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-
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing Metrics, Part 1: The Basics
February 22, 2015 • Carolyn Nye
Email marketing is cost effective and typically has a high return on investment. But over the years, email marketing has changed. Measuring the performance of email and its impact on incremental revenue can be difficult. In this 2-part series,
-
Email & Text Marketing
Without Email Marketing, You’re Probably Losing Sales
February 16, 2015 • Armando Roggio
When you send a well-done email-marketing message, it is like stepping on the gas pedal in a sports car. Things just start to go. In fact, of all of the ways ...
-
Marketing & Advertising
How to Create a Social Media Strategy
February 16, 2015 • Cathy Qori
Your organization needs a social media presence. One approach is to choose a platform such as Facebook or Twitter and start posting, but this probably won’t be very successful. To be effective, begin by creating a social media strategy. You don’t have to start from scratch. There are plenty of resources available online. Here are some of the most useful.
-
Marketing & Advertising
4 Content Lessons from Leading Blogs, for 2015
February 12, 2015 • Armando Roggio
Content marketing, which seeks to attract site visitors and, ultimately, customers, is one of the most popular trends in marketing. The key is producing interesting, useful, or entertaining articles, images,
-
Social Media
3 New Twitter Ad Features for Ecommerce Merchants
February 10, 2015 • Paul Chaney
Twitter recently launched three new features that extend the platform’s usefulness as a marketing tool for ecommerce merchants. The features are group direct messages, video, and quick promote advertising. Group Direct Messages Twitter now ...
-
Social Media
10 Ways to Use Instagram for Ecommerce Marketing
February 5, 2015 • Paul Chaney
The photo-sharing site Instagram is in a transition phase between personal and business use. Unlike Facebook or Pinterest, for instance, the site offers no business-specific features. That has not stopped retailers ...
-
Google Ads
Pay-per-click Ads: Unlocking the AdWords Dimensions Tab
February 3, 2015 • Robert Brady
The AdWords interface is cluttered and hard to understand. A colleague of mine put it best when she said that AdWords is an enterprise tool. Unless you’re a regular user ...
-
Social Media
18 Pinterest Tools for Businesses
February 2, 2015 • Sig Ueland
Pinterest is the social network for people to discover and share interesting pictures. It’s also a place for businesses to connect with consumers and influential brand advocates through dynamic product ...
-
Social Media
WhatsApp to Change Social Media Marketing?
January 29, 2015 • Samantha Collier
WhatsApp is a mobile messaging app that allows users to communicate via free SMS style messages within the app. It launched in 2009 and gained popularity as a way of ...
-
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for February 2015
January 28, 2015 • Armando Roggio
In February 2015, content marketers can connect with potential customers around holidays like Valentine’s Day or Groundhog Day, via sites like SlideShare, or even with inspirational quotes. Content marketing is essentially ...
-
Social Media
Comparing dlvr.it and Buffer for Content Distribution
January 28, 2015 • Paul Chaney
If you create or curate content on the web, you may want to consider the use of software tools to automate the distribution process. Today, I compare two such tools — dlvr.it ...
-
Influencers & Affiliates
3 Affiliate Tools for Content Marketing
January 27, 2015 • Carolyn Kmet
Banner ads are best used for branding, not to drive clicks. Affiliate marketers realize this. Increasingly, affiliate marketers are relying less on banner ads, and more on their affiliates’ content.
-
Marketing & Advertising
2015 Ecommerce Marketing Checklist
January 20, 2015 • Armando Roggio
In “2014 Ecommerce Marketing Checklist,” I addressed 10 marketing strategies that could help an ecommerce business. If business owners wanted sales to be flat year over year, however, and if ...
-
Email & Text Marketing
4 Email Tactics to Nurture Ecommerce Prospects
January 16, 2015 • Carolyn Nye
Lead nurturing is a business-to-business marketing process to optimize a series of communications with a lead or prospect, to increase sales. The strategy for a successful B2B lead nurturing program ...
-
Email & Text Marketing
12 Email-marketing Twitter Feeds to Follow in 2015
January 15, 2015 • Armando Roggio
Email messages can deliver relevant, actionable, and engaging content directly to shoppers, ultimately improving sales or helping businesses achieve any number of goals. Getting the most from an email-marketing campaign ...
