Back-to-school season is here! Students, teachers and parents are preparing for a new school year. As consumers from virtually all age brackets are back-to-school shopping; brands and retailers must ensure they are marketing effectively to an eager audience.

This article from 1WorldSync provides helpful insights for back-to-school shopping content. As school approaches, and for some starts, more consumers are looking to online retailers to buy school supplies quickly. Brands must prioritize product content to effectively reach, engage and convert these last-minute shoppers. This article explores how.

1. Curate Content for Your Audience(s)

Back-to-school shopping draws in consumers from various age brackets and demographics: 

• K-12 students
• College students 
• Parents and caregivers
• Teachers

Creating content that increases conversions requires knowing your audiences and the content type and details that appeal to them. 

The channels, campaigns and promotions you use to market your back-to-school supplies and products will vary. However, establishing yourself on the digital shelf ensures you’re reaching your targets wherever they shop and whoever they are. 

2. Promote Back to School Bundles 

Product bundling is a surefire means to increase your average order value. Users browsing back-to-school products, whether clothes, school supplies, or other product subtypes, are likely shopping for multiple related items. Promoting back-to-school product bundles highlights your product offerings and reduces the time and effort consumers spend shopping. 

For example, most shoppers buying pencils will also buy a pencil sharpener or eraser. Users browsing crayons are likely to buy markers and construction paper. 

Bundling related supplies puts these products before shoppers in the shopping and purchasing stage of the buyer’s journey. And when you offer bundles with the products they’re shopping for at a reduced price, why would they shop elsewhere? 

Product bundling will help you sell more, but only if executed effectively. One in five shoppers will leave a product detail page if served irrelevant or unhelpful product recommendations. What does this mean for your back-to-school content? Your product bundles must be accurate, compatible with the right products, and personalized to the consumer. 

3. Make School Supply Comparison Simple 

With back-to-school spending at an all-time high, offering price comparisons is essential to your content strategy. 1WorldSync research finds that 38% of consumers spend more time studying product content than before, with 67% citing budget concerns as a primary motivation. 

Consider your e-commerce pricing optimization strategy. Set prices that entice shoppers to purchase, outpace your competitors and maintain profits. Offering discounts or sales during the back-to-school season helps drive high-volume traffic during your most profitable time of the year. 

Consumers will do the work of comparing product value and pricing. By including comparison tables in your back-to-school content, you put that information directly into the hands of potential shoppers. When you can show them that you deliver the supplies and products they want at a better price point than anyone else, they have no reason to leave your pages. 

Keeping consumers on your product detail page increases the likelihood of conversion and allows you to promote other products they might be shopping for.  

4. Take Advantage of Omnichannel Shopping Behaviors 

Consumers interact with back-to-school content across various channels, not only your product detail pages. Retailers must manage content with an omnichannel approach, including physical retail spaces. 

Many shoppers, particularly parents, bounce between in-store and online channels as they complete their school supply lists. As consumers shop and compare prices across retailers and platforms, product content consistency is paramount; 81% of consumers expect a brand’s product content experience to be similar everywhere they interact with that brand. 

Consumers shop on multiple channels. Meet them where they are with consistent, accurate, quality product content. 

5. Rich Content Syndication 

Rich product content is often the defining difference between omnichannel brands that succeed and those that don’t. Consumers are 150% more likely to buy a product after interacting with rich content. 

In a market as competitive as the back-to-school sphere, prioritizing and effectively distributing rich content is a must. Placing high-impact media where it matters –– on the product detail page –– provides shoppers with engaging, informative content that can compel them to add your products to their carts. 

Rich content can include 

• Images, videos, and augmented reality applications 
• Hotspots and image zoom 
• Comparison tables 
• Technical specs and FAQs

This content will increase engagement and conversions. Adding it to your PDPs is essential for your back-to-school sales prep and will yield positive results long after school begins. 

6. Remember the Latecomers 

Back-to-school shopping comes around at the same time every year, but many shoppers scramble to get it all done at the last minute. While some consumers begin shopping in June, many wait until August to start. 

As you ready your content for the school season, remember the latecomers. Back-to-school season is long, and shoppers will be purchasing school supplies even a few weeks after school starts. Curating content for these shoppers is vital to securing this shopper demographic –– one many retailers and brands neglect. 

Labor Day sales are a prime avenue to scoop up shoppers scrambling for last-minute supplies for Fall classes. But September isn’t the only time of year when consumers are doing back-to-school shopping. The holiday season and the start of a new year are ideal times for running sales on school supplies and related products. 

Teachers, parents, and students alike will need a school supply refresh at the turn of the year. Offering product deals at these crucial times helps drive traffic to your site and increase your sales.  

7. Measure Content Impact 

After the rush of back-to-school shopping dies down, it’s just a matter of time until it’s time to prepare for the next season. Collecting data on your product content reach and efficacy is the only way to measure its impact accurately.   

Product content metrics highlight various aspects of your content strategy and the results of each campaign or individual piece of content, including 

• Traffic acquisition 
• Conversion rate
• Rich content KPIs 
• Average order value 
• Cart abandonment rate  

Collecting and organizing content performance data guides your content decisions for the future, maximizing your spending and efforts to help you increase sales and ROI during the back-to-school season. 

Get Ready for Back-to-School with 1WorldSync

Your product content quality dictates your success on the digital shelf. Seven out of ten shoppers say poor-quality content influences their decisions not to purchase a product. Attracting shoppers, teaching them about your product, and driving them toward purchase requires implementing and executing a robust product content strategy. 1WorldSync can help. 

1WorldSync provides the tools that ensure your content is ready for back-to-school shoppers. From data aggregation and disbursement to rich product content creation and syndication, we help you get your content ready so you can secure your space on the digital shelf. Reach out to our team today to learn how our content tools and resources can enhance your content strategy.