You have a visitor coming to your online store, they’re interested in your products…and a good customer service experience is going to help you convert more sales.  It seems obvious, right?  Well, that is only part of the picture and there are ways that you can use that process in order to dramatically increase your exposure to brand new customers.  The name of the game?  Well, its the same name of the game that it’s always been…..CONTENT.  But not the content that you’re spending a notable amount of money creating and then wishing, and hoping, and dreaming, and praying that gives you a ROI…but content that you’re probably already creating as part of your normal customer service processes…you’re just not maximizing it’s use.

The fact is, every time you answer a potential customers question, you’ve just created a valuable piece of content that not only helps that first customer who asked it….but it can (and should) help every customer in the future who has that same question.  The gold is, that this doesn’t only impact support customers who are already on your website….but also people who are asking questions about products through search engines.

How does this play out in reality?  Well, if you’ve read any tips on what to focus on when considering a content marketing piece…one of the first things that they say is “look at what questions your customers are asking”.  This is the key, those same questions that one visitor had about your product….many potential customers are asking through Google (and yeah sure, Bing and Yahoo as well;).  This is your golden opportunity, your support content is naturally marketing content as well….you just need to make sure you’ve recognized that and ensure it’s formatted this way.

Let’s show you an example, one of Answerbase’s customers.   Let’s say somebody does a Google search for “truck fridge that can run on batteries for many days”.  What do you think comes up?  Take a look….

The top organic (free) result for that search is a landing page for a Q&A thread specifically about, guess what?  Yup, a truck refrigerator that Raney’s is selling which somebody had asked a question about.  Bingo, Raney’s just created a valuable piece of content that hits the nail on the head for something potential customers are searching for.   They didn’t have to rack their brains to figure out what their customers were interested in reading, and then playing Russian roulette with a new blog post (at $200-$400 a pop).  Nope, they created brand new valuable content simply by serving their existing customers well.  Magic?  Hardly, just a smart way of processing and using interaction and content that they’re already creating.

So what does that look like over time?  Well, its exactly what you’re wanting from any content marketing effort….growing organic traffic year over year.  See an example of another SMB ecommerce customer of Answerbase’s….and note that this is ONLY traffic going to Q&A landing pages over a 3 year period.

Again, that chart is only organic search traffic that is coming to those Q&A landing pages….visitors that wouldn’t have come to the store otherwise.   As said before, gold.

Think about it, that is without spending any mental energy on “what do I write about?”, “what are users going to search for and find valuable?”….all of those questions are answered naturally because your current visitors are just a fraction of the world’s population that have similar questions about the products you sell.  So just answer them, literally….once and for all.

So, you don’t have to be a marketing genius to create great content that hits the nail on the head for your potential customers…you just have to take advantage of that knowledge that’s already upstairs and serve your customers well.   The content does the rest.  Of course, Answerbase facilitates this automatically….so feel free to get in touch if you’d like us to manage the Q&A interaction ( You can start a 30 day free trial here)….and you can do what you do best, support your customers.

“We fired up Answerbase Q&A on our product pages and it’s been amazing for increasing sales.”  – Bill Rowell, Owner of Rvupgrades