and @mentions, so posts are easy to find, see, and search.
- Publish different content formats like Reels, carousels, shoppable posts, and Stories.
- Interact with people’s comments, tags, and mentions of your brand.
Not sure what to share with your audience? Here are some fresh content ideas to get started:
- Reels showing behind-the-scenes snippets of your brand
- Live Q&A sessions with your founder
- Stories counting down to a new product launch
- TikTok videos with tips on how to use your product
- Images that feature products, staff, store, or relevant events you host
- Tutorials and product demos
3. Develop an email marketing strategy
Your retail email list includes some of your most engaged audience members—they took the time to sign up or have already purchased from you.
To build your email audience, incentivize people to sign up with discounts, exclusive content, or early access to new product launches. Place email sign-up forms on your website, checkout sequences, and social media channels.
For best results:
- Personalize the experience. Use the recipient’s name, suggest products based on past purchases, and consider location-based offers.
- Keep your messaging concise and customer-focused. Use persuasive subject lines, clear calls-to-action (CTAs), and engaging visuals.
- Outline a schedule for promotional emails, newsletters, abandoned cart reminders, and seasonal campaigns to maintain consistent communication.
- Automate your email campaigns. For example, automation for welcome series, birthday offers, and cart abandonment emails ensures timely interactions without manual effort.
📌 Pro tip: The Shopify Email app lets you create, send, and track email campaigns directly from your Shopify admin. Use the data you’ve collected from your online store or POS system to segment them and trigger automated emails when they complete a certain action—no manual sending required.
4. Experiment with other content types
Writing blog posts or publishing Instagram posts are among the easiest pieces of content for retailers to create. But don’t feel limited to just these strategies.
Depending on your interests and your audience's preferences, you may find that video content on YouTube or Facebook Live generates more interest and builds your following faster.
Video is a particularly powerful tool for retailers because it allows you to display your products, how they work, and the results they provide in an engaging and easy way for your audience to consume. It offers more information on how items work—and how to use them—which may make a more compelling case for your customers to purchase than a blog post or photo alone.
Play around with your content and see what you enjoy creating and what mediums resonate with your audience. Think about their current habits and where they spend time now:
- Book stores: A blog might make sense because you sell to readers.
- Office furniture shop: Starting a podcast talking about the challenges and triumphs of entrepreneurship might do well and give you a platform to promote the office supplies and other products you sell.
- Food products: Get on TikTok and share quick and easy recipes featuring your products.
There’s no shortage of ways to engage with your audience with different content formats. For example, Firebelly Tea uses TikTok to respond to users’ product questions and creates quick video explainers to clear up doubts about how to use the product.
5. Measure your retail content marketing efforts
Not seeing an immediate increase in traffic? Don’t worry—retail content marketing success takes time and consistent effort.
It’s not about seeing exponential or rapid growth month to month. Instead, look for trends over time. Is your traffic trending upward? Is your audience of social media followers increasing over time? More importantly, are you reaching your target audience?
Ultimately, success isn’t measured by the number of social media followers. What matters the most is your audience’s engagement with your brand’s content. It’s better to reach a smaller quantity of your target audience than many people who aren’t the right fit for your product.
Use tools like UTM codes to track where your website traffic is coming from (social, referrals from other blog posts, and retail campaigns you’re running) and analyze which referral sources are most effective at sending you traffic. These metrics can give you a deeper view into whether your retail content marketing efforts meet your needs, what pieces of content convert best, and how to tweak your content strategy.
Examples of successful content marketing in retail
Looking for some ideas to inspire your retail marketing strategy? Here are five examples of retail brands with successful content marketing campaigns.
1. Cocokind’s blog
Skincare brand Cocokind uses its blog to share tips and advice for caring for complex skin conditions like discoloration, forehead blemishes, and dark spots.
The brand shows how people can use its products as part of their skincare routine for specific conditions. But the main emphasis of the blog is on solving people’s skin care issues, as opposed to promoting products, and helping people find them through search engine optimization.
Prioritizing education over promotion helped Cocokind become a thought leader in the skincare space.
2. Jones Road Beauty’s interactive quiz
Jones Road Beauty uses interactive content like quizzes to help educate its target audience about available products and the pain points each one solves.
Visitors answer a few questions about their skin tone, issues they’d like to fix, and how they’d like to use a product. The quiz then matches each user with the right product for their unique use case and preferences.
