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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
  • 5 Content Marketing Ideas for April 2018 Content Marketing

    5 Content Marketing Ideas for April 2018

    March 4, 2018 •

    Need inspiration for your company's April content marketing? Write about baseball, American filmmaking, holidays, or springtime activities and shopping. Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and distributing articles, videos, podcasts, or even graphics with the aim of attracting, engaging, and retaining an audience of customers and potential customers. It is marketing based on reciprocity.

  • Step-by-step PPC Testing Strategy for Any Advertiser Google Ads

    Step-by-step PPC Testing Strategy for Any Advertiser

    February 28, 2018 •

    Ad copy is often the first interaction a consumer has with a business. For AdWords and Bing Ads, advertisers have 30 characters in Headline 1, 30 characters in Headline 2,

  • Facebook Product Feed Ads: Not Just for Remarketing Social Media

    Facebook Product Feed Ads: Not Just for Remarketing

    February 26, 2018 •

    Product feed ads for remarketing are seemingly everywhere on Facebook. And that makes sense because if a merchant can show a potential customer the exact product she viewed or added to the cart, why wouldn’t it? It’s a no-brainer, which is why it’s time to set up those ads if you haven't already. However, while product feed ads are good for remarketing, they also can be compelling prospecting tools.

  • A Brief Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Ecommerce Marketing & Advertising

    A Brief Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Ecommerce

    February 21, 2018 •

    Affiliate marketing is a promotional model that connects merchants with independent marketers who are willing to invest time and money to sell a merchant's products. Put another way, affiliate marketing connects a business that has a product to sell with a marketer who can sell it. Affiliate marketing is performance based. Thus advertisers only pay when affiliates deliver a specified customer action. In the ecommerce context, this action is typically an online purchase, which makes affiliate marketing very cost effective.

  • Does 'AMP for Email' Impact Ecommerce? Email & Text Marketing

    Does ‘AMP for Email’ Impact Ecommerce?

    February 20, 2018 •

    Google just introduced "AMP for Email" and announced plans to include it Gmail later this year. In this post, I will explain AMP for Email and its potential impact on email marketing for merchants. "Accelerated Mobile Pages" is an open-source initiative to improve load times for mobile pages. AMP's popularity has increased considerably during the past few years.

  • 5 Writing Tools to Improve Grammar, Readability Content Marketing

    5 Writing Tools to Improve Grammar, Readability

    February 19, 2018 •

    If you never understood grammar in school, or if you learned English as a second or third language, you may be looking for a software tool to help. In this post, I'll address the pros and cons of using automated writing tools.  I'll also list three popular grammar checkers and two readability raters.

  • Proofreading Pitfalls That Trip Up Even Watchful Wordsmiths Content Marketing

    Proofreading Pitfalls That Trip Up Even Watchful Wordsmiths

    February 13, 2018 •

    Shoppers are taken aback when they spot a typo on a website that seems to them obviously careless or ridiculous. In some instances, it’s not habitual sloppiness or lack of effort leading to the errors. Instead, certain situations crop up where even meticulous writers or editors find it tough to catch mistakes. By keeping an eye out for these glitch generators, you can keep website visitors focused shopping. Here are the seven situations most likely to cause hard-to-catch typos.

  • 13 Social Media Plugins for WordPress Social Media

    13 Social Media Plugins for WordPress

    February 12, 2018 •

    Here is a list of social media plugins for WordPress. There are sharing plugins to connect your website to a wide selection of social networks. There are also plugins with specific features, such as a social locker and a social metrics dashboard. Most of these plugins are free, though many have premium plans.

  • The State of Social Advertising and Tracking Social Media

    The State of Social Advertising and Tracking

    February 9, 2018 •

    What a year 2017 was for social advertising and tracking. What stayed the same, what’s new, and what is on the horizon? Let’s get into it. UTM links are still crucial to understanding ad performance. We may never move beyond UTM tags, or any query parameter tracking for that matter. The reason is simple.

