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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

    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...

  • Social Media

    Pinterest Releases Business Accounts

    November 19, 2012 •

    Pinterest, the popular image and video sharing site, now allows for specific business accounts that have a separate set of terms and conditions and may eventually include promotional options not currently available on the platform. "Thousands of businesses have become part of our commu...

  • Social Media

    13 Facebook Marketing Apps Worth Your Attention

    November 14, 2012 •

    Facebook’s modifications to fan pages — most importantly the shift to Timeline — has reduced the use of specialized, third-party marketing apps. However, that does not mean these apps have ...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email Marketing: Planning Your Holiday Calendar

    November 12, 2012 •

    Email marketing is a powerful driver of holiday sales. But haphazardly sending emails is not the way to optimize campaigns. Taking just a few minutes to think about what an email will contain and when it will be sent should help to improve results. What follows is an example holiday em...

  • Content Marketing

    23 Tools to Help Manage Content

    November 12, 2012 •

    To ensure your customers have a rich experience with great content, you'll need more than just a content management system. You'll need a basket of tools to research, generate, market, and track your content. Here is a list of tools to help you with content. There are content search-...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    21 Pay-per-click Resources to Learn and Improve

    November 8, 2012 •

    If you’re new to pay-per-click advertising, or are responsible for training new PPC staff, you can never have enough training resources. With that in mind, I’ve assembled a number of resources for PPC beginners — and for PPC pros. Here are 21 blogs, websites, and books to learn and improve your PPC skills.

  • Marketing & Advertising

    3 Marketing Lessons from Goruck.com

    November 6, 2012 •

    Goruck is an American manufacturer and retailer of high-quality rucksacks, bags, and gear that does an exemplary job of marketing its products. In fact, there are at least three lessons ...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Simplifies Ad Creation Process

    November 6, 2012 •

    Facebook has simplified its ad campaign creation process. The changes address (a) the redesign of the user interface, (b) a concentrated focus on marketing goals and objectives, and (c) the ability to easily use different ad types. To create an ad using the revised system, follow thes...

  • Social Media

    9 Blogging Lessons for Ecommerce Merchants

    November 1, 2012 •

    Blogging is a combination of science and art. The science part requires that bloggers use the latest search-engine-optimization tactics. The art is to hone writing and editing skills. But it doesn't have to be as difficult as that may sound. As a longtime blogger and journalist, I've ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    How to Diversify Your Traffic Sources

    November 1, 2012 •

    In “Understanding Google’s Algorithm Changes," contributing editor Jill Kocher explained the frequency and magnitude of Google's ongoing search algorithm changes. Having read that terrific article, it reminds me of the importance of diversifying your store’s traffic sources. As an ecomm...

  • Google Ads

    Google Shopping: 5 Optimization Tips

    October 31, 2012 •

    With the Google Shopping transition completed on October 17, all of Google’s organic, free product listings — those that showed a product thumbnail and price in search results — disappeared. If you want your product listings to appear in Google, you now have to buy Product Listing Ads t...

  • Social Media

    LinkedIn Updates Member Profiles

    October 30, 2012 •

    LinkedIn recently launched a new version of its user profiles. It will be available to all members in the coming weeks. More than just a design change, the new profile increases your opportunity to make connections, tell your professional story, and engage with others in your network. ...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Affiliate Marketing: Using Product Data Feeds

    October 29, 2012 •

    A common error that merchants make when launching an affiliate program is not providing enough marketing support for their affiliates. Merchants sometimes assume that all they need to do is provide a few banner ads to their affiliates, who would place them on their sites. But many sav...

  • Social Media

    How to Set Up a YouTube Channel

    October 23, 2012 •

    A "Channel" is YouTube's equivalent of a Facebook page. You must create a YouTube Channel to upload videos, comment on videos, or create "playlists" — collections of different videos by topic. In this article I discuss how to set up a YouTube Channel, to help market your business. ...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Email Marketing: Analyzing J.C. Penney’s New Approach

    October 22, 2012 •

    J.C. Penney has received a lot of press for the many changes made by its new CEO, Ron Johnson, who came from Apple. As a J.C. Penney email subscriber, I have noticed its email program has become more engaging. The subject lines are more compelling. The emails contain unique and interest...

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