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-
Social Media
How 20 Leading Brands Use Facebook to Engage Audiences
October 6, 2020 • Sig Ueland
According to its March 31 quarter-end results, Facebook has 2.60 billion monthly active users and 1.73 billion daily active users. For brands, Facebook can be a place to engage and inspire. Here is a list of brands that have successfully grown audiences on Facebook.
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Business
5 Content Marketing Ideas for November 2020
October 5, 2020 • Armando Roggio
The U.S. presidential election, family-oriented observances, blogging, and even entrepreneurship are all good topics for your business's content marketing in November 2020. Content marketing is the act of creating or curating content, publishing that content, and promoting it with the aim of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers.
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Google Ads
Google Ads Decreases Search Terms Visibility
October 4, 2020 • Matthew Umbro
In early September, Google Ads announced that the search terms report would disclose fewer user queries. The explanation from Google is to "maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data." The search terms report allows you to see the actual queries from users.
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Social Media
14 Tools for Selling on Facebook and Instagram
September 28, 2020 • Sig Ueland
Shopping on Facebook and Instagram is finally here. With the recent launches of Shops on both apps and Live Shopping, Facebook is facilitating easier commerce across its platform. Here is a list of tools to help you sell on Facebook and Instagram.
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Social Media
9 Pointers for High-converting Instagram Ads
September 27, 2020 • Kaleena Stroud
Instagram ads appear in users' feeds. The ads look like a regular post but with a sponsored label and a colored call-to-action button. What follows are nine tips for high-converting Instagram ads.
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Influencers & Affiliates
Amazon Live: 12 Shows from Influencers, Sellers, Brands
September 21, 2020 • Sig Ueland
Amazon Live combines streaming video with online shopping, letting influencers, sellers, and brands engage and interact with consumers in real-time. Here is a list of shows using Amazon Live from influencers, sellers, and brands. Episodes range from 30 minutes to two hours, though most are roughly one hour.
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Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing: Optimizing ‘From’ Lines, Subject Lines, Pre-headers
September 20, 2020 • Carolyn Nye
Email marketing remains a cornerstone of most ecommerce companies. But optimizing "from" lines, subject lines, and pre-headers is challenging for even the savviest marketers. I'll offer tips in this post.
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Marketing & Advertising
2020 Holiday Shopping Is a Tale of 2 Consumers
September 17, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Covid-19 has throttled the U.S. economy, dropping the nation's gross domestic product 31.7 percent in the second quarter of the year. The economic effect, however, has impacted folks differently.
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Marketing & Advertising
Privacy Changes on Apple Devices, Chrome Will Impact Targeted Advertising
September 14, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Privacy-related changes impacting Apple mobile devices and Google's Chrome browser will make it more difficult for businesses to target advertising at specific customers across platforms, applications, and devices. At issue are two separate technologies that are connected because of their privacy implications.
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Google Ads
Using Google Analytics to Optimize Google Ads
September 13, 2020 • Morgan Jones
The Google Ads reporting suite in Google Analytics is essential for advertisers looking to drive profitable sales. I'll explain the setup and analysis process in this post. Before you can view Google Ads reports in Google Analytics, complete a couple of steps.
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Google Ads
4 More Google Ads Scripts to Automate Tasks, Save Time
September 6, 2020 • Matthew Umbro
Google Ads scripts automate routine tasks. Last fall, I shared three such scripts that are helpful to me. In this post, I'll address four additional Google Ads scripts that automate tasks and save time.
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Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for October 2020
September 3, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Content marketing can help connect with new customers or deepen relationships with existing ones. But some businesses struggle to find topics to address. The good news is that opportunities abound in October 2020, when a company could cover National Taco Day, raise cybersecurity awareness, profile customers, provide a brief history of products, or identify Halloween do-it-yourself projects.
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Marketing & Advertising
Using Instagram Video for Ecommerce
August 30, 2020 • Kaleena Stroud
Since it launched Stories in 2016 and TV in June 2018, Instagram has positioned itself as a destination for consuming videos. Instagram's "Reels," which mimics TikTok, follows that trend. In this post, I'll address options for posting videos on Instagram to drive awareness and sales for your ecommerce company.
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Google Ads
What Is Performance Marketing?
August 26, 2020 • Armando Roggio
With performance marketing, businesses pay only when they get results. While it doesn't necessarily guarantee a good return on investment, performance marketing is often a contributor to success for ecommerce merchants.
