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-
Google Ads
Report: Internet Trends Favor Amazon, Mobile, Social
June 5, 2018 • Robert Brady
On May 30, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm, delivered her “Internet Trends 2018” report at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
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Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for July 2018
June 4, 2018 • Armando Roggio
Need content marketing ideas to fuel your ecommerce business in July 2018? Consider being nice to New Jersey, introducing a little pandemonium, or focusing on customers and products. Content marketing is ...
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Social Media
Navigating Changes to Facebook Ads
May 27, 2018 • Michael Stancil
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook is running its own advertising campaign. The ads proclaim how terrible Facebook was, how it compromised your data, and how it’s ...
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Email & Text Marketing
5 Ways to Make a Good Email Great
May 18, 2018 • Carolyn Nye
Consumers are inundated with marketing emails. The challenge for ecommerce merchants is to craft subject lines and body content that are relevant to recipients, who typically scan their inboxes to ...
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Marketing & Advertising
Is Text Messaging a Game-changer for Ecommerce?
May 17, 2018 • Armando Roggio
Mobile devices are ubiquitous. I don't go anywhere without mine, and I bet you have a smartphone with you now. But are you doing everything you can to connect with shoppers on mobile? According to a survey from Quiq, a provider of chat software, 66 percent of consumer-respondents ranked mobile messaging as their preferred channel for contacting a company. I recently spoke with Chris Albro, head of enterprise sales for Quiq.
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Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for June 2018
May 6, 2018 • Armando Roggio
The Stanley Cup playoffs, summertime weddings, Father’s Day, and old fishing stories provide content marketers with interesting topics to cover in June 2018. Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing,
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Social Media
The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing
May 5, 2018 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.
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Marketing & Advertising
18 Mother’s Day Marketing Ideas for Lifestyle and Fashion Merchants
May 4, 2018 • Viktoria Kanevsky
Mother’s Day can generate substantial revenue for fashion and lifestyle merchants. In this post, I’ll offer 18 tactics and strategies to spur ecommerce sales during this important shopping holiday. Products and ...
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Google Ads
AdWords Smart Bidding: Dos and Don’ts
May 1, 2018 • Robert Brady
"Smart Bidding" is the umbrella term in AdWords for automated bid strategies. Smart bids can vary — from targeting page placement to outranking a competitor. There are seven Smart Bidding options. In this post, I'll address each one.
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Social Media
Getting Reacquainted with LinkedIn Ads
April 19, 2018 • Michael Stancil
Advertising on LinkedIn has come a long way. But the platform still isn’t getting the attention it deserves. Until now. With Facebook’s data controversy and the renewed concerns about online privacy, advertisers ...
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Marketing & Advertising
Upgrading an AdWords Landing Page Experience
April 17, 2018 • Armando Roggio
The web page that potential customers see when they click on a Google AdWords ad could be affecting how much an ecommerce business pays per click and where it appears in search results. Google AdWords Landing Page Experience is a measurement of how well an ad's landing page serves potential customers. It describes whether Google believes the landing page is likely to meet user expectations.
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Email & Text Marketing
15 Essential Elements of Every Marketing Email
April 13, 2018 • Carolyn Nye
A timely email promotion is an easy and cost-efficient way to kick-start sales. But in the haste of a tight turnaround or deadline, it’s easy to make email composing mistakes, to miss crucial elements or even errors and typos. In this post, I'll offer a checklist of 15 items that every marketing email should have. Print it and use it for your email deployments.
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Content Marketing
7 Key Details to Enhance an Ecommerce Blog
April 12, 2018 • Marcia Yudkin
Many ecommerce merchants publish a blog. But they don’t always assess its overall effectiveness. Has it boosted sales? Does it generate reader engagement? In this post, I’ll review a strategy for ...
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Marketing & Advertising
How to Write Text Ads in AdWords, for Ecommerce
April 12, 2018 • Armando Roggio
AdWords, Google’s advertising platform, is the engine driving online sales for many small and mid-sized ecommerce operations. Sellers that want to get the most from text ads in AdWords should ...
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Marketing & Advertising
How to Create Video Ads That Sell
April 9, 2018 • Armando Roggio
Direct response video ads on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and similar platforms have the potential to drive shoppers to your ecommerce site and help your company sell more. While the creative substance ...
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Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for May 2018
April 5, 2018 • Armando Roggio
Whether your business launches a new video series, composes a post about filmmaker Wes Anderson, or features any of the month’s many holidays, there is no shortage of content marketing ...
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Marketing & Advertising
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Merchant Voice
Newsletter frustrations result in new target audience
March 27, 2018 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Last month I noticed declining subscriptions across my three email newsletters. To offset the reduction, I decided to revise my signup popup box. I've used popup discount offers on other retailers’ websites. So I decided to do the same on mine: offering a discount to new email subscribers. I asked my developer to revise my existing newsletter popups on both websites — My Wedding Décor and My Event Décor — to include a 15 percent discount for subscribers’ first orders.
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Social Media
High-performing Facebook Ad Placements (in 4 Steps)
March 23, 2018 • Michael Stancil
In 2018, Facebook ads can appear on Facebook itself, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and the Audience Network. Facebook is no longer a one-option platform. Advertisers must now keep a close eye on how their ads render on all platforms. Otherwise, you might be wasting money. Consider Instagram and Messenger, for example.
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Email & Text Marketing
How Does Your Email Marketing Program Stack Up?
March 20, 2018 • Carolyn Nye
Email is the workhorse of direct marketing. The basics have remained consistent for years. Best practices from 10 years ago are still relevant. But email marketing is evolving. Segmentation, personalization, mobile:
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Marketing & Advertising
For Ecommerce, Better to Use Search Ads or Display?
March 19, 2018 • Armando Roggio
For online sellers, digital advertising is not a choice between search ads or display ads, but rather understanding how each of these tools can help generate sales. The term "search advertising" describes placing ads on a search engine results page. Search ads target specific keywords and seek to capture potential customers intent on finding some piece of information or, perhaps, finding a product.
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Social Media
For Digital Ads, Minimal Text Converts the Best
March 9, 2018 • Michael Stancil
When it comes to digital advertising, less is more. Ad platforms such as Google AdWords, Twitter, and Facebook have character limits. And that's good. No matter how complicated your product or how compelling your offer, brevity nearly always produces more conversions, in my experience.
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Content Marketing
Content Marketing Can Drive Long-tail SEO
March 5, 2018 • Armando Roggio
A robust content marketing campaign may attract shoppers searching on long-tail keyword phrases, which could generate additional sales. The term “long tail” describes statistical distributions where there are many points, if ...
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Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for April 2018
March 4, 2018 • Armando Roggio
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.
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Google Ads
Step-by-step PPC Testing Strategy for Any Advertiser
February 28, 2018 • Robert Brady
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,
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Social Media
Facebook Product Feed Ads: Not Just for Remarketing
February 26, 2018 • Michael Stancil
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.
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Marketing & Advertising
A Brief Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Ecommerce
February 21, 2018 • Armando Roggio
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.
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Email & Text Marketing
Does ‘AMP for Email’ Impact Ecommerce?
February 20, 2018 • Carolyn Nye
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.
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Content Marketing
Proofreading Pitfalls That Trip Up Even Watchful Wordsmiths
February 13, 2018 • Marcia Yudkin
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.
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Social Media
13 Social Media Plugins for WordPress
February 12, 2018 • Sig Ueland
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.
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Social Media
The State of Social Advertising and Tracking
February 9, 2018 • Michael Stancil
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.
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