If online content is a food pyramid, your Ecommerce customers need a more balanced diet than just blogs, social media posts and other types of content that all sites need. There’s a whole menu of media that helps present a more cohesive picture of your B2B enterprise. You’ve got plenty of options for generating all new, effective and engaging Ecommerce content. Let’s take a look at the top seven types of B2B Ecommerce content that you should be offering customers right now.

1. Product Videos

According to the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, about 65% of people are visual learners. As a sales driver, product demonstration videos or product guide videos offer a level of engagement, digestibility and nuance that static photos and text descriptions just can’t match. More than that, they offer a huge opportunity to express your business’ personality with visuals, sound and art direction. 

Like the Ecommerce experts at CrewMachine say, videos “fill in the gap that exists between brick-and-mortar stores, where customers can examine potential purchases in person, and online stores, where it’s impossible to try before you buy.”   

2. Case Studies

Think of case studies as sort of deep dive testimonials — and if you’ve ever experienced just how much a testimonial can help move product, you already know how crucial a good case study can be. This type of Ecommerce content explains, in depth, how a product or service helped an individual customer or company, in their words. 

Especially in the B2B and service spheres, where products are often too niche for something like a banner ad, case studies offer a direct and relatable way to let potential buyers know exactly why they should consider your company. When a potential client sees a case study, they might just see themselves in it, drawing a direct line of connection between their specific business setup and the product or service you offer. In this case, it’s all about telling stories that potential customers resonate with and can relate to.  

3. Infographics

Evidence-based decision making is foundational to the way customers navigate their options, and fewer types of content make hard evidence more enticing and approachable than a good infographic. Whether you’re dealing with stats, charts, product instructions or just celebrating your year-in-review highlights, infographics simply make the data you want to convey to your customers more convenient, and yes, more fun. And speaking of stats, the SEO experts at OptinMonster note that articles with images get roughly 94% more views than those without visuals.

4. Webinars

No matter what type of B2B business you run, you’re an expert in your field. Webinars leverage that expertise in a video format. More long-form than a product demonstration video, webinars are also less directly ‘sales-y”, instead covering educational content in or around your sphere of business (think TED Talks). While webinars can be presented or streamed live or pre-recorded, the B2B marketers at KeyScouts point out that live presentations also serve as lead-generation machines, as they often reveal your most engaged audience members and present the perfect opportunity to follow up with them afterward.

5. eBooks

It’s not uncommon for a B2B enterprise to deal in highly specific inventory – say, for example, layered steel drilled and slotted rotors. While blogs specialize in bite-sized content, eBooks excel at encapsulating complex concepts with extreme specificity. Following the example, that rotor company might release an eBook on solving common problems in rotor dynamics, for instance. While eBooks do often offer free solutions for potential customers, don’t consider them a loss; consider them an opportunity to illustrate your expertise and your ability to solve problems.   

A word of advice from Riverbed Marketing when it comes to B2B-oriented eBooks: “Keep your eBooks problem-solution focused. Find an expensive problem in your target market, and offer a practical solution without holding anything back. The bigger the problem, the more valuable your solution is perceived.” 

6. Support Pages

While you might not think of support pages as “content” right off the bat, a good support page is where effective Ecommerce content meets customer retention. A simple place on your site, typically a contact page, that offers an email address or email contact form and a phone number is content and it is necessary. Even better is a support page that emphasizes a sense of community via organized and accessible help topics or a discussion forum (one that your company participates in, mind), which can be a make-or-break in a world of increasingly research-oriented and savvy customers.

But perhaps the most effective element of a support page? Online chat. According to Magellan Solutions, 63% of millennials — notably the majority age group of B2B buyers — prefer live chat over any other type of support channel. When it comes to building both customer affinity and retention, don’t sleep on support pages.     

7. Whitepapers

Think of whitepapers as the novella version of the eBook’s novel, or a sort of business-specific version of a project pitch packet. Whitepapers usually range from 12 to 15 pages — or 3,000 to 5,000 words and plentiful illustrations, graphs, charts and infographics — that serve as a persuasive piece, honing in on your product or service with a mix of facts, explanations and personal stories. Rather than a hard sell, though, effective whitepapers let facts and testimonials speak the loudest. 

Either offered as gated or “exclusive” digital content upon signing up for a mailing or produced as impressively printed hard copies, whitepapers are best suited for later in the sales cycle, and take no small effort to create. However, a well-circulated whitepaper is something that can easily end up in the right exec’s hands, lending your company a baseline of familiarity with potentially powerful leads.   

Optimizing B2B Ecommerce Content

On the note of synergy, it’s both important and exciting to remember that these types of content aren’t binary. Various modes of Ecommerce content can not only be used in unison, but they can also overlap – you might create a case study video, put infographics into a whitepaper or include a testimonial in an eBook. And that sort of creativity isn’t just an opportunity to do more business, it’s an opportunity to show the world exactly what your business is all about.

While this article honed in on specific Ecommerce content types, there are other types of content marketing that any online store can utilize. For more B2B Ecommerce content tips, check out our Sales and Marketing blog posts.

Dan is a small business owner and freelance writer based in Dallas, TX. In over a decade of experience, he’s been fortunate to write and collaborate with business-facing brands including The Motley Fool, Chron, Office Depot, Fortune and more.