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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 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...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    3 Tips for Better Email Subscription Forms

    March 14, 2012 •

    Email subscription forms should be simple and direct, encouraging site visitors to become opt-in participants in email marketing campaigns. Email marketing is one of the best ways that ecommerce businesses have to engage shoppers, introduce new products, and make more sales. But these ...

  • Social Media

    10 Commandments for Effective Online Social Networking

    March 12, 2012 •

    Here is a ten-step game plan for effective social network engagement. These are ten practical guidelines that will make you a better member of the social networking communities in which you participate. 1. Pull, Don’t Push One of the first lessons you will learn very quickly when eng...

  • Social Media

    Fancy Is a Pinterest-like Alternative for Ecommerce Merchants

    March 7, 2012 •

    There is a lot of interest in Pinterest. It encourages content curation through user self-expression. With over 11 million users, the site has gained a large following in a short amount of time. However, to date, Pinterest has no model for businesses, certainly not one that actively fos...

  • Social Media

    3 New Facebook Marketing Tools: Timeline, Reach Generator, Premium

    March 6, 2012 •

    At last week’s Facebook Marketing Conference, the social media giant unveiled three new marketing solutions to drive business growth using social technology: Timeline, Reach Generator and Premium. Here is a list of Facebook’s new marketing products. Access the conference videos to lear...

  • Social Media

    How to Shorten Google+ URLs

    March 5, 2012 •

    Google+ business page URLs can be long and unwieldy. But there are a couple of easy ways you can create a short alias addresses that shoppers can remember. At the present, a typical Google+ business page URL looks something like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103654589540801342565...

  • Social Media

    Facebook Implements Timeline for Business Pages

    March 1, 2012 •

    At its first-ever marketing conference on February 29, Facebook announced sweeping changes to its platform that have direct bearing on businesses. One of the most important was the introduction of Timeline for business pages. Late last year, Facebook introduced Timeline to individual ...

  • Google Ads

    How to Optimize a Pay-per-click Landing Page

    February 29, 2012 •

    A pay-per-click landing page should be a sales conversion engine, tuned to help consummate an order. Landing pages “are one of the strongest tools you have to convert visitors to customers,” wrote Brandon Eley and Shayne Tilley in their book, Online Marketing Inside Out. “Much of your ...

  • Influencers & Affiliates

    Affiliate Marketing: Segmenting Your Affiliates, Part 2

    February 29, 2012 •

    Running an affiliate program often requires managing relationships with thousands of different advertising partners. This can be challenging, as different types of affiliates have different marketing needs. Last month, in "Segmenting Your Affiliates," I addressed two of the most commo...

  • Google Ads

    3 New Google AdWords’ Features Worth Trying

    February 28, 2012 •

    Google continues adding new features to AdWords. "Enhanced Ad Sitelinks," "Offer Extensions," and "TrueView" video ads are three examples. I have tested each of these, and recommend them to merchants. Online retailers who use them first can start profiting before their competitors. The...

  • Social Media

    Using Amateur Videos for Marketing Success; 2 Examples

    February 27, 2012 •

    In the past, if you wanted to make a video for your business, you had to hire a production company or ad agency, spend tens of thousands of dollars and, as often as not, end up with a product much different than you expected. Edits and retakes were costly, so you just left well enough a...

  • Content Marketing

    Using Content Marketing for Your Ecommerce Business

    February 27, 2012 •

    Content marketing seeks to publish high-quality content to engage prospects, earn business, and create repeat customers. In the Internet age, anyone — private or commercial — can publish articles, essays, white papers, newsletters, audio podcasts, games, or videos that have the potenti...

  • Social Media

    Ecommerce Comes to Twitter

    February 20, 2012 •

    Twitter has served as a marketing and customer service channel by small businesses for years. Now merchants can use it to promote ecommerce, thanks to a third-party platform called Chirpify and Twitter's own efforts to open its advertising platform to small companies. Chirpify, the Tw...

  • Email & Text Marketing

    5 Steps to Effective Email Calls to Action

    February 17, 2012 •

    In email marketing, subject lines get recipients to open the email. The "from" line gives credibility and builds brand awareness. The creative message invokes the desire to know more, buy a product, or sign up for a webinar. But one of the most important and overlooked elements to email...

  • Social Media

    5 Free Facebook Welcome Tab Apps; Pros and Cons

    February 15, 2012 •

    A number of companies offer free apps that give merchants the ability to add custom content, such as a Welcome tab, to Facebook fan pages. In this article I review five of these apps, and discuss the pros and cons of each. 1. Woobox Custom Facebook Page Tab Facebook app provider Woobo...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    How to Optimize Your Site for Google in Foreign Countries

    February 14, 2012 •

    As with SEO in your own language, attention to the basics pays off. Just as you would do when working in your own country, when working outside your home country and language be sure to build your site with algorithm-friendly architecture, load it with relevant content, and attract inbound links from authoritative sites.

  • Social Media

    How Does Facebook Make Money?

    February 10, 2012 •

    Facebook has finally filed its long anticipated SEC S-1 registration to take the company public. The filing is straightforward, lacking any surprises or innovative accounting techniques that other recent registration statements have offered. Nevertheless, the investment community and th...

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