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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
  • Email & Text Marketing

    Using Sales Data to Automate Email Marketing

    February 6, 2013 •

    Customers are the bloodline of any business. For ecommerce businesses, it’s particularly important to focus on creating recurring, loyal customers. This centers on understanding customer sales and shopping data, and using that information to develop profitable, automated email campaigns...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Influencing How Google Displays Your Page Description

    February 5, 2013 •

    The brief preview text that appears below the links to your pages in Google's search results can be influenced by savvy marketers to improve site traffic through engineered meta descriptions. Read on for details.

  • Social Media

    2 Ways to Create Facebook Ads

    February 5, 2013 •

    A number of changes have taken place at Facebook with regard to how businesses use the platform. I will be reporting on these over the next few weeks. In this article, I discuss changes made to Facebook Ads. Recently, Facebook revised its advertising platform to make it easier for bu...

  • Social Media

    Can New Myspace Help Ecommerce Businesses?

    February 2, 2013 •

    Myspace is one social network I thought I would never address again, especially in a business context. The site became the most popular social network in 2005 and surpassed Google as the most visited website in 2006. In later years, use of the site quickly declined due to the growing ...

  • Social Media

    10 Ways Merchants Can Use Google+

    January 30, 2013 •

    The continued growth of Google+, along with an increased understanding of the nature of the platform, has caused many companies to establish a presence there. Google has also positioned Google+ as a channel businesses can use. With that in mind, here are 10 ways you can take advantage...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Affiliate Marketing: Beyond Banner Ads to Drive Traffic

    January 29, 2013 •

    Affiliate marketing extends beyond a standard banner ad. While you should offer your affiliates a solid creative inventory — featuring a wide variety of campaigns and sizes — you should also ensure that you are providing tools for affiliates who use other forms of advertising to drive ...

  • Google Ads

    6 Rules for Pay-per-click Ad Profits

    January 28, 2013 •

    I often hear from merchants that have tried pay-per-click advertising, but it wasn’t profitable for them. So they abandoned it. In my experience, however, many merchants could turn unprofitable campaigns into profitable ones by adopting the six rules that follow. Rule 1: Commit to PPC...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    7 Keys to Ecommerce Blogging Success

    January 22, 2013 •

    Business blogs serve many functions. They can inform consumers of news about your company, highlight upcoming events, promote products and services, or demonstrate expertise and thought-leadership. However, a successful blog requires careful planning. These seven keys will help you be...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Takes on Local Search

    January 17, 2013 •

    Consumers use the Internet to search for local businesses, events, and topics. Google is a major player in local search, but so is Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, YellowPages.com, Foursquare, and other sites. Local search now has a new competitor: Facebook Graph Search. Launched this week, Facebo...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email Marketing: 4 Tips for Sending to Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo!

    January 17, 2013 •

    An email is effective only if it is successfully delivered to the recipient. Moreover, getting the email to the inbox, versus the spam or junk folder, increases the chances of the message being read. Deliverability is a crucial element in the overall success of an email program. It ca...

  • Social Media

    10 Tips for Syndicating Blog Content

    January 16, 2013 •

    Blogging is hard work. It takes much time to research a topic, write copy, and find useful images, videos, and infographics. But writing a post is only the first step. For ...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Don’t Forget Email Marketing; 13 Reasons

    January 11, 2013 •

    With all the focus on social media, it seems that email marketing is almost an afterthought for many companies. Email may not be trendy, but it’s cheap, easy to measure, and easy to target. It's a good place to do testing, it keeps your brand visible, and at the end of the day it delive...

  • Social Media

    8 Instagram Photo-Sharing Alternatives

    January 8, 2013 •

    Photo-sharing site Instagram created a controversy recently when it proposed a change in its terms of service that would have allowed the company to incorporate user generated images in ads without users' permission. The company has since reconsidered its decision. Having written "10 W...

  • Google Ads

    Pay-per-click Advertising: 7 Predictions for 2013

    January 3, 2013 •

    2012 was a big year for pay-per-click advertising. Many online retailers saw their PPC budgets, conversion rates, and return-on-ad-spend grow nicely. At the same time, cost-per-click rates dropped precipitously for Product Listing Ads and mobile ads. Looking forward, here are my top sev...

  • Social Media

    Using Instagram for your Ecommerce Business

    January 2, 2013 •

    Popular photo-sharing app Instagram — which Facebook acquired earlier this year — is now used by businesses. Of 100 leading brands, 54 have incorporated Instagram, according to Simply Measured, an analytics firm. Here is how you can start using Instagram to market your products and ser...

