Our Work: Advice Content & Sales for I Want Fabric

In this month’s post looking at our Content Marketing team’s work for our clients, we delve into the world of advice-based content and how this non-promotional content can still lead to click-throughs and traffic to the rest of the site.

About I Want Fabric

I Want Fabric are a specialist online retailer of everything fabric related, for things such as curtains, clothes and upholstery. They have both a domestic focus (it’s exactly where I’d go if I even had the smallest amount of sewing skills) as well as a trade store. However, what we’re looking at here is their site’s main focus, which is their domestic customer base.

In addition to fabrics and materials, they do also stock all you need to get the job done, such as sewing machines, irons and specialist supplies.

The Aim

The aim with this piece of content was to kick off a series of posts as part of an ‘Advice Centre’ for the client. We’re sharing knowledge with visitors to the site, and hoping for those all-important clicks to categories and products.

The topic of this piece of content was a comprehensive guide on how to make curtains; a step-by-step walkthrough of how to start with your fabric and end up with something hung on a curtain rail.

So what we were tracking here was clicks on our buttons to category pages at the top – just a subtle, simple and non-intrusive line of icons. We used a simple event tracking code in the URL of each button to do this, with easily identifiable labels to make any success clear in Google Analytics.

As an example:

onclick="ga('send', 'event', { eventCategory: 'blog', eventAction: 'click', eventLabel: 'needle-icon'});"

If this is something you want to add to your own content, then this online configuration tool makes it easy even for anyone with minimal HTML knowledge; just paste the code it generates into the your HTML link.

You can view the full piece of content on the I Want Fabric site here.

The Creation

We started by researching content competitors; by this I don’t mean business competitors who offer the same products as they do, I mean other sites (whether they are other companies, home-based magazines or blogs) which host the kind of content we were looking to create.

Essentially, we want to take what we see and do it better.

Following this research, we identified that visual pieces worked more effectively than purely text-based pieces. With this in mind, we knew that the focus needed to be on visual elements with clear and concise content to support each step.

Utilising the incredible illustrative talents of one of our Technical SEO Web Developers, Dane, we were able to get some fantastic images created to represent each step.

With these elements alongside our written content, we had the post laid out in an easy-to-follow format to ensure that engagement on the page was strong; we didn’t want visitors bouncing off because the layout was poor.

Finally, we ensured that there was a clear way for potential customers to find the materials and equipment they’d need to follow the guide.

While the content doesn’t push products into a visitor’s face in a promotional way, the audience of this post are going to be people who are interested in making curtains – as a result, they also need to know what they need to get the job done.

The Outreach

Armed with a comprehensive guide put together and a slew of unique visual elements we were happy to get republished, we thought that amplifying this content was the ideal way to not only build some additional authority (which is always good) but also get more eyes on the content from a relevant and engaged audience.

Our Media Relations team contacted sites with a relevant and engaged audience, including the site above, and gained strong interest – culminating in a site owner so impressed with the content, they were happy to use it as part of their own content.

The Results

So did the content work? In short, yes! The overall views and engagement were positive, and we currently have a strong 5% click through rate to products and categories directly from the post. In essence, we’re funnelling relevant visitors interested in making curtains towards what they need to make it – so there’s a much higher chance of direct conversions and additional sales for the customer.

We were also able to build a great link for our client, with a home design blogger happily using it as part of her guide on sprucing up her living room, which not only passes on some domain authority from an SEO perspective but also gives the content more visibility and offers another avenue through which visitors can land on the I Want Fabric site.

The content also performed well socially; a push from their Facebook page by our Social Media team resulted in well over 160 interactions, including shares, Likes and comments, across Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.

What this content has demonstrated is that you don’t have to shove promotion, products or services down a site visitor’s throat to get the results you need. Simply beginning to establish the client as an authority in their industry and giving something back to their customer base can be all that’s needed to boost confidence in a company.

Confidence means trust, and trust means a better chance of visitors becoming customers – something we know works.

If it’s something you’d like to apply to your own business or campaigns, then this can be a great approach to have – breaking that ‘promotional promotional promotional’ thought process. We’ve got a lot of similar case studies that are also applicable to most e-commerce campaigns; you can read about these on our main Advice Centre feed.

If it’s something you’d like to discuss with the Creare team, as well as our SEO marketing services, then don’t hesitate to get in touch – we’re always on hand to advise.

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Feature image source: Gadini – Pixabay. Licensed under Creative Commons – CC0 (Public Domain).