  • Creating Dynamic Ads in Facebook Google Ads

    Creating Dynamic Ads on Facebook

    February 7, 2018 •

    In "Using AdWords’ New ‘Responsive Ads’ Format," my article from February 2017, I explained how AdWords allows advertisers to insert ad content on the fly, such as a logo, images, text, and the business name. It's a cool feature for advertisers short on time and design resources. In keeping with the theme, in this post I'll address Facebook, the other player in the online advertising duopoly

  • 5 Content Marketing Ideas for March 2018 Content Marketing

    5 Content Marketing Ideas for March 2018

    February 4, 2018 •

    March is prime time for information about nutrition, success, humor, and being outside. So why not create seasonal content that will help your business build customer relationships and make sales? Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and distributing articles, podcasts, or videos with the aim of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. It works on the principle of reciprocity — exchanging things for mutual benefit.

  • 12 New Social Media Tools for 2018 Social Media

    12 New Social Media Tools for 2018

    January 29, 2018 •

    Improve your social media marketing this year with a slew of new tools. Create content to promote your brand, engage with customers, and track your success. Here is a list of new social media tools for 2018. There are tools to create infographics, stories, contests, and video and audio elements. There are also tools to communicate with customers, edit links on social media, and even purchase branded content from creators.

  • 4 Common Methods to Personalize Email Marketing Email & Text Marketing

    4 Common Methods to Personalize Email Marketing

    January 18, 2018 •

    Personalizing an email marketing program can greatly increase opens and clicks. But a quick look at my inbox reveals that very few retailers are doing it effectively. Much of the success of any marketing effort can be boiled down to making the message relevant to individuals. In this post, I'll review four common methods to personalize email, to encourage conversions.

  • Will Customer Profiles Replace Marketing Personas? Marketing & Advertising

    Will Customer Profiles Replace Marketing Personas?

    January 15, 2018 •

    Emerging technologies make it possible to move segmentation and personalization models beyond marketing personas to distinct, individual customer profiles. The ability to collect customer information — and organize it (i.e., big data) and draw insights from it (i.e., machine learning) — makes it possible for marketers to evolve. This evolution from buyer personas to individual profiles can provide superior personalization and an enhanced experience for shoppers.

  • Testing Pay-per-click Ad Copy Requires Human Intuition Google Ads

    Testing Pay-per-click Ad Copy Requires Human Intuition

    January 12, 2018 •

    My first step in setting up a new AdWords campaign is to test the ad copy. AdWords has long recommended running three or more ads in each ad group. It’s an industry practice to test new messaging. The most common protocol for testing ad copy in a single ad group uses the following pattern.

  • Which Ad Channel Is Right for Your Consumer Brand? Marketing & Advertising

    Facebook, Google, Amazon: Which Ad Channel Is Right for Your Brand?

    January 11, 2018 •

    Consumer brands can advertise to prospects on so many channels. There are seemingly countless options for targeting and for creative copy. Facebook and Google have long been the dominant consumer advertising channels. Shoppers use both of these platforms to discover and research products. But a third option, Amazon, is gaining ad share.

  • 5 Content Marketing Ideas for February 2018 Content Marketing

    5 Content Marketing Ideas for February 2018

    January 3, 2018 •

    Valentine's Day dominates the retail calendar in February, driving more than $18 billion in consumer purchases in the United States alone, including, by some accounts, $5.4 billion in ecommerce sales. Valentine's Day spending often includes dinner out, movie tickets, and flowers. But there is still plenty of opportunity for online retailers. The challenge is in how to attract those purchases. One solution is content marketing.

  • 10 Exceptional Digital Marketing Campaigns in 2017 Marketing & Advertising

    10 Exceptional Digital Marketing Campaigns in 2017

    January 2, 2018 •

    Looking back at the year’s best marketing campaigns can generate ideas for your own upcoming marketing efforts. Here is a list of 10 outstanding digital marketing campaigns from 2017. The campaigns include search hacking, viral retweets and replies, user-generated content on Instagram, Google hacking, success in failure, fake ads, and true.

