Category

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
  • West Elm on Pinterest Social Media

    10 Ways to Use Pinterest for your Ecommerce Business

    August 14, 2013 •

    Social networking sites have become more visual. This is especially the case with Pinterest. The site, which consists of images and videos arranged in a bulletin board style layout, has become one of the largest social networks. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which rely on content from ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Multichannel Marketing Key for Reaching Online Shoppers

    August 14, 2013 •

    Many ecommerce merchants are too reliant on Google organic search referrals. Some merchants depend on Google for 70 percent or more of their traffic. About five years ago that was fine, since that was where most shoppers began their shopping search. Today, this is simply not the case. ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    3 Christmas Ecommerce Marketing Strategies

    August 13, 2013 •

    More than eight out of ten Christmas-season shoppers will look for gifts and gift ideas online before making a purchase, creating a significant opportunity for Internet retailers. But to cash in on Christmas sales, many merchants need to begin executing coordinated marketing campaigns n...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Using Forums to Generate New Business

    August 12, 2013 •

    As a small business owner, I am always looking for channels to reach a new audience. One way to do this is via established forums. Forums help many small businesses to profitably grow revenue. In Nielsen’s recent “Global Survey of Product Purchase Sentiment” PDF, web-based forums tied ...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Text Messaging Effective for Retailers

    August 9, 2013 •

    Short message service communications — text messaging — may help online retailers deliver better customer service and represent an important marketing opportunity. Worldwide there are more than 4.3 billion SMS-enabled mobile devices and in the U.S. approximately 96 percent of smartphon...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    4 AdWords Settings that Work Against You

    August 9, 2013 •

    Pay-per-click advertising is a good way for companies to grow their businesses. Whether they are selling products online or trying to generate leads for services, it is cost effective and typically generates a positive return on investment. Google AdWords is the leader in paid search advertising, with an 80 percent market share in the U.S. While there are other PPC platforms, advertisers seeking maximum reach should include Google AdWords in their PPC marketing mix.

  • Social Media

    Facebook Announces Updates to Algorithm; Advice for Merchants

    August 8, 2013 •

    In a press event on August 6, Facebook revealed how it determines which content gets displayed in users' News Feeds and announced changes to its algorithm. The event was held in response to criticism from both the media and Facebook users about the lack of visibility surrounding how t...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Prepare in August for Holiday Ecommerce Sales

    August 7, 2013 •

    As we approach the end of summer, ecommerce merchants should start preparing for the fall selling season. It's time to identify new products, inventory and supplier issues, and pricing competition. Importantly, start planning seasonal promotions: Labor Day, Halloween, Veterans Day, Than...

  • Google Ads

    5 Pay-per-click Holiday Tasks to Do Now

    August 6, 2013 •

    The beginning of the holiday season is right around the corner. It is often the busiest and most profitable period of the year for ecommerce merchants. Now is the time to plan your holiday pay-per-click advertising campaigns. There are many pay-per-click initiatives that merchants can...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Launches New Version of Insights

    August 6, 2013 •

    Facebook just launched a new version of Insights, its analytics engine. One new addition is comparative, scorecard-style reports that enable businesses to evaluate positive and negative metrics together. Also, some elements in Insights have been renamed and the overall structure has ...

  • Social Media

    How to Target Facebook Ads to your Audience

    August 5, 2013 •

    One of the benefits of advertising on Facebook is its ability to target ads. Options include location, age, gender, interests, broad-range categories, and connections. This article outlines the different options in terms of their applicability and usefulness. Location Location incl...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Affiliate Marketing: How to Recruit Bloggers

    August 1, 2013 •

    Bloggers are often the most sought-after affiliates in the affiliate marketing industry. This is because bloggers have unique content and targeted, loyal audiences, which drives solid conversion rates and new customers. According to statistics compiled by BlogHer, a publishing network o...

  • Social Media

    LinkedIn Launches Sponsored Update Advertising Program

    July 31, 2013 •

    LinkedIn's new Sponsored Updates is a form of advertising that resembles Facebook Page Sponsored Posts. Sponsored Updates are paid Company Page status updates that, according to LinkedIn, appear in members' home page news feeds along with organic posts. Sponsored Updates can be seen o...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    How to Write an Email Newsletter in 90 Minutes

    July 29, 2013 •

    Writing a newsletter is one of the most difficult marketing stumbling blocks for a small business owner. You know it’s a task worth doing, but every week or month the email newsletter deadline rolls around and you think, “What I am going to say in the newsletter?”