  • Social Media

    10 Ways to Encourage Customer Ratings and Reviews

    December 26, 2012 •

    According to Nielsen’s "Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages" report, which surveyed more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries, 92 percent of consumers said they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising. From an ecommerce ...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Remember a Holiday ‘Thank You’ Email

    December 19, 2012 •

    As the 2012 Christmas shopping season comes to a close, online retailers should take the time to sincerely thank customers and offer appropriate holiday greetings. Email marketing often reaches its peak during the weeks leading up to December 25. Many, if not most, Internet retailers a...

  • Social Media

    5 Sites for Consumer Product Discovery

    December 18, 2012 •

    Social media has inspired a new kind of shopping that is based on peer-to-peer sharing of content on sites like Pinterest, Etsy, or Shopcade, and less known sites such as LoveIt or Wanelo. This consumer-driven trend is referred to as "discovery." For many consumers, shopping is as muc...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    3 Common Email Marketing Mistakes

    December 18, 2012 •

    There were some fantastic email campaigns in 2012. And there were some ineffective ones, too. In this article, I'll address three of the top email marketing mistakes from 2012. Sending Emails Too Frequently As an email marketing professional, I subscribe to hundreds of ecommerce em...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Transactional Emails: 5 Secrets to Improve

    December 12, 2012 •

    Five relatively simple steps could help online retailers significantly improve transactional emails, and, perhaps, earn additional sales. Transactional or relationship email messages complete, confirm, or provide information about a previously agreed upon transaction. In the ecommerce ...

  • Social Media

    How to Create a Google+ Community

    December 11, 2012 •

    Google+ is growing. According to a Google executive, more than 500 million people have set up profiles, 235 million actively use Google+ functionality such as Hangouts (its video chat feature) and sharing links (via the +1 button), and 135 million use Google+ as a stand-alone social net...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email, Mobile, On-site Driving 2012 Holiday Sales

    December 6, 2012 •

    Retail holiday sales for 2012 from the first of November through Cyber Monday rose 16 percent year over year to more than $16.3 billion. Email marketing, mobile shopping, and on-site promotions have all played an important role in online sales. The 16 percent boost in early holiday ret...

  • Social Media

    Designing a Facebook Marketing Campaign in 4 Steps

    December 4, 2012 •

    Marketing on Facebook involves four basic steps: Build, Connect, Engage and Influence, a process Facebook now refers to as the BCEI framework. This article outlines these four steps and explains how ecommerce merchants can use them to execute an effective Facebook marketing campaign. ...

  • Social Media

    6 Sites to Monitor Facebook Changes

    December 4, 2012 •

    Facebook is notorious for making changes to its platform. Often, such changes are made with little notice or fanfare, unless you know where to look. Staying abreast of such changes is important to any merchant who wishes to use Facebook marketing more effectively. In this article, I p...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 1: Tracking Platforms

    November 29, 2012 •

    Editor's Note: This is "Part 1" of a three-part series on launching a new affiliate marketing program. "Part 2" and "Part 3" we published subsequently. There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking p...

  • Google Ads

    7 Last Minute Holiday Marketing Improvements

    November 28, 2012 •

    Christmas is less than five weeks away. Here are seven last-minute holiday marketing improvements you can make to maximize sales. 1. Shop Your Site from Mobile Devices Smartphone and tablet users accounted ...

  • Social Media

    Amazon and Pinterest Add Business Pages

    November 26, 2012 •

    Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ have their own versions of business pages. Now, Amazon and Pinterest do, too. Amazon Marketing Services Amazon has quietly launched what it refers to as Amazon ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    9 Creative Websites For Marketing Inspiration

    November 23, 2012 •

    Your business's website needs to be fresh, bold, and worthy of a visitor’s time. Reading about your industry — or visiting business blogs — sometimes isn’t enough to inspire or help generate ideas. If you feel as though you are in a rut, there are many ways to generate creative thinking. Here’s a nine websites that can help.

  • Social Media

    Top 10 Social Sharing Buttons for Your Website

    November 21, 2012 •

    One of the best ways to get traffic to your website is through the use of social sharing buttons. The problem, however, is that while many social sharing options exist, their features vary. Some offer fewer sharing options, some only work on WordPress, and some require more technical ex...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Automated Email Marketing Drives Ecommerce Sales; 4 Tips

    November 20, 2012 •

    Email marketing is becoming increasingly automated. Recent acquisitions by ExactTarget, a leading email service provider, of iGoDigital and Pardot, for $21 million and $95 million respectively, illustrate this trend. iGoDigital is a platform that helps online retailers offer product re...

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