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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
  • 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...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Will Gmail’s New Tab Layout Affect Ecommerce Merchants?

    June 17, 2013 •

    Consumers have many options for email services. The top three providers are Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail, which recently changed to Outlook. Occasionally these services make changes that can impact ecommerce email programs. The changes are often dynamic — changing algorithms, rules, and ...

  • Social Media

    How to Use Klout for Business

    June 12, 2013 •

    Klout is a popular influence measurement platform that ranks people based on their prominence in social media. Klout defines influence as the ability to drive an action related to someone's comments, likes, tweets and retweets. People use Klout to understand how influential they are a...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Implementing Google’s New Data Feed Specifications

    June 11, 2013 •

    Google updated its data feed specifications in early May, requiring online merchants who sell through AdWords or Product Listing Ads to include additional product attributes in the data they send Google. This article will address commonly asked questions on Google's new data feed requi...

  • Social Media

    How to Set Up a LinkedIn Company Page

    June 10, 2013 •

    A LinkedIn Company Page serves as a hub where members can learn more about your company and its products and services. This is the primary way for a company to have a presence in LinkedIn. Three basic steps are involved in setting up a Company Page: Create a company profile; Add a "...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    The Internship: Google Film Review, for Marketers

    June 7, 2013 •

    Thanks to a special sneak preview of The Internship last night — hosted by the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association — I was able to view the new film that was set at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley, a.k.a. the "Googleplex." I was particularly interested to see whether the film revealed anything new or noteworthy about Google from an Internet marketing perspective.

  • Google Ads

    PPC: How to Calculate Maximum Bid per Click

    June 6, 2013 •

    "Customer Lifetime Value" is a critical metric that enables you to optimize the long-term profitability of your pay-per-click advertising. CLV answers the simple yet powerful question, "How much is a new customer worth over the long-term?" It’s an important concept that almost every l...

  • Social Media

    Using Twitter Lists to Manage Followers

    June 5, 2013 •

    Twitter recently lifted the limits on its lists feature. Users can now create up to 1,000 lists that each contains up to 5,000 accounts. Previously the cap was set at 20 with no more than 500 accounts in each list. Though it's unlikely that smaller ecommerce merchants would ever need ...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email Still Effective Marketing Tool?

    June 5, 2013 •

    At a time when social media seems to be the only thing people talk about, email is still an effective ecommerce marketing tool. But merchants will have to alter how they use it if they wish to keep up with changes in how people access email messages. Are People Still Reading Email? Th...

  • Social Media

    10 Reasons to Consider Tumblr for Ecommerce Blogging

    June 3, 2013 •

    Tumblr is a fast growing social blogging platform suited to the creation of short form, multimedia content. It became so popular that Yahoo! just acquired the company for $1.1 billion. Tumblr started six years ago as a place for creators to showcase their work and it retains that eth...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 2: Developing Creative

    May 30, 2013 •

    Editor's Note: This is "Part 2" of a three-part series on launching a new affiliate marketing program. "Part 1" we published previously. There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking platforms, (b) ...

  • Social Media

    Pinterest Introduces ‘Rich Pins’ for Products

    May 29, 2013 •

    Pinterest recently introduced a new feature called "Rich Pins" that should be especially helpful to merchants. It allows companies to include key information such as pricing, product availability, and where to buy to pinned items. The information can be updated daily. Rich Pins are also...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Promoted Post Generates Sales, Traffic

    May 28, 2013 •

    Although recent studies demonstrate that social media sites like Facebook work best to augment other ecommerce marketing campaigns, anecdotal data from a small Facebook ad test demonstrated that the promotion could boost both direct traffic and sales. “In its most recent [Ecommerce Qua...

  • Social Media

    Don’t Focus on Social Media Traffic

    May 24, 2013 •

    New data from a leading marketing optimization firm indicates that social media is not a significant traffic driver for online merchants, but traffic may not be the only indicator of success for social media marketing. Social media represented about 1.55 percent of traffic to ecommerce...

  • Social Media

    Google’s Purchase Path Tool Helps Merchants View All Marketing Channels

    May 22, 2013 •

    The path customers take before making a purchase has become more complex due to social media. Very often, they perform extensive online research that includes reading ratings and reviews, seeking advice on social networks from friends, watching product videos, and looking at competing p...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Good, Bad Email Design for Ecommerce Merchants

    May 20, 2013 •

    Email design has changed over the years. It has evolved from basic text, to beautiful design with great images, to hybrids that balance images and text. With the majority of shoppers previewing or reading emails on their smartphones, many ecommerce merchants wonder what the best practic...

  • Google Ads

    How to Sell on Marketplaces without Harming your Store’s Brand

    May 16, 2013 •

    In "Third-Party Marketplaces: What Merchants Should Know" and "Marketplaces: How to Sell More in 2013," we addressed tactics — pro and con — for using marketplaces. Some merchants avoid marketplaces, believing they compete with their stores' brands. Others enjoy the additional revenu...

  • Social Media

    Instagram’s ‘Photos of You’ New Sharing Feature

    May 15, 2013 •

    Popular photo-sharing app Instagram recently introduced a new sharing feature called "Photos of You," which allows users to tag other user accounts in pictures they take. For example, if a user snaps a photo of a group of friends, he or she can tag each person in the image, similar to...

  • Social Media

    Using Vine Videos for your Ecommerce Business

    May 8, 2013 •

    Vine is a new iOS app that allows users to record six-second, looping videos — called "vines" — on their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads. The videos can then be shared with followers on Twitter and Facebook. Users can shoot very short clips, then edit them together to create stop-motion...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Ecommerce Search Marketing Evolves

    May 3, 2013 •

    A few years ago, small ecommerce business owners invested a good part of their marketing budgets on search engine optimization. Their goal was typically to obtain the highest possible search rankings, to capture as much organic traffic as possible. Many businesses used that as their cor...

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