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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

    18 Tools to Develop Your Brand on Facebook

    May 24, 2012 •

    If you’re look for a place to develop your brand, Facebook is the spot. With over 500 million daily active users, it’s a great platform on which to engage followers and promote yourself. It’s also an ideal environment to monitor how successful you are at engaging and promoting. Here is...

  • Social Media

    Using Facebook’s Insights Analytics to Expand Your Audience

    May 22, 2012 •

    This article takes a closer look at ways merchants can utilize Facebook's administrative console and Insights analytics platform for marketing purposes. These newly revised sections contain information that can help merchants gain a deeper understanding into (a) who is visiting their ...

  • Social Media

    How to Install Social Sharing Buttons from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest

    May 17, 2012 •

    All major social networks provide merchants with the capability to incorporate social sharing buttons that allow visitors to share content. The process of embedding these buttons is simple, can be done in a matter of minutes, and requires only a basic understanding of HTML. Below are ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    23 Tools to Research Your Competition

    May 16, 2012 •

    Sometimes the best way to improve your own business is by taking a hard look at your competitors. By understanding their most and least effective strategies, you can fine-tune your own marketing efforts. Here is a list of competitive research tools. There are tools to research your com...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    How to Choose an Email Service Provider

    May 10, 2012 •

    Selecting an email service provider can be a daunting task. With so many potential providers — and a vast range of pricing options and levels of service — how do you know which providers are the best match for your ecommerce business? In this article, I'll address five keys to help yo...

  • Social Media

    8 Social Shopping Sites for Ecommerce Merchants

    May 8, 2012 •

    Today's social shopping sites are the online equivalent of old-fashioned swap meets and flea markets. They bring thousands of buyers and sellers together in a social environment where shoppers can rely on friends to help them shop and connect with merchants. These social marketplaces ...

  • Social Media

    20 Most-Shared Marketing Videos

    May 7, 2012 •

    Online viewers share compelling content. A marketing video that makes an impact can go viral, whether the video is funny, sad, inspiring, or cheaply produced. Here is a list of the most-shared marketing videos, based on the amount of times content is shared on Facebook, Twitter and in ...

  • Social Media

    Using Twitter to Promote Your Ecommerce Products

    May 2, 2012 •

    Twitter is a largely untapped promotional channel for ecommerce merchants. According to social commerce company ArgyleSocial, only 26 percent of retailers include calls to action such as "visit a website" or "purchase a product" in their tweets — here's ArgyleSocial's infographic. In a...

  • Social Media

    Survey Says: Pinterest-like Sites Drive Sales

    May 1, 2012 •

    Some 32 percent of respondents to a March survey reported making a purchase after seeing a product on Pinterest or a similar picture and video sharing social media website. Bizrate Insights, which sells customer feedback and ratings solutions to online retailers, surveyed 3,741 online ...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Affiliate Marketing: Communicating with Your Affiliates

    May 1, 2012 •

    One of the important responsibilities of managing an affiliate marketing channel is communicating with affiliates. The most common form of communicating with them is an email newsletter. A question many affiliate managers ask is, “How often should I send a newsletter?” The concern is...

  • Social Media

    3 Examples of Contest Marketing

    April 30, 2012 •

    Contest marketing seeks to give shoppers a positive retailer-related experience, create an affinity for the products a retailer sells, and collect information about shoppers that may help with future sales-oriented marketing campaigns. The idea of giving away hundreds of dollars worth ...

  • Social Media

    10 Marketing Examples of Facebook Photo Albums

    April 23, 2012 •

    There are many ways for ecommerce merchants to use Facebook's photo gallery. My article last week — "Facebook Photo Albums: Maximize the Marketing Value" — outlined a number of them. Here are 10 examples of ecommerce merchants and small businesses that are taking advantage of Facebook...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Photo Albums: Maximize the Marketing Value

    April 17, 2012 •

    In last week's article, "Using Facebook's New App Icons to Promote Your Business," I discussed how to modify Facebook Page app icons, which are located just beneath the cover image. The first icon that appears in the row of four is "Photos." It cannot be moved from this first position...

  • Social Media

    23 Twitter Chats for Small Businesses

    April 16, 2012 •

    One of the best ways to harness Twitter is by participating in chats, scheduled hashtag discussions that focus on specific topics. Small businesses can utilize chats to develop a social media plan, discuss brand strategy, and take advantage of free legal advice. Here is a list of chats...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    5 Unique and Effective Email Offers

    April 16, 2012 •

    The offer in an ecommerce email campaign is key. Coming up with offers that stand out from the competition and get your subscribers' attention, however, can be difficult. A straight dollar-off discount gets boring over time, and email recipients will eventually ignore the same types o...