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Marketing & Advertising
OTT Ads Are an Opportunity for Established Retailers
August 25, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Streaming commercials — which are called over-the-top (OTT) ads because most cable and streaming boxes used to sit on top of televisions — can provide a level of audience targeting that is similar to search engine marketing, social media advertising, and affiliate marketing.
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Marketing & Advertising
Live Streaming Can Drive Affiliate Revenue
August 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Live streaming is a popular way to sell products in 2020, thanks, in part, to how the pandemic has impacted retailing. But within this broader trend, at least a few entrepreneurs are finding a new niche promoting products to social media friends and followers.
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Email & Text Marketing
2020 Holiday Email Marketing Starts Early
August 18, 2020 • Carolyn Nye
With the fluid retail environment surrounding Covid-19, protocols and expectations change daily. According to Coresight Research, a consulting firm, 23 percent of U.S. consumers plan to start 2020 holiday shopping earlier than in prior years. Ecommerce merchants should plan holiday marketing now.
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Email & Text Marketing
13 Robust Newsletter Plugins for WordPress
August 10, 2020 • Sig Ueland
WordPress is a highly customizable content management system. With the right plugins, it can be a robust email marketing platform to create a newsletter and build a list of subscribers. Here is a list of newsletter plugins for WordPress.
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Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for September 2020
August 6, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and promoting articles, podcasts, and videos with the intent of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. Here are five content marketing ideas your business can try in September 2020.
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Google Ads
‘Buy On Google’ Opens to All Merchants
August 5, 2020 • Matthew Umbro
Google Shopping has made its second significant change in the last few months. The first change was implementing free Google Shopping listings. The second is opening the “Buy on Google” program for all merchants, commission-free.
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Email & Text Marketing
1 Million Email Subscribers ‘Fricking Hard,’ Says TheHustle.co Founder
July 31, 2020 • Eric Bandholz
I asked Sam Parr, the founder of The Hustle, an email newsletter with curated business and technology news, how he has grown his list to over 1 million subscribers. "It's fricking hard," he told me.
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Content Marketing
Inject New Life into Old Content
July 30, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Content marketing is a long game. A business must publish regularly over an extended period. This inevitably means that some of the content created will get old or outdated. Fortunately, a marketer can inject new life into old content, making it valuable again.
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Social Media
8 Ways to Drive Product Sales on Instagram
July 29, 2020 • Kaleena Stroud
More than 130 million users tap on an Instagram shopping post at least monthly. That activity, combined with new shopping features, confirms that Instagram is quickly turning into one of the largest mobile shopping platforms. In this post, I'll review the top avenues for getting your products in front of an Instagram audience.
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Content Marketing
The Hero-Hub-Help Content Marketing Strategy
July 27, 2020 • Armando Roggio
A content marketing strategy should identify what to publish and when to publish it. When a content marketing goal includes growing an engaged audience, YouTube's venerable hero-hub-help framework has much to offer.
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Google Ads
Understanding ‘Explanations’ in Google Ads
July 26, 2020 • Robert Brady
You may have noticed blue, hyperlinked performance stats recently in your Google Ads interface. This is a new feature called "explanations." In this post, I’ll explain explanations and how they can improve results.
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Marketing & Advertising
Live Streaming Connects with Pandemic-driven Consumers
July 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses can use live streaming to sell like QVC and HSN, introducing and demonstrating products as well as providing helpful content. And deploying live streaming now can take advantage of consumers' new, pandemic-driven buying habits.
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Email & Text Marketing
4 High-converting Email Segments for Ecommerce
July 16, 2020 • Carolyn Nye
Ecommerce has experienced incredible changes in the past few months. Consumers who had not embraced online retail are now forced to adopt it. Email segmentation can marketers reach these new buyers by improving relevancy. In this post, I'll describe the most effective ways to segment an email list for ecommerce.
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Google Ads
3 Ways to Scale Ecommerce with Data
July 9, 2020 • Anna Kayfitz
Scaling an ecommerce business requires insights into the market, consumers, and products. In this post, I'll address each aspect and how data can help.
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Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for August 2020
July 2, 2020 • Armando Roggio
Content may well be one of the most powerful forms of modern marketing. When a business creates content, publishes that content, and then promotes it, it has the potential to attract, engage, and keep customers. What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can use in August 2020.
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Google Ads
The Anatomy of a Text Ad
June 30, 2020 • Matthew Umbro
Google and Microsoft advertisers have had to rethink quality copy with the format of expanded text ads and responsive search ads. But the principles of the copy are the same for all pay-per-click ads: include the searcher's query, the product's value propositions, and a clear call-to-action.