At the end of the quiz, you can ask people for their email addresses in exchange for personalized marketing campaigns that solve their specific pain points.
3. Muscle Nation’s event calendar
Sportswear and supplements brand Muscle Nation shares free workouts and recipes on its site. Its blog features detailed information about supplements and news about upcoming events. It’s a hub where new and experienced fitness fans can find lots of relevant information to enhance their lifestyle.
4. State Bicycle Co.’s comparison articles
Purchasing a bicycle can result in a lengthy decision process. With so many available models, use cases, and price points, it can be hard for shoppers to make a final decision.
State Bicycle Co. makes it easier for its audience to determine the right bicycle for them by sharing product comparison articles on its blog. It positions the brand as a trusted expert, especially because it explains the pros and cons of each product.
Each article features bullet point lists of each bicycle’s strengths and drawbacks. At the end of each comparison article, there’s a CTA encouraging readers to reach out to the team with further questions.
5. Warby Parker’s holiday gift guide
The holiday season is the busiest time of year—not only because people are looking for discounts, but because they’re gift shopping. The average person spends $975 on gifts each year. Gift guides help potential shoppers find the right products for their loved ones.
Glasses retailer Warby Parker, for example, sent a mini gift guide to email subscribers. Instead of standard categories like “Gifts for her,” the retailer helped shoppers find items for unique personas like:
- “The perpetually prepared”
- “The always-on-vacationers”
- “The singularly stylish”
- “The device devotees”
Retail content marketing trends
Lean into holiday marketing trends
The holiday season is a busy time for retailers. But consumers are conditioned to look for discounts—some 84% of holiday shoppers say they keep an eye out for deals, discounts, and sales promotions during peak season.
Experiment with discounting strategies like:
- Percentage off over a certain spend
- Buy one, get one free offers
- Free gifts on qualifying purchases
- Free shipping
- Donations to charitable causes
If you’re not in a position to compete with brands that slash profits to lure in holiday shoppers, experiment with holiday marketing campaigns that put the focus on your products. That might mean an exclusive series that takes people behind the scenes of your manufacturing process or launching a limited edition product co-created with an influencer.
Share user-generated content
Retail marketing campaigns often taper off when they’re unsustainable. The constant pressure to produce new content can result in burnout. You’re left thinking: What’s the next new trend I can jump on? What content do I need to create to stand out?
User-generated content (UGC) puts the onus on your customers to create trending content for you. It can take many forms and doesn’t have to be a paid partnership. For example:
- Scan branded hashtags to find organic posts already shared by customers
- Run a competition that incentivizes people to post about you, like entering customers into a draw to win a $50 gift card
- Create an Instagrammable photo spot within your retail stores, like a backdrop or neon sign
- Operate an influencer marketing campaign that offers free products to creators who create social media videos that you can repost
📌Pro tip: Shopify Collabs helps businesses and creators connect using a marketplace-style app. Connect with creators by sending direct invites, sharing instant commission offers in the Collabs Network, or setting up an online store page to accept affiliate applications. You can use also use Shopify Collabs to send gifts or discount codes, track affiliate sales, and send payments to your affiliates.
Launch joint marketing campaigns with other retailers
It’s not just creators you can collaborate with on retail marketing campaigns. Other retailers make for great partnerships, so long as they don’t directly compete with the products you’re selling within your retail store.
Joint retail marketing campaigns can take the form of:
- Discounts or free products that can be redeemed at either store, like spending more than $25 on mugs and receiving a free gift from your coffee retail partner
- Social media shout-outs that draw either brand’s audiences to the other’s page
- Exclusive events or pop-up shops where inventory from either brand is available to buy
- Joint webinars that touch on customers’ shared pain points
- Collaborative limited edition products, like Pangia’s collab with Headspace
Feature insight from unbiased subject matter experts
Authenticity is important to modern shoppers. #Ad posts seem to crop up on almost every social media scroll, and they’re impacting how likely a shopper is to believe it. A 2023 survey found that 81% consumers say a brand’s use of influencers has either no impact or a negative impact on their perception.
Subject matter experts, however, are naturally more trustworthy. Those with an official qualification or extensive experience within the field and no official attachment to your brand can help people believe what you’re saying through unbiased recommendations.