  • Google Ads

    Google AdWords Ad Extensions Basics

    April 10, 2012 •

    Google AdWords extensions give potential shoppers more information about a merchant and more options to engage with that merchant before clicking a search ad. Although ad extensions have been around for a couple of years, Google recently added conversion tracking data to extensions, ma...

  • Social Media

    Using Facebook’s New App Icons to Promote Your Business

    April 9, 2012 •

    Now that Facebook has transferred commercial Fan pages to the new Timeline format, links to custom tabs — now called "apps" — reside in a row below the cover image. These were previously located in the left-hand column, with small icons. No matter how many apps you have, only four appea...

  • Social Media

    Pinterest: Choosing Cover Images, Tracking Pins

    April 9, 2012 •

    Pinterest released a new feature last week, giving marketers significantly more control over how their companies' Pinterest boards are represented. This new feature allows users to choose the cover images for their pin boards, which serve as a sort of directory for a user's Pinterest p...

  • Social Media

    5 Creative Ideas for Facebook Timeline Covers

    April 3, 2012 •

    This article builds on "Facebook Timeline Cover Images: 6 Pointers," my article last week. Here are five ways to creatively use Facebook Timeline cover images, which Facebook calls "Covers," with 12 examples from small businesses, large retail brands and others. 1. Integrate a Pro...

  • Social Media

    4 Pinterest Marketing Mistakes

    April 2, 2012 •

    Pinterest is a fun social media service that lets users post images and videos, organized into topical boards. The site has great potential for driving traffic to online stores, but it is important not to misuse this potential or alienate users and would-be customers. What follows are ...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Affiliate Marketing Case Study: CrazyForBargains.com

    March 29, 2012 •

    CrazyForBargains.com is a small, family-owned retailer of fun, quality sleepwear. It sells everything from plush bathrobes to Batman pajamas, using the Yahoo! shopping cart. Melissa Canepa Murphy launched the company ...

  • Google Ads

    Boost Pay-per-click Profits in 5 Easy Steps

    March 29, 2012 •

    The difference between a profitable and an unprofitable pay-per-click advertising campaign can be the post-click conversion rate. We've run hundreds of conversion rate optimization tests at my firm over the past decade. Below I’ll share five optimizations that have consistently driven c...

  • Content Marketing

    How Authors, Entertainers Are Selling Their Content Online; 9 Examples

    March 28, 2012 •

    Whether through online video, audio, or ebooks, entertainers and authors are finding new access to audiences. In many cases, it's at the expense of established distribution channels. Here is a list of entertainers and authors who have found success in the shift to online media. Some e...

  • Google Ads

    3 Basic Ways to Improve PPC Advertising

    March 28, 2012 •

    Pay-per-click advertising is a staple of ecommerce marketing that can play a key role in increasing site traffic and sales when managed well. Pay-per-click advertising can also be very expensive and labor intensive as marketers seek to find the best combination of ad copy, audience, ke...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Timeline Cover Images: 6 Pointers

    March 27, 2012 •

    Facebook states that on Friday, March 30, it will convert all Fan pages to the new Timeline format. The most obvious component of Timeline is the large cover image at the top of the page. Facebook has restrictions on these images. They cannot contain the following elements. Price o...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Tips on Targeting Other Countries with Google AdWords

    March 27, 2012 •

    With Google's dominant hold on market share around the world, the tools and interfaces you already know -- Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and Google Webmaster Tools -- should help you successfully implement campaigns in other countries.

  • Social Media

    Facebook Launches ‘Offers’ for Facebook Pages

    March 22, 2012 •

    Facebook is shuttering its check-in deals program — which worked only for brick and mortar businesses — in favor of a new feature, Facebook Offers, which will be incorporated into Facebook Pages. Unlike check-in deals, Offers can be redeemed both in-store and online. Facebook is now b...

  • Social Media

    8 Innovative Brand Promotions Using Social Media

    March 19, 2012 •

    With the growing number of social media outlets, businesses are developing innovative ways to promote their products, using new tools to engage customers. Here is a list of innovative brand promotions using a variety of social media: Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotif...

  • Content Marketing

    4 Ways to Write Compelling Blog Titles

    March 19, 2012 •

    Blog post titles that capture a reader's attention, make strong claims, and solve problems should get lots of clicks, shares, and retweets. Blogging is an important part of any good social media marketing campaign. While writing great blog content — see "Write Better Blog Posts, Pyrami...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    Using Email to Promote Holiday Sales; Pros and Cons

    March 15, 2012 •

    With St. Patrick’s Day near, companies are scrambling to deliver emails to promote green-themed products, or events around the holiday. With all the buzz, it brings up a interesting question: When does it make sense for ecommerce merchants to embrace a holiday or event and incorporate i...

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