Chris Shaffer made the provocative point on The My Wife Quit Her Job podcast that 99% of ecommerce content fails. He argues it's because most brands just talk about themselves. Their blogs are just thinly veiled sales pitches and their social posts are just product shots with a caption. This content doesn't build trust or offer any real value, so customers simply ignore it. It never answers the essential "what's in it for me?" question from the audience's perspective and completely fails to start a meaningful conversation.
Shaffer’s core idea is that successful content needs to shift from being product-centric to being audience-centric. To make something that actually works, you have to deeply understand your customer's life, including all the problems, interests, and questions that exist around your product category. The goal is to become a trusted authority and a go-to resource in your niche, not just a catalog people browse. This means mapping content to the entire buyer's journey, creating helpful resources for people who aren't even ready to buy yet. That's how you build the trust that eventually earns the sale.
Andrew Youder reinforces this idea on The EcomCrew Ecommerce Podcast. He talks about high-value content as a sustainable competitive advantage, especially for smaller shops trying to compete with massive retailers. While bigger companies can outspend you on ads, you can out-care them with authentic, helpful content. Youder sees this as building a true asset for the business. It’s a moat that can't be easily copied by a competitor with a bigger budget. The authority you build through content is yours to keep, and it pays dividends for years by creating a real relationship with your audience.
So how do you actually do this? You start by immersing yourself in your customer's world. The Shopify Masters story about a brand speaking to sneakerheads is a perfect example of this in action. The founders were part of that subculture, so they could create content that was perfectly authentic and resonated deeply. You can't fake that kind of connection. Your content needs to answer the questions your audience is already asking Google, or provide a unique perspective they can't get anywhere else. It might be a detailed how-to guide, an entertaining video series, or a calculator that helps them solve a problem. It has to feel like it came from a real person who genuinely cares, not from a marketing department trying to hit a KPI. The content that wins is generous and serves the audience first.