Say you’re creating a retail content marketing program for a brand selling eco-friendly gardening tools. You’ve identified that your target market is homeowners who are interested in sustainable landscaping but aren't sure where to start. To address this, you host a webinar that helps them create and maintain an environmentally friendly garden.
A spokesperson from your brand might be perceived as biased. Attendees may assume you have a hidden agenda: to promote the gardening tools your brand sells.
To work around this issue, consider inviting a certified horticulturist or landscape architect to co-host the webinar with you. These professionals have official qualifications that lend credibility to the information presented, making it more believable and less biased.
Host live streams
Today’s consumers don’t just want to see pre-recorded, fine tuned video content. Live streams are the third-most popular type of content to watch online, beating product reviews, gaming videos, and influencer vlogs.
Tap into the live stream market by connecting your Shopify store with a live commerce platform like TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram. Draft a brief script of talking points beforehand, and build a rapport with your audience by interacting with them in real-time.
Brands like Three Ships have seen incredible success from this type of retail content marketing. It tested live commerce with a new product, its Dream Night Cream, before officially launching their website.
During the one-hour live stream, Three Ships attracted 1,200 unique viewers and boasted a 26% conversion rate. The beauty brand received over 350 orders and $25,000 in revenue within the hour—results any retail marketer would dream of.
Highlight sustainability commitments
Sustainability is no longer a buzzword—it’s driving consumer behavior. Studies have shown that 46% of shoppers are buying more sustainable products to reduce their carbon footprint, and more than four in five say they’re willing to spend more on a sustainably produced or sourced product.
Help these climate-concerned consumers find your brand by talking about your sustainability commitments within retail marketing campaigns. Allbirds, for example, promotes its recommerce program that rewards people who return their old shoes with $20 credit to spend in-store.
However, this trend requires a word of warning: you shouldn’t greenwash your audience. Overstating your sustainability commitments, or downright lying about the changes you’re making to become more sustainable, is never OK and could harm your reputation in the long run.
Use artificial intelligence to speed up content workflows
While we’re still a far way off relying solely on AI to produce high-quality content, you can use it as a tool to create more content at scale. For example, AI can help you:
- Analyze customer data, like purchase history and product preferences, to offer personalized recommendations in email campaigns
- Get a rough first draft of a blog article or social media post
- Optimize your website copy for search engines and find keywords your audience is searching for
- Update product imagery (without actually shooting new images yourself)
📌 Pro tip: Shopify Magic is a suite of free AI-enabled features that are integrated across Shopify’s products and workflows to make it easier for you to start, run, and grow your business. That includes automatic text generation for product descriptions, email subject lines, and more.
“I use Shopify Magic to write product descriptions by inputting desirable keywords for SEO,” says Kwayne Chambers, CEO, co-founder, and managing/creative director at Glitch Anomaly. “It gives me the ability to work more efficiently and save costs… It’s a game changer.”
Tell stories to your audience through a successful content marketing strategy
A solid retail content marketing strategy will help get your brand in front of more of your target audience.
The best way to grow an audience online is to tell your story in a way that’s real and authentic. And the best way to keep your audience coming back? Tell stories that include helpful and valuable information for the people you want to serve.
Read more
- 5 Lessons Traditional Retailers Can Learn From DTC Brands
- Retail Branding: Build a Memorable Brand
- Retail Events: The Complete Guide (+ Real-world Examples)
- Local Marketing: How to Drive Local Shoppers to Your Brick-and-Mortar Store
- How to Create Retail Packaging That Drives Sales [With Examples
- Increase Your Productivity On Instagram With These Tools for Retailers
- What is Visual Search: How Retailers Can Use it to Enhance the Customer Experience
- How to Get Started with Google Places for Business
- 4 Easy Ways to Get Better Reviews on Your Google Places Page
Retail content marketing FAQ
What is retail content?
Retail content is any type of content that a business creates to reach and engage its target audience. Examples include blog posts, emails, social media posts, videos, and case studies.
What are the 5 P's of retail marketing?
The five P’s of retail marketing are product, price, promotion, place, and people. An effective retail marketing strategy encompasses all five.
What are the benefits of retail content marketing?
- Increasing brand awareness
- Building trust and authority with target audiences
- More cost-effective than other advertising methods
What is an example of retail marketing?
An example of retail marketing is a store offering discounts and promotions on their products in order to attract customers. This could include releasing coupons for discounts, offering customer loyalty programs with rewards, or creating promotional events such as in-store giveaways.
