Marketing & Advertising Archives

Facebook Replaces Profiles with Timelines; Implications for Merchants

December 28, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Facebook will soon make a dramatic change to individual user Profiles, turning them into “Timelines,” which Facebook calls “a new kind of Profile.” Rationale for ‘Timelines’ Facebook says its motivation for the ...

Social Media

Understanding YouTube’s New Redesign

December 21, 2011 • Paul Chaney

The major social networks are all in redesign mode. Facebook is rolling out "Timelines," a more picturesque version of user Profiles. Twitter has completed a major redesign, which I covered last week in "Understanding Twitter's New Redesign." And now YouTube is changing its appearance a...

Email Marketing

4 Mobile Email-Marketing Tips

December 20, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

There are many mobile devices that consumers can choose from: basic feature phones, smartphones, tablets, e-readers and more. Consumers have their own preferences as to what combination of devices to use and whether to use them on cellular connections, Wi-Fi networks, or both. For ecomm...

Google Ads

Formatting a Product Spreadsheet for Google Merchant Center

December 20, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google has created a service that helps online retailers list and submit products to Google's Product Search, Product Ads, and Commerce Search offerings. This service, called "Google Merchant Center," can accept a data feed of product information. In this article, you'll find a descrip...

Social Media

Understanding Twitter’s New Redesign

December 14, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Twitter has just launched several enhancements that include a major redesign of its layout, the introduction of Facebook-style brand pages, embeddable tweets and a redesign of its mobile and Tweetdeck apps. Dubbed “Let’s Fly” — Twitter describes it in a blog post — the goal of the rede...

Social Media

21 Twitter ‘Brand Pages’

December 14, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Twitter has launched "brand pages" as part of its recent redesign. Brand pages feature large customizable header images and highlight a top tweet with an embedded photo or video. Twitter is launching brand pages with 21 marketers: American Express, Best Buy, Bing, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola,...

Email Marketing

Email Marketing: 3 Tips for Recovering from Content Mistakes

December 13, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The email send button and the content of the message it represents are powerful marketing tools that launch a message directly to thousands of potential customers at once. But when there is a mistake in the email message — a broken link, misspelled word, an incorrect date — an emergenc...

Social Media

5 New Social-Shopping Sites and Apps

December 12, 2011 • Paul Chaney

When it comes to making product purchase decisions, customers are increasingly relying on each other for information and advice. That is not a new behavior, as people have always relied on the influence of friends. It's just that social media technology has given it wings. Consumers ar...

Google Ads

The 20 Most Expensive Keywords

December 8, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Google makes a lot of money from online advertising. In the twelve months ended June 30, 2011, Google made $33.3 billion in revenues. Of that, 97 percent ($32.2 billion) was from advertising. WordStream, a provider of software for keywords and pay-per-click marketing campaigns, has don...

Social Media

Add the Twitter Tweet and Follow Buttons without Hiring a Developer

December 8, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Twitter is an important site for ecommerce marketers that want to encourage shoppers to share products and pages. Fortunately, the service is easy to integrate into a retail site without even hiring a developer. In this article, you'll learn how to add both the Twitter Tweet and the Tw...

Social Media

Using LinkedIn for Your Ecommerce Business: Pros and Cons

December 5, 2011 • Paul Chaney

LinkedIn appeals primarily to business professionals. It does not have as many consumer users as Facebook. But its social media strengths can still help your ecommerce business. This article will outline the benefits and limiations of using LinkedIn as a social commerce marketing platf...

Influencers & Affiliates

Affiliate Marketing Metrics: A Primer

December 1, 2011 • Carolyn Kmet

One of the benefits of online marketing is all the data we have access to. Unlike brick-and-mortar establishments, an online retailer can determine product interest and then forecast sales based on how many people viewed a product. Take it a step further, and the online retailer can a...

Social Media

3 Ways Social Media Affects Brands

December 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The continued growth of social networking and blog sites is having an effect on brands and how those brands are marketed. According to an October study from The Nielsen Company and its social media affiliate, NM Incite, “60 percent of consumers researching products though multiple onli...

Email Marketing

Email Marketing: How to Prevent, Manage Dormant Lists

November 30, 2011 • PEC Staff

Email marketing remains critical for many ecommerce merchants. But for those merchants with established ecommerce sites — and older email lists — maintaining healthy email open rates and click-through rates can be a challenge. We spoke recently with an email-marketing expert on how, ex...

Illustration of a person in front of a computer with video

Marketing & Advertising

Ask an Expert: For SEO, Better to Host Videos On-site?

November 30, 2011 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about hosting videos for search engine optimization purposes.

