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 & Text Marketing | Google Ads | Influencers & Affiliates | Social Media-
Business
5 Content Marketing Ideas for March 2021
February 3, 2021 • Armando Roggio
Content marketing is the act of publishing articles, videos, and similar to attract, engage, and retain customers and prospects. What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can use in March 2021.
-
Social Media
Social Media Updates for Commerce, Live-streaming, More
February 2, 2021 • Sig Ueland
Social media sites help businesses build a brand, engage customers, and sell products. Many popular networks continue to innovate with new features, particularly around ecommerce. Here is a list of social media updates to explore in 2021.
-
Marketing & Advertising
Adding SMS to an Ecommerce Marketing Mix
January 31, 2021 • Armando Roggio
Text messaging can help ecommerce marketers engage and retain customers, but it is not a replacement for email communication or mobile apps. How does an ecommerce marketer use SMS? Here are seven tips to help.
-
Marketing & Advertising
Using TikTok for Ecommerce Marketing
January 28, 2021 • Kaleena Stroud
TikTok is a relative newcomer to the social media world, having launched as A.me in 2016 in Beijing, China. Once viewed as a passing phase, TikTok now has more than 200 million downloads in the U.S. and 2 billion worldwide. It's among the most downloaded apps in Google Play and the Apple App Store.
-
Email & Text Marketing
Quick Refresher of U.S. CAN-SPAM Requirements
January 18, 2021 • Carolyn Nye
New consumer privacy laws in the U.S. and elsewhere apply to many forms of digital promotion, including email marketing. Thus it's worth reviewing the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which sets rules for the use of commercial email to U.S.-based recipients.
-
Social Media
Charts: Social Media’s Impact on Ecommerce Revenue
January 13, 2021 • Anna Kayfitz
Social media's impact on global ecommerce revenue varies depending on the platform. Almost half of Pinterest users shop on the site. Pinterest users also generate the highest average order value, at $154, versus other social media channels. Less than 10 percent of Snapchat and Twitter users shop for goods or services on those sites.
-
Google Ads
A Data Studio Template to Automate Ecommerce KPIs
January 5, 2021 • Morgan Jones
Automating key performance indicators streamlines data collection and enables real-time reporting. Collecting and reporting from multiple data sources is possible in Google Data Studio, an excellent platform. To help, I've created a free Data Studio template that you can use for your business. I'll explain the template in this post.
-
Google Ads
4 Uses for Google Ads’ New Insights Tab
January 4, 2021 • Matthew Umbro
Google Ads introduced Insights in late 2020. The new beta feature will roll out to advertisers in the coming months. Similar to the Keyword Planner, Insights provides advertisers a sense of trending keywords.
-
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for February 2021
January 4, 2021 • Armando Roggio
Your company's February 2021 content marketing could cover the obvious, such as Valentine's Day, and the obscure, such as Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. Content marketing is the act of creating content, publishing it, and promoting it with the goal of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers.
-
Email & Text Marketing
Attributing Sales to Email Marketing Is Not Always Easy
December 27, 2020 • Carolyn Nye
Attributing sales to email marketing can be difficult. A typical customer journey involves multiple touchpoints, such as email, organic search, and social media. The better we understand the impact of each channel on conversions, the better we can optimize that channel for growth.
-
Google Ads
Big Changes from Google Ads in 2020
December 23, 2020 • Robert Brady
The year 2020 witnessed raging Australian wildfires, a presidential impeachment, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Google Ads had some big changes this year, too.
-
Social Media
12 Outstanding Digital Media Campaigns from 2020
December 21, 2020 • Sig Ueland
Reviewing the year’s best digital marketing campaigns from established brands can generate ideas for your own efforts. Here is a list of outstanding digital marketing campaigns from 2020. The campaigns are mostly tied to Covid-19, working remotely, the presidential election, and social injustice.
-
Marketing & Advertising
5 Ways to Boost January 2021 Retail Sales
December 16, 2020 • Armando Roggio
For many retailers, January sales feel like a slump after the high-flying holiday season. But stores can still take steps to earn relatively more. Here are five tactics to try.
-
Influencers & Affiliates
How Influencer Marketing Drives Holiday Sales
December 13, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Influencers have the power to help drive ecommerce sales the way old school media did in years past. Advertising on 1950s television and other mass media was successful because of the audiences. Today, the same thing may be true for influencer marketing.
-
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2021
December 3, 2020 • Armando Roggio
January 2021 can represent a beginning for content marketers to build communities, stream live videos, write about national holidays, report industry news, or visually expose interesting industry data. Content marketing is the act of curating or creating content such as articles, podcasts, videos, and graphics.
