To increase e-commerce sales over time and build customer lifetime value (CLV), you must communicate with consumers on an ongoing basis.

Blogging is one of the best ways to do it. In fact, research conducted by Hubspot in 2019 found that businesses that prioritize blogging are 13X more likely to see a positive return on their investments.

Blogging is so important to increasing e-commerce sales that I highly recommend every e-commerce business has a blog – regardless of what kinds of products they’re selling.

Why?

Because a blog brings your e-commerce brand and business more web traffic, more targeted visitors, more engagement and relationship-building opportunities, more ways to promote your products, and more chances to move consumers through the marketing funnel from lead generation to nurturing and finally, to sales.

Following are several specific ways a blog can increase e-commerce sales for your business.

Read, learn, and start blogging!

More Traffic Means More Sales

A blog creates entry points for your e-commerce website. Each new blog post is a new entry point to your site for Google and other search engines to index and provide in relevant search results.

Google loves fresh content, so publishing new blog posts frequently can drive a significant amount of traffic to your site. In other words, blogging can give your e-commerce site a significant SEO boost.

In addition, each new blog post creates opportunities for people to share your content across their social media profiles, on their own blogs, in their email newsletters and more.

All of those search results listings and all of that sharing add up to more traffic to your e-commerce website – traffic that can turn into buying customers.

More Opportunities to Engage and Nurture Leads

Every blog post that you publish can be shared with your email subscribers to keep your brand top-of-mind and nurture leads through the marketing funnel.

If your blog posts are high-quality, useful, relevant, and meaningful, your subscribers will be happy to receive them. They’ll be reminded of your brand every time they get your messages, and when they’re ready to buy, it’s your business that they’ll think of first.

More Ways to Show off Your Products

While you don’t want all of your blog posts to be self-promotional, you can show off your products on your blog. Stick to the 80-20 rule where 80% or more of your content is not self-promotional and 20% or less is self-promotional. No one wants to read a bunch of ads disguised as blog posts.

How do you show off your products in your blog posts without annoying your audience?

The key is to be useful!

Here are some ways you can, directly and indirectly, promote your products in your blog posts:

• Create product demo or tutorial videos.
• Announce new product launches or product availability.
• Announce special offers, sales, contests, and so on.
• Share the story of how a product was made.
• Share customer stories about how and why they use your product.
• Write about lifestyle topics and weave a product into the story.
• Write about people’s problems and mention ways your product solves those problems.
• Ask customers to submit their own articles and videos about your products and publish them in your blog posts.

More Places to Promote Your Products

Whenever possible, link to your products from your blog posts. But don’t overdo it!

You don’t want your blog posts to be covered with links. Instead, look for the most relevant content and add links to your products when it enhances the user experience rather than distracting the audience from your post’s message.

The goal is to make the link to your product seem like the next logical step after reading your post. With that said, you can mention relevant products directly within the post text and link to each product in your e-commerce store.

Alternately, you can include images of your products with Buy Now messages that link to each product in your online store.

Another way to promote your products on your blog is with pop-ups, fly-overs, slide-ins, and other interactive elements using a tool like OptinMonster. You can set these up to display when visitors exhibit specific behaviors on your blog such as hovering over certain images, exiting the page, and more.

More Opportunities to Build Brand Trust

Consumers believe e-commerce websites that include authoritative blogs are more trustworthy than sites without blogs.

The reason is simple. A well-written, targeted blog establishes the brand’s expertise and helps consumers by providing useful information.

Blogs also allow consumers to see the human side of a business and get to know your brand and your team. Familiarity increases comfort and trust, which leads to a stronger relationship between your audience and your brand.

Which business would you buy from? One that you barely know anything about or one that has helped you in the past with useful, meaningful, and relevant blog content?

For most people, the latter is an easy choice.

Key Takeaways about Blogging to Increase E-commerce Sales

A blog can increase website traffic, SEO, engagement, leads, brand trust, and sales for your e-commerce business.

It can also differentiate your business from competitors. However, you need to be authentic in your blog posts and avoid being overly self-promotional or no one will read your content.

Bottom-line, think of your e-commerce blog as a long-term marketing opportunity that can deliver significant results over time.

Yes, you can publish posts to boost short-term sales, but the priority should be long-term, sustainable, organic growth.

That’s where the power of blogging to increase e-commerce sales comes from.