  • Live Streaming Can Promote Ecommerce Products Marketing & Advertising

    Live Streaming Can Promote Ecommerce Products

    January 2, 2018 •

    From demonstrating intricate products in real-time to broadcasting webinars and conferences, live streaming is a natural progression of an ecommerce business's video marketing. It is an important tool for engaging customers. The technology behind live streaming is not necessarily new.

  • 3 Email Tactics to Make Life Easier for Shoppers Email & Text Marketing

    3 Email Tactics to Make Life Easier for Shoppers

    December 19, 2017 •

    As consumers progress through life stages, their shopping priorities change. A recent college graduate is likely concerned with price. A seasoned corporate executive may focus on quality. The visitors to ...

  • AdWords 3 Ways to Find Negative Keywords Google Ads

    AdWords: 3 Ways to Find Negative Keywords

    December 12, 2017 •

    Inside every AdWords account there is a report that shows the exact words (a “query”) that searchers typed into Google before clicking on a specific ad. It’s called the Search ...

  • 5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2018 Content Marketing

    5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2018

    December 11, 2017 •

    The beginning of a year represents new opportunities for content marketers. In January, help potential customers get started on their new hobbies and activities, celebrate one of the greatest Americans,

  • Affiliate Marketing Report Card WP Engine Influencers & Affiliates

    Affiliate Marketing Report Card: WP Engine

    December 4, 2017 •

    This installment of “Affiliate Marketing Report Card” reviews WP Engine, a global WordPress hosting platform. WP Engine has a powerhouse affiliate program listed at number 38 in the ShareASale Top ...

  • 5 Content Marketing Trends to Try in 2018 Content Marketing

    5 Content Marketing Trends to Try in 2018

    November 29, 2017 •

    The line, if there is one, between content marketing and publishing will continue to blur in 2018, as businesses produce high-quality articles, books, and broadcasts to attract, engage, and retain ...

  • AdWords: Navigating the New ‘Opportunities’ Tab Google Ads

    AdWords: Navigating the New ‘Opportunities’ Tab

    November 21, 2017 •

    If you’re an AdWords advertiser, you likely know about the new AdWords’ experience. Google sent emails to all users and has posted reminders throughout the legacy interface. Google will discontinue ...

  • Coupon Codes Can Measure Ecommerce Marketing Results Marketing & Advertising

    Coupon Codes Can Measure Ecommerce Marketing Results

    November 20, 2017 •

    Coupon or discount codes your customers enter during the ecommerce checkout process can help your business monitor and measure marketing and advertising effectiveness and make better promotional decisions. For a professional ...

  • Nurture Email Subscribers to Drive Downstream Conversions Email & Text Marketing

    Nurture Email Subscribers to Drive Downstream Conversions

    November 17, 2017 •

    Converting a prospect into a customer is a process. It can take time and multiple touch points. Prospects that are email subscribers are at various stages in their lifecycle with ...

  • 5 Unconventional Black Friday Marketing Tactics, for Ecommerce Marketing & Advertising

    5 Unconventional Black Friday Marketing Tactics, for Ecommerce

    November 10, 2017 •

    The competition for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales is stiff. Online sellers — from the smallest garaged-based startup right up through Amazon — are sending email messages, buying pay-per-click ...

  • Seasonal Copy Perks Up Promotions and Triggers Purchases Content Marketing

    Seasonal Copy Perks Up Promotions and Triggers Purchases

    November 6, 2017 •

    A few years ago, I started to read a four-page flyer from the hip grocery chain Trader Joe’s and could not stop. I was astounded at its creativity. It promoted ...

  • 5 Content Marketing Ideas for December 2017 Content Marketing

    5 Content Marketing Ideas for December 2017

    November 5, 2017 •

    From curated wish lists to telling your company’s story, December 2017 offers content marketers many opportunities to connect with shoppers. Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and distributing articles,

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