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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
Facebook Insights Helps Measure Social Media Efforts

January 10, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Social media marketing can be an effective way to engage customers and, ultimately, sell more products. There have certainly been lots of articles, publications, and webinars that describe tactics you can use in social media campaigns. But there may be comparatively few resources that h...