-
Social Media
Do Social Share Buttons Help Ecommerce Conversions?
January 14, 2015 • Paul Chaney
It’s difficult to find a website or ecommerce product page that does not include sharing buttons to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and others. Many Internet users are members of at least ...
-
Email & Text Marketing
6 Triggered Email Strategies for Ecommerce
January 13, 2015 • Armando Roggio
Email marketing is one of the most powerful, sales-driving tools available to ecommerce companies, reaching consumers directly on their mobile smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. Not every email message, however,
-
Email & Text Marketing
5 Clever Email Innovations for 2015 and Beyond
January 9, 2015 • Pamella Neely
Email marketing has a reputation for being dull. When someone says "innovation" we're more likely to think social media or mobile or video. Not email. But email marketing is evolving, and evolving fast. In just the last year or two there are several advances that can take any "dull" email message and make it cutting edge.
-
Social Media
Pros, Cons of Sprout Social for Social Media Management
January 7, 2015 • Paul Chaney
Last week, I addressed the pros and cons of using Hootsuite for social media management. This week, I review another popular tool, Sprout Social. Pros Well-organized dashboard. Of the features Sprout Social offers,
-
Influencers & Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing Events in 2015
January 5, 2015 • Carolyn Kmet
The following is a non-exhaustive list of top events in 2015 for affiliate mangers to consider. Deciding which events to attend will depend on whether your primary goal is to ...
-
Social Media
Review Social Media Channels for 2015
January 5, 2015 • Samantha Collier
This article will address how to review and retool social media marketing for 2015, to improve its effectiveness. 1. Conduct a Channel Audit You can’t retool until you know what you have to work ...
-
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2015
January 4, 2015 • Armando Roggio
In January 2015, ecommerce content marketers can use infographics, animation, videos, podcasts, and national holidays to connect with potential customers. Content marketing is the art and science, if you will, of ...
-
Google Ads
3 PPC Advertising Trends in 2015, for Ecommerce
January 2, 2015 • Robert Brady
The pay-per-click advertising industry is always changing and 2014 was no exception. There were many new features launched in AdWords and Bing Ads as well as on social platforms, such as ...
-
Social Media
Pros, Cons of Hootsuite for Social Media Management
December 30, 2014 • Paul Chaney
Social media management platforms can save time. This is especially the case for companies and individuals that maintain a presence on multiple social sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
-
Social Media
Restart Your Facebook Page Posting Activity in 2015
December 26, 2014 • Paul Chaney
When consumers visit your Facebook business page, they expect to see fresh content. They are much less likely to visit your page a second time if it has grown stale ...
-
Email & Text Marketing
7 Tips for a Powerful Email Call to Action
December 23, 2014 • Pamella Neely
If you could only have two things in an email, they would the subject line and the call to action. I wrote about subject lines a few months back, in "7 Ways to Improve Email Subject Lines (and a Sneaky Way to Test)." But the call to action has been left unexamined until now. So here are seven of the best ways to nail the call to action in your next email campaign, and in all your email campaigns to come.
-
Social Media
6 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2015
December 18, 2014 • Paul Chaney
As we look to 2015, what social media marketing trends are likely to develop? Here are six that online retailers should monitor. 1. Niche Social Networks Will Emerge Mainstream social networks like ...
-
Email & Text Marketing
4 Compelling Holiday Email Campaigns, from Retailers
December 17, 2014 • Carolyn Nye
Once Thanksgiving arrives, the volume of emails increases dramatically. Retailers race to get offers out to eager shoppers. Typically companies that send infrequent emails will increase their volume this time of ...
-
Marketing & Advertising
4 Content Marketing Trends in 2015, for Ecommerce
December 17, 2014 • Armando Roggio
In 2015, content will still be king, and many of the year’s most important marketing trends will be related to how ecommerce marketers use content to boost sales or collect ...
-
Marketing & Advertising
Christmas-is-almost-here Ecommerce Marketing Plan 2014
December 10, 2014 • Armando Roggio
This year’s Christmas shopping season is rapidly drawing to a close. But there are still plenty of “Christmas Is Almost Here” marketing that online retailers can use to boost sales. Black ...