-
Google Ads
When to Apply Google Ads Recommendations (or Not)
December 3, 2020 • Matthew Umbro
The work of a pay-per-click ad specialist is seemingly never complete — more optimizations are always possible. Google Ads provides a recommendations tab to help. These include changes to core account components.
-
Social Media
Is Longer Copy Better for Social Media Ads?
November 29, 2020 • Kaleena Stroud
I’ve addressed the importance of copywriting for Facebook and Instagram ads. Many marketers default to short copy — a few sentences, max — thinking that their audience will not read more. But that is not accurate, in my experience.
-
Content Marketing
Last-minute Holiday Social Media Checkup for Ecommerce
November 18, 2020 • Armando Roggio
A quick checkup can ensure that holiday social media posts achieve a company's objectives. Think of it as a tune-up for an important journey. What follows is a holiday social media checklist. It will likely take a few minutes to complete and offer a measure of certainty about holiday social campaigns.
-
Email & Text Marketing
Analyzing Unsubscribes Can Save an Email Marketing Program
November 17, 2020 • Carolyn Nye
Email marketers do not typically monitor why recipients unsubscribe. But the more we understand the reasons, the better we can reduce the number. In this post, I'll explore how to analyze unsubscribes to improve email performance.
-
Social Media
15 Social Media Plugins for WordPress
November 17, 2020 • Sig Ueland
Here is a list of social media plugins for WordPress. There are plugins to display icons from hundreds of social media networks, schedule and automate publication, track engagement, and more. Some of these plugins are standalone, while others are bundled with larger sets of WordPress tools.
-
Marketing & Advertising
The 5 C’s of Ecommerce Marketing
November 12, 2020 • Armando Roggio
The 5C marketing framework provides a structured way to evaluate and describe a business's position in a market. The framework, applied consistently, could guide decisions as the business promotes its brand and products.
-
Marketing & Advertising
10 Inspiring Holiday Marketing Campaigns
November 3, 2020 • Sig Ueland
The 2020 holiday season is upon us. Here is a list of successful marketing campaigns from previous holiday seasons. The campaigns celebrate Yule logs, Santa, holiday music, and heading outdoors. Several of the campaigns use contests to generate content from followers.
-
Google Ads
Understanding Google’s Smart Shopping Campaigns
November 2, 2020 • Matthew Umbro
I’ve written many articles in the last year that address Google Ads' automation. Used carefully, automation — bidding, dynamic copy, scripts — can free up time for strategy. In this post, I’ll focus on Smart Shopping campaigns for Google Shopping.
-
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for December 2020
November 1, 2020 • Armando Roggio
In December 2020, online retailers and B2B sellers can focus their content marketing on getting things done during Covid, launching a YouTube channel, profiling the Nobel Prizes, teaching skills, and raising AIDS awareness. Content marketing starts with creating or curating content such as articles, videos, graphics, or podcasts.
-
Content Marketing
CopySmiths Founder on Content Marketing by the Numbers
October 30, 2020 • Eric Bandholz
Kat McKinnon's agency, CopySmiths, produces hundreds of blog posts per month for, mainly, ecommerce clients. She's developed a formula of sorts for getting those posts ranked in Google's search results. "You need between 1,000 and 1,500 words for a blog article," she told me. "Definitely not 600. Avoid 800, unless you're literally just answering a short question."
-
Social Media
Optimize Facebook Ads with Better Images and Copy
October 28, 2020 • Kaleena Stroud
Despite the chatter around its dwindling reach, Facebook remains hugely popular. It has twice the number of users than Instagram, for example, according to Sprout Social. But gaining users’ attention on Facebook via advertising can be difficult.
-
Marketing & Advertising
The Value of Personalized Marketing for Ecommerce
October 22, 2020 • Armando Roggio
A well-executed personalized marketing program may resemble person-to-person conversations like those a shopper could experience in a brick-and-mortar retail store. It is easy to recognize a genuinely good customer experience when you have it.
-
Email & Text Marketing
Designing Emails to Drive Clicks and Conversions
October 22, 2020 • Carolyn Nye
Email design has evolved to reflect changes in technology and consumer behavior. The goal is to elicit the desired action from the recipient, such as a click or conversion. In this post, I'll address tips on designing high-performing emails for ecommerce.
-
Content Marketing
Content Marketing Should Mimic Publishing, Broadcasting
October 12, 2020 • Armando Roggio
The best content marketing is so good, so useful, so entertaining that it holds an audience's attention like a good newspaper, magazine, or TV show. The process, however, can require a substantial commitment.
-
Content Marketing
Privacy Concerns Will Increase the Value of Content Marketing
October 7, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Increased emphasis on personal privacy, particularly with changes to Apple's Identifier for Advertisers and the probability of cookie-less browsers in the near future, could increase the need for content marketing.