  • Email & Text Marketing

    New Gmail Tabs Impact Email Marketing, Expert Says

    July 26, 2013 •

    MailChimp, a popular email marketing solutions provider, says that the new Gmail tabs that are intended to help users clean up their inboxes have negatively impacted open rates for email marketing campaigns, but that there is no need to panic. Google began introducing its new tabbed Gm...

  • Social Media

    Create a Social Hub for your Ecommerce Site

    July 24, 2013 •

    The number of social networks in which merchants participate is on the rise. In addition to the big three — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — we now have Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and many others. Keeping up with all these from a merchant perspective is difficult enough, b...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email Marketing Dos and Don’ts for Ecommerce Merchants

    July 23, 2013 •

    In "Email Still an Effective Marketing Tool?," we addressed why email marketing is highly efficient, inexpensive, and easy to measure. This is unlike social media marketing, which for smaller merchants is often difficult to manage and track. I used email marketing extensively in my pr...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Using Email to Maintain and Build Site Traffic

    July 18, 2013 •

    When I managed email marketing for a leading ecommerce site, I would receive calls from our IT department almost every Tuesday, asking if I had sent a large email campaign. The trouble was that we were sending too much traffic to the site at once. This was a good problem to have, but we...

  • Social Media

    7 Keys to Facebook’s ‘People Talking About This’

    July 18, 2013 •

    In "10 Ways to Improve EdgeRank on your Facebook Page," my previous post, I covered how Facebook sorts content in users’ News Feeds using its EdgeRank algorithm. This article is a follow-up and covers a metric that closely ties with EdgeRank: "People Talking About This," or PTAT.

  • Social Media

    4 Tips for Better Contest Forms

    July 16, 2013 •

    Contest marketing is a good way to engage potential customers, increase your social media fan base, give folks positive things to say about your store, and collect data that can improve both your business’s bottom line and your customers' online experiences. Consider for a moment just ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Using Content for Ecommerce Marketing

    July 11, 2013 •

    There is a lot of buzz about content marketing. Much of it applies to business-to-business marketers that develop sophisticated lead nurturing campaigns. But content marketing is also important for ecommerce businesses. Many are experienced content marketers and don’t realize it. What...

  • Social Media

    6 Tools to Monitor Social Media Conversations

    July 11, 2013 •

    It is common for consumers to seek recommendations and advice from their peers on social networks, forums, or rating and review sites when considering a purchase. Whether or not you choose to proactively engage in social media, it is important to pay attention because what people say ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    5 Ways to Get More Site Traffic

    July 10, 2013 •

    Online stores need shoppers and getting more potential customers to visit an online retailer’s site is an important part of ecommerce marketing. Many Internet merchants rely primarily on search engine optimization to drive traffic — and spend a lot of time focused on good title tags. T...

  • Google Ads

    4 Lessons from Google’s Dynamic Remarketing Ads

    July 9, 2013 •

    Google recently announced the launch of a sophisticated new ad feature called Dynamic Remarketing. It works much the same as general remarketing, but the ad units showcase products that visitors viewed. If a shopper came to your site and viewed, say, a specific running shoe, you can in...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 3: Promotion

    July 4, 2013 •

    There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking platforms, (b) implementing and testing the tracking code, (c) developing your creative inventory, and (d) promoting your newly-launched program.

  • Social Media

    Podcasting: Getting Started

    July 3, 2013 •

    One form of marketing communication that gets overlooked is podcasting. Podcasts offer several benefits, not the least of which is portability. You can listen to podcasts on the go via mobile devices and, unlike video, podcasts can run in the background while you participate in other a...

  • Social Media

    8 Twitter Hashtag Tracking Tools

    June 27, 2013 •

    Twitter hashtags are a way to organize tweets into topical groups. Tools are available that make it easy to follow hashtag-related conversations, start hashtag chats, and analyze data around their ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    3 Social Shopping Sites for Merchants to Consider

    June 26, 2013 •

    The power of community and key influencers are changing the way we do business. The likelihood of purchasing a product that is recommended by a friend is much higher than a product without such a recommendation. Consumers are now more comfortable with recommendations from those with sim...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Cart-abandonment Email Best Practices

    June 25, 2013 •

    An abandoned shopping cart is like a broken promise. For the merchant, there is a lost sale and unclaimed revenue. For the shopper, there is an unfulfilled need or want. Fortunately, a quick series of cart abandonment emails may renew that promise, helping both the customer and the reta...

  • Social Media

    11 Twitter Pointers for Ecommerce Merchants

    June 20, 2013 •

    Twitter is encouraging small businesses to use its service and has created a section on its website and a Twitter channel for that purpose. There are good reasons for ecommerce merchants to use Twitter. It's a place to share real-time information about the products you sell, engage wi...

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