How Do Large Retailers Manage Product Content?

What is ‘content’ in retail?

Large retailers’ content includes a variety of items aimed at informing, engaging, and persuading customers during their buying experience. It can come in the form of thorough product descriptions that provide important information about features, characteristics, and benefits, allowing customers to better understand what they’re purchasing. High-quality photos and videos help to increase product appeal by displaying things from different perspectives and in real-life settings.

User-generated information, such as customer reviews and ratings, promotes trust and influences purchasing decisions by sharing genuine experiences. This type of user-generated content is a goldmine for retailers. In fact, top brands like Amazon leverage user-generated content as part of their content management strategy to build trust with potential buyers by showcasing real customer experiences directly on product pages.

Educational content

Furthermore, educational blogs and articles promote the merchant as an expert in their respective field, while frequently asked questions (FAQs) answer common client questions, offering clarity and lowering barriers to purchase.

Social media content, such as engaging posts, stories, and adverts suited to platforms like Instagram and Facebook, sells items and raises brand awareness. Targeted email campaigns include incentives, new product releases, and personalized suggestions based on past behavior, which encourages client loyalty.

Retailers also use catalogs and lookbooks to showcase selected product selections in visually appealing formats for digital and print distribution. Instruction manuals and guides help customers use, assemble, and care for products, increasing satisfaction and reducing returns.

Finally, consistent message and branding across all sales channels ensures a seamless buying experience, whether online, in-store, or via third-party platforms. Overall, successful content not only promotes products, but also improves the customer experience, resulting in increased engagement and sales.

1. How to centralize product information

Product content managers need a standalone system to centralize their retail product information. A PIM can manage digital assets allowing large retailers to create, edit, and publish product content to their sales and marketing channels.

As you’ll find, the more SKUs you have, the more difficult it is to manage product information from spreadsheets, databases, and ERPs. Additional challenges that impact digital assets such as a high churn, multi-geography, multi-brand, and multi-marketplaces make it even more difficult to remain commercially viable.

Using a PIM to systemize and automate the entire process is the simplest answer to centralizing product information.

2. Why large retailers use a PIM for managing product content

PIMs offer powerful automation that helps manage content for a large product range, removing the need to upload data manually. With a PIM, large retailers streamline the management of product information and save valuable time and energy. It provides a safe and secure way to allow third parties to share information while also breaking down cross-departmental silos.

In effect, large eCommerce retailers set up workflows to improve internal communication across the business, including the complex multi-player approval process.

They can even automate the creation of product campaigns with easy access to the most current, approved digital media. Enriched data also improves the customer experience by providing the information they need at crucial touchpoints in the customer journey.

As a result, the retail corporation increases conversions and improves revenue. This is how a PIM solution helps with eCommerce product catalog management.

3. How enterprise retail manages product content

Effective product content management strategies shared by large retailers include:

Set higher standards for your product information

Enterprise retail companies are constantly looking for ways to improve the shopping experience. Because they have a good deal of pull, they can look to their suppliers for detailed product information. Detailed information allows them to standardize and share enriched content with customers across multiple channels. The data can be used for advertising purposes, as well as cataloging of products both online and in print.

High standards for product information provide the content consumers need and want to make purchasing decisions. It sets a standard for purpose-driven content— whether it is an image and product description for an enterprise eCommerce marketplace, specifications downloaded from your website, or instructions on how to operate or put together an item via a YouTube video.

In other words, the more product information you can provide to your visitors, and the easier it is to understand, the higher the chance there is they will become customers.

Standardized conventions for product information creation

Another effective retail product management strategy large retailers adopt is setting standards for their content. Standardized information is easy if you take the time to create conventions. These conventions tell anyone involved in product description creation how each product should be defined.

In turn, a PIM allows you to set standards so that the same steps are followed when creating a product life cycle.

You can standardize the entire attribution process, but also ensure every detail appears in the same way, right down to whether you spell out inch and foot or use “and ‘.

More importantly, it also sets standards of relatable terms and content that appeals to your ideal customer. It eliminates internal industry terms your team uses and translates them into a narrative format that educates and illuminates.

Create an omnichannel strategy

Today’s leading retailers understand they need to manage multiple sales and marketing channels to broaden their audience. However, to follow suit, you need an omnichannel content management strategy to ensure products appear using the same tone and manner regardless of being used for a Google ad, YouTube video, or being sold on an eCommerce marketplace like Amazon.

Your omnichannel product content management system also determines the most crucial touchpoints for customers so you can contextualize your content for each channel, including:

• Social media
• Word of mouth
• Testimonials
• Product video reviews
• Catalogs
• TV adverts

A PIM removes data silos and creates a central hub that allows you to streamline processes for your omnichannel strategy. It also develops workflows to improve the approval process and helps you become more efficient.

From there, you can create rich product interactions and a highly contextualized buying experience. This makes retail content management easier. Best Buy effectively maintains content across numerous platforms, resulting in a consistent customer experience. For example, they synchronize inventory information, product reviews, and specials across their website, mobile app, and physical stores, ensuring that customers receive consistent information regardless of where they purchase.

Cater to international customers

Entering the global market requires translated content that maintains the same integrity as your original product data. You have to be sensitive to cultural differences while being as clear as possible. This includes accurate product information with easy-to-understand measurements, clear 360 photos, video, etc.

A PIM allows retailers large and small to take a more customer-centric approach to selling in the marketplaces they trust. Your product data becomes consistent, making it easier to add new SKUs and adopt an omnichannel strategy in all geographies you sell in. You also remain scalable as you grow. High-quality digital assets suited to each customer touchpoint help improve customer experience on a universal level, creating loyalty and increasing global conversions.

Bottom line

These are some of the best content management tips for large retailers using PIM solutions. Implementing a PIM is critical for large retailers that manage extensive product catalogs. PIM simplifies content and data management as it can centralize product information, streamline workflows, and facilitate collaboration across departments. In doing so, it helps large retailers deliver a better customer experience.

Of course, retailers also have to play their part in setting high standards for product data, standardizing content creation, and adopting an omnichannel strategy. Only then they can maintain consistency and clarity across all touchpoints.

This strategy also works for retailers planning to expand, as it can accommodate diverse markets and cultural nuances. As the retail environment continues to evolve, the role of effective product content management through PIM solutions will be pivotal.