Category

Marketing & Advertising

The marketing of an ecommerce business is paramount to its success. Our coverage includes insights on email marketing, content marketing, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest — affiliate marketing, video advertising, and much more.

Content Marketing | Email Marketing | Google Ads | Influencers & Affiliates | Social Media

Google Ads
Google Shopping’s Impact on SEO

July 6, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Over the next several months, Google’s free Product Search feature will start costing ecommerce sites a lot more. Since the launch of Google’s Froogle in 2002, Google has provided a free product search service. The newly launched Google Shopping marks the first time that the company has...
Social Media
‘Promoted Stories’ Enables Wide Content Syndication

July 5, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Syndicating blog posts, press releases or new product announcements can be time consuming, especially when you consider the number and types of channels available. Further, many small ecommerce merchants do not have the internal resources to effectively promote such content. They may po...
Social Media
12 Resources for Custom Facebook Pages

July 3, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Facebook has a whole lot of people to introduce your brand to. It also has a variety of third-party resources to create custom tabs and pages to present your brand. Here is a list of resources to create custom tabs and pages for your brand. Many of these resources offer social apps to...
Marketing & Advertising
13 Sites with Personalized Social Media Icons

June 29, 2012 • Drew Coffin

Many online merchants use social media icons to link their storefronts to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. While basic social media icons will get the job done, some merchants choose to customize their social media icons for a more personalized user experience. Here are thirte...
Social Media
Putting a Dollar Value on Fans, Friends, and Followers

June 27, 2012 • Armando Roggio

According to studies from diverse research and analysis firms around the globe, a Facebook Fan is worth $136.38, a Twitter follower is worth $2.00, and a would-be friend on Pinterest is worth, perhaps, $5.00. Unfortunately, as concise and direct as these figures might seem when used a...
Marketing & Advertising
For Quick Sales, Target Top PPC Ad Placements

June 26, 2012 • Dale Traxler

For many retail businesses, summers can be a challenging time to maintain steady revenue. This week, I’m going to focus on a strategy that could bring quick revenue into your business. A lot of the marketing buzz for ecommerce businesses has been around using social media to build you...
Social Media
Writing Social Media Press Releases: 3 Tools to Help

June 25, 2012 • Paul Chaney

More than 3,000 press releases are issued each day. However, unless you have a public relations firm following up — making phone calls or sending emails to journalists and bloggers — it's almost impossible to get your release read by the media. But there are three ways press releases ...
Social Media
Moving Beyond Likes on Facebook

June 25, 2012 • Armando Roggio

A new study seeks to better understand how businesses may use Facebook to go beyond just acquiring Likes, to engaging and communicating with customers in effective and measurable ways. The study comes from Internet analysis firm comScore and includes data from comScore's "Social Essent...
Marketing & Advertising
Collaborative Consumption Can Help Your Ecommerce Business

June 21, 2012 • Gagan Mehra

"Collaborative consumption" refers to the matching of suppliers with consumers in a large-scale manner. It could involve bartering services, renting resources, selling products, and more. The Internet has greatly facilitated collaborative consumption, by offering online platforms for ...
Social Media
Installing Facebook’s New WordPress Plugin

June 19, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Facebook has created a WordPress plugin that integrates the social network's functionality to a much deeper degree. It makes your WordPress site nearly an extension of Facebook itself. Once installed, each time you create a WordPress post, it automatically cross-posts to your Facebook T...
Email Marketing
5 Ways to Freshen Your Email List

June 18, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

Your email-marketing program depends on a quality list. It's easy for a list to stagnate over time. An email database that is left alone, without refreshing, combined with an email marketing program that is not stimulating, will lead to lower open and click rates. In this article, I'l...
Social Media
Measuring Social Media’s Impact on Revenue

June 15, 2012 • Tim Wilson

You can explore the impact of social media on your site’s revenue using data that is already available to you. None of this data is perfect, and none of it is comprehensive. But when used together, the data can inform how and where you invest. Organic vs. Campaign-Driven Social Media ...
Social Media
Facebook Adds Post Scheduler and Admin Roles

June 13, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Facebook recently added two new administrative functions to Fan pages: the ability to (a) schedule posts, and (b) set management roles for page administrators. Scheduling Posts Facebook page administrators can now schedule posts for publication at a future date. This long anticipated...
Social Media
Facebook Promoted Posts: Getting Started

June 5, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Facebook just launched a new advertising format called Promoted Posts, which allows Page administrators to turn any Timeline post into an ad that appears at the top of Fans' news feeds. Promoted Posts increase the chance that more Fans will see it, and that more of their friends will to...
Social Media
Ecommerce Marketing on Google+

June 5, 2012 • Armando Roggio

As Google rolls more features and functions into Google+, marketing on the new and fast growing social media network is increasingly important. Last week, Google announced the launch of Google+ Local, which provides users with recommendations and information about local businesses incl...
Social Media
Who is Using Twitter and Why?

June 4, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Mobile adoption may be driving a surge in Twitter use, according to a major research firm. A report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released May 31, 2012 said, “Twitter usage is highly correlated with the use of mobile technologies, especially smartphones.” This find...
Influencers & Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing: Optimize Creative Inventory

May 31, 2012 • Carolyn Kmet

Managing an affiliate marketing channel is more than just getting affiliates to join your program. It is also about optimizing ad placements on affiliate sites. Building Your Creative Inventory Different types of affiliates have different creative needs. Coupon and deal sites such...
Google Ads
Remarketing Renaissance Helps Ecommerce Merchants

May 30, 2012 • Scott Smigler

The idea of targeting ads to visitors who leave a site and continue surfing the web always made sense to me. Until recently, however, this "remarketing" was an afterthought. It just wasn’t producing enough traffic or sales to be valuable. That’s likely to change. When Google got into ...
Social Media
3 Ways to Integrate Tweets on Your Ecommerce Site

May 29, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Twitter offers several ways to integrate tweets into a retailer's website. Showing tweets increases the number of followers. It also keeps the website updated with new content. And it serves increase the community around the retailer's brand. With that in mind, here are three of the m...
Social Media
18 Tools to Develop Your Brand on Facebook

May 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland

If you’re look for a place to develop your brand, Facebook is the spot. With over 500 million daily active users, it’s a great platform on which to engage followers and promote yourself. It’s also an ideal environment to monitor how successful you are at engaging and promoting. Here is...
Social Media
Using Facebook’s Insights Analytics to Expand Your Audience

May 22, 2012 • Paul Chaney

This article takes a closer look at ways merchants can utilize Facebook's administrative console and Insights analytics platform for marketing purposes. These newly revised sections contain information that can help merchants gain a deeper understanding into (a) who is visiting their ...
Social Media
How to Install Social Sharing Buttons from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest

May 17, 2012 • Paul Chaney

All major social networks provide merchants with the capability to incorporate social sharing buttons that allow visitors to share content. The process of embedding these buttons is simple, can be done in a matter of minutes, and requires only a basic understanding of HTML. Below are ...
Marketing & Advertising
23 Tools to Research Your Competition

May 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Sometimes the best way to improve your own business is by taking a hard look at your competitors. By understanding their most and least effective strategies, you can fine-tune your own marketing efforts. Here is a list of competitive research tools. There are tools to research your com...
Email Marketing
How to Choose an Email Service Provider

May 10, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

Selecting an email service provider can be a daunting task. With so many potential providers — and a vast range of pricing options and levels of service — how do you know which providers are the best match for your ecommerce business? In this article, I'll address five keys to help yo...
Social Media
8 Social Shopping Sites for Ecommerce Merchants

May 8, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Today's social shopping sites are the online equivalent of old-fashioned swap meets and flea markets. They bring thousands of buyers and sellers together in a social environment where shoppers can rely on friends to help them shop and connect with merchants. These social marketplaces ...
Social Media
20 Most-Shared Marketing Videos

May 7, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Online viewers share compelling content. A marketing video that makes an impact can go viral, whether the video is funny, sad, inspiring, or cheaply produced. Here is a list of the most-shared marketing videos, based on the amount of times content is shared on Facebook, Twitter and in ...
Social Media
Using Twitter to Promote Your Ecommerce Products

May 2, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Twitter is a largely untapped promotional channel for ecommerce merchants. According to social commerce company ArgyleSocial, only 26 percent of retailers include calls to action such as "visit a website" or "purchase a product" in their tweets — here's ArgyleSocial's infographic. In a...
Social Media
Survey Says: Pinterest-like Sites Drive Sales

May 1, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Some 32 percent of respondents to a March survey reported making a purchase after seeing a product on Pinterest or a similar picture and video sharing social media website. Bizrate Insights, which sells customer feedback and ratings solutions to online retailers, surveyed 3,741 online ...
Influencers & Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing: Communicating with Your Affiliates

May 1, 2012 • Carolyn Kmet

One of the important responsibilities of managing an affiliate marketing channel is communicating with affiliates. The most common form of communicating with them is an email newsletter. A question many affiliate managers ask is, “How often should I send a newsletter?” The concern is...
Social Media
3 Examples of Contest Marketing

April 30, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Contest marketing seeks to give shoppers a positive retailer-related experience, create an affinity for the products a retailer sells, and collect information about shoppers that may help with future sales-oriented marketing campaigns. The idea of giving away hundreds of dollars worth ...

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