You built the content. Now build the journey.

Why retail brands must stop hiding their content — and start giving it a route to work.

Retail brands are investing significant, energy and budget into content. From seasonal style edits and parenting advice to food inspiration and expert buying guides — the quality is improving; the strategy often is not.

All too often, that valuable content is quietly uploaded to a subfolder on the brand website… and left there. No social posts. No email links. No homepage signpost. No in-store prompt. No app notification. No paid media. No clear traffic-driving strategy.

The content’s there — but the customer is not.

Content without visibility is just digital deadweight.

You wouldn’t open a new shop in the middle of nowhere and forget to tell anyone about it. Yet this is exactly what many retail brands are doing with their content.

One popular UK retailer we know has created over 100 thoughtful, well-written articles housed on their website, but unless you have the exact URL or the patience to carry out a determined search, you’re unlikely to see them. The articles are difficult to find from the homepage, and even when you do find it, the tagging is inconsistent — with everything from newborn baby advice to teen university prep filed under ‘Baby & Child’.

It’s a similar story at one of our leading supermarkets. Their blog is packed with food tips and lifestyle content, but it’s virtually invisible from the main site navigation. If the user must work hard just to find your content, they probably won’t bother — especially in the context of weekly food shopping.

A premium retailer has recently launched a beautiful parenting content hub. The writing is engaging, the tone is perfectly on-brand — but it’s buried under the catch-all “Inspire Me” tab, with no filtering by age or stage. It looks great… if you ever get there. For a busy parent, it’s just too much work.

Discovery is everything — and retailers are missing the trick.

Retailers believe in the power of content — to educate, inspire and build brand trust. 

But content can’t do its job in the dark. It needs:

• Traffic-driving tactics — including social posts, CRM, app push, loyalty programme integration, in-store prompts and QR codes 
• Clear navigation from key pages like the homepage, hub landing pages, and product categories
• Smart tagging and filtering, especially for life-stage-driven content (e.g. baby, toddler, teen)
• Measurement and iteration — because if no one’s reading it, why keep making it?

SEO is not enough.

Too many retail teams rely on Google to do the heavy lifting — assuming content will naturally get picked up and served to the right people. But without strong domain authority, smart metadata, or internal links, even the best articles are unlikely to surface. Content without active distribution is unlikely to deliver ROI.

Retailers need to set clear content objectives, and monitor results

If your content is meant to support shoppers, influence purchase decisions, drive basket size, or increase loyalty — then it needs a route to do so. Otherwise, how can it deliver against objectives?

At best, it’s a missed opportunity. At worst, it’s wasted investment.

So, let’s not just create great content. Let’s signpost it. Promote it. Nudge it. Test it. Make it easy to navigate. And make sure it’s doing the job it was designed to do.

Otherwise, we may as well not create it at all.

Find out how we can help you: email us at hello@ingagecontent.com