Google Ads

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Becoming More Important?

November 28, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Ten years ago a business could thrive by focusing on organic search engine optimization. My rule of thumb then was that organic rankings garnered roughly 80 percent of the clicks on search result pages while paid listings garnered less than 20 percent. A smart SEO strategy seemed to out...

Social Media

5 Content Curation Tools for Social Sharing

November 28, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Many of us use popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Yet there are hundreds of others, most of which you likely have never heard of. Some of these lesser known digital outposts are worth discussing, however. Over the past few weeks I have reported on three: Stum...

Social Media

20 Top Brands on Google+

November 25, 2011 • Sig Ueland

A new study by social management company BrightEdge found that 61 of the top 100 global brands had a Google+ page the week after Google let companies create brand pages.

Content Marketing

Syndicating Content for SEO Benefit

November 18, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

When ecommerce companies think about content syndication, they typically consider acquiring content that others have written to beef up their own sites. Depending on the goal, placing content from other sites onto your own can be beneficial from a branding, partnership, or reference poi...

Influencers & Affiliates

Celebrity Curators Help Personalize Ecommerce

November 18, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

How do you stand out in a crowded market with a sizeable number of players competing mostly on low prices and free shipping? By differentiating yourself. Several ecommerce websites are melding social media with personalization to create a more inviting and collaborative shopping experie...

Social Media

How to Create a Google+ Business Page

November 16, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Google announced last week that it has launched Pages for business in its Google+ social network. I addressed this topic in my "Social Retailer" blog last week and listed what I suggested are three possible benefits. Direct connection to search. Through the use of the "+1" button, ...

Email Marketing

Email Case Study: Toys“R”Us Gears Up for Cyber Monday

November 15, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

For online retailers, the days before and after Thanksgiving can determine a successful holiday season. Toys“R”Us, the large U.S.-based toy retailer, uses email marketing extensively during the holidays. I'll analyze Toys“R”Us's email strategies in this article — to help other merchants...

Social Media

8 Businesses on Tumblr

November 9, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Of a Kind, the first store built on blogging platform Tumblr, is one year old. The site, which sells fashion items commissioned from emerging designers, is a mash-up of blog and ecommerce, providing personal content on its designers and their goods. While Of a Kind is still unique as ...

Social Media

Using the New Delicious.com; 5 Advantages for Businesses

November 7, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Delicious is a longtime social bookmarking service for storing, discovering and sharing links to online resources. The site was founded in 2003, sold to Yahoo! in 2008, and sold again in 2011 to AVOS Systems, a company owned by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the founders of YouTube. Soci...

Social Media

13 Crowdfunding Sites for Social-Cause Entrepreneurs

November 2, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Crowdfunding websites help entrepreneurs fund small businesses with financing from the community. For social-cause entrepreneurs, who venture to create a positive change in the world, crowdfunding sites can also provide financing and resources. Here is a list of crowdfunding sites that...

Marketing & Advertising

8 Steps to Developing Ad Revenue from Your Website

November 1, 2011 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

There are three primary ways to monetize (that is, generate revenue from) a website. Ecommerce . Receive profits from direct sales of products or services.Affiliate marketing. Receive referral fees from merchants when a product or service you linked to results in a sale as a result of your link.

Social Media

StumbleUpon: Social Bookmarking Traffic Generator

November 1, 2011 • Paul Chaney

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to share a website with others in their network. People use the tool to "stumble upon" web pages recommended by others that are matched to their personal preferences. How Does it Work? StumbleUpon uses a "thumbs up, thumbs do...

Marketing & Advertising

5 Pointers for Using Facebook for Your Ecommerce Business

October 31, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Many small retailers struggle with using Facebook to grow their business. Some have created Facebook pages, but are not seeing results. However, Facebook can work effectively for your business if it's used properly. Here are five pointers. 1. Make Sure Your Customers Use Facebook If...

Google Ads

Pay-Per-Click Ads: 5 Tips for Higher Clicks this Holiday Season

October 28, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Google’s paid-click revenue grew by an astounding 28 percent last quarter, thanks in part to a 5 percent rise in click prices. It’s likely that Google will set ad revenue records this fourth quarter also, due to the increase in holiday ad spending. To online retailers, Google’s surge i...

Influencers & Affiliates

Understanding Affiliate Marketing

October 27, 2011 • Carolyn Kmet

Editor's Note: We welcome as our newest contributor. She is director of affiliate marketing for Groupon, the deal-of-the day site, and the recent recipient of Affiliate Summit's "Affiliate Manager of the Year" award. Kmet's first piece — an overview of affiliate marketing — is below. ...