Marketing & Advertising Archives

Facebook ‘Nearby’ Increases Mobile Search Capability

February 12, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Facebook knows a lot about what its users like. Thanks to a recent upgrade of its mobile app, a feature called Nearby turns that information into meaningful search data that local businesses with a Facebook Page and physical location can turn to their advantage. Considering that more th...

Social Media

Selling on Facebook Easier for Smaller Merchants

February 8, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

The merits of selling goods on Facebook are a topic of much debate. Several large retailers, including GameStop, Gap, jcpenney, and Nordstrom, experienced disappointing results and shut down their Facebook stores within months. But according to Sucharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at For...

Email Marketing

Making Emails Responsive to Tablets, Smartphones

February 7, 2013 • PEC Staff

In "Optimizing Ecommerce for Tablets and Smartphones," my article last month, I addressed responsive design, the practice of coding a website to automatically adjust to the size of a user's Internet device. This month, I extend that discussion to include outbound emails, so that the ...

Social Media

6 Twitter Marketing Lessons from the Super Bowl Blackout

February 7, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Several large brands — including Oreo and Tide — took advantage of Super Bowl 47's blackout to quickly create Twitter ads. Oreo's ad reminded followers that "You can still dunk in the dark," while Tide declared "We can't get your blackout. But we can get your stains out." Other brands...

Marketing & Advertising

The 5 C’s of Integrated Marketing

February 6, 2013 • Shirley Tan

The idea of integrated marketing is to make sure that the internal and external messaging of a company is consistent across all communication and sales channels. A big part of this is to make sure that ecommerce is not merely a platform for sales, but an opportunity to reach existing ...

Email Marketing

Using Sales Data to Automate Email Marketing

February 6, 2013 • Jaime Brugueras

Customers are the bloodline of any business. For ecommerce businesses, it’s particularly important to focus on creating recurring, loyal customers. This centers on understanding customer sales and shopping data, and using that information to develop profitable, automated email campaigns...

Marketing & Advertising

Influencing How Google Displays Your Page Description

February 5, 2013 • Chris Silver Smith

The brief preview text that appears below the links to your pages in Google's search results can be influenced by savvy marketers to improve site traffic through engineered meta descriptions. Read on for details.

Social Media

2 Ways to Create Facebook Ads

February 5, 2013 • Paul Chaney

A number of changes have taken place at Facebook with regard to how businesses use the platform. I will be reporting on these over the next few weeks. In this article, I discuss changes made to Facebook Ads. Recently, Facebook revised its advertising platform to make it easier for bu...

Social Media

Can New Myspace Help Ecommerce Businesses?

February 2, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Myspace is one social network I thought I would never address again, especially in a business context. The site became the most popular social network in 2005 and surpassed Google as the most visited website in 2006. In later years, use of the site quickly declined due to the growing ...

Social Media

10 Ways Merchants Can Use Google+

January 30, 2013 • Paul Chaney

The continued growth of Google+, along with an increased understanding of the nature of the platform, has caused many companies to establish a presence there. Google has also positioned Google+ as a channel businesses can use. With that in mind, here are 10 ways you can take advantage...

Influencers & Affiliates

Affiliate Marketing: Beyond Banner Ads to Drive Traffic

January 29, 2013 • Carolyn Kmet

Affiliate marketing extends beyond a standard banner ad. While you should offer your affiliates a solid creative inventory — featuring a wide variety of campaigns and sizes — you should also ensure that you are providing tools for affiliates who use other forms of advertising to drive ...

Google Ads

6 Rules for Pay-per-click Ad Profits

January 28, 2013 • Scott Smigler

I often hear from merchants that have tried pay-per-click advertising, but it wasn’t profitable for them. So they abandoned it. In my experience, however, many merchants could turn unprofitable campaigns into profitable ones by adopting the six rules that follow. Rule 1: Commit to PPC...

Marketing & Advertising

7 Keys to Ecommerce Blogging Success

January 22, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Business blogs serve many functions. They can inform consumers of news about your company, highlight upcoming events, promote products and services, or demonstrate expertise and thought-leadership. However, a successful blog requires careful planning. These seven keys will help you be...

Social Media

Facebook Takes on Local Search

January 17, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Consumers use the Internet to search for local businesses, events, and topics. Google is a major player in local search, but so is Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, YellowPages.com, Foursquare, and other sites. Local search now has a new competitor: Facebook Graph Search. Launched this week, Facebo...

Email Marketing

Email Marketing: 4 Tips for Sending to Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo!

January 17, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

An email is effective only if it is successfully delivered to the recipient. Moreover, getting the email to the inbox, versus the spam or junk folder, increases the chances of the message being read. Deliverability is a crucial element in the overall success of an email program. It ca...

Social Media

10 Tips for Syndicating Blog Content

January 16, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Blogging is hard work. It takes much time to research a topic, write copy, and find useful images, videos, and infographics. But writing a post is only the first step. For ...

Email Marketing

Don’t Forget Email Marketing; 13 Reasons

January 11, 2013 • Dale Traxler

With all the focus on social media, it seems that email marketing is almost an afterthought for many companies. Email may not be trendy, but it’s cheap, easy to measure, and easy to target. It's a good place to do testing, it keeps your brand visible, and at the end of the day it delive...

Social Media

8 Instagram Photo-Sharing Alternatives

January 8, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Photo-sharing site Instagram created a controversy recently when it proposed a change in its terms of service that would have allowed the company to incorporate user generated images in ads without users' permission. The company has since reconsidered its decision. Having written "10 W...

Google Ads

Pay-per-click Advertising: 7 Predictions for 2013

January 3, 2013 • Scott Smigler

2012 was a big year for pay-per-click advertising. Many online retailers saw their PPC budgets, conversion rates, and return-on-ad-spend grow nicely. At the same time, cost-per-click rates dropped precipitously for Product Listing Ads and mobile ads. Looking forward, here are my top sev...

Social Media

Using Instagram for your Ecommerce Business

January 2, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Popular photo-sharing app Instagram — which Facebook acquired earlier this year — is now used by businesses. Of 100 leading brands, 54 have incorporated Instagram, according to Simply Measured, an analytics firm. Here is how you can start using Instagram to market your products and ser...

Social Media

10 Ways to Encourage Customer Ratings and Reviews

December 26, 2012 • Paul Chaney

According to Nielsen’s "Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages" report, which surveyed more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries, 92 percent of consumers said they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising. From an ecommerce ...

Email Marketing

Remember a Holiday ‘Thank You’ Email

December 19, 2012 • Armando Roggio

As the 2012 Christmas shopping season comes to a close, online retailers should take the time to sincerely thank customers and offer appropriate holiday greetings. Email marketing often reaches its peak during the weeks leading up to December 25. Many, if not most, Internet retailers a...

Social Media

5 Sites for Consumer Product Discovery

December 18, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Social media has inspired a new kind of shopping that is based on peer-to-peer sharing of content on sites like Pinterest, Etsy, or Shopcade, and less known sites such as LoveIt or Wanelo. This consumer-driven trend is referred to as "discovery." For many consumers, shopping is as muc...

Email Marketing

3 Common Email Marketing Mistakes

December 18, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

There were some fantastic email campaigns in 2012. And there were some ineffective ones, too. In this article, I'll address three of the top email marketing mistakes from 2012. Sending Emails Too Frequently As an email marketing professional, I subscribe to hundreds of ecommerce em...

Email Marketing

Transactional Emails: 5 Secrets to Improve

December 12, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Five relatively simple steps could help online retailers significantly improve transactional emails, and, perhaps, earn additional sales. Transactional or relationship email messages complete, confirm, or provide information about a previously agreed upon transaction. In the ecommerce ...

Social Media

How to Create a Google+ Community

December 11, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Google+ is growing. According to a Google executive, more than 500 million people have set up profiles, 235 million actively use Google+ functionality such as Hangouts (its video chat feature) and sharing links (via the +1 button), and 135 million use Google+ as a stand-alone social net...

Email Marketing

Email, Mobile, On-site Driving 2012 Holiday Sales

December 6, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Retail holiday sales for 2012 from the first of November through Cyber Monday rose 16 percent year over year to more than $16.3 billion. Email marketing, mobile shopping, and on-site promotions have all played an important role in online sales. The 16 percent boost in early holiday ret...

Social Media

Designing a Facebook Marketing Campaign in 4 Steps

December 4, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Marketing on Facebook involves four basic steps: Build, Connect, Engage and Influence, a process Facebook now refers to as the BCEI framework. This article outlines these four steps and explains how ecommerce merchants can use them to execute an effective Facebook marketing campaign. ...

Social Media

6 Sites to Monitor Facebook Changes

December 4, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Facebook is notorious for making changes to its platform. Often, such changes are made with little notice or fanfare, unless you know where to look. Staying abreast of such changes is important to any merchant who wishes to use Facebook marketing more effectively. In this article, I p...

Influencers & Affiliates

Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 1: Tracking Platforms

November 29, 2012 • Carolyn Kmet

Editor's Note: This is "Part 1" of a three-part series on launching a new affiliate marketing program. "Part 2" and "Part 3" we published subsequently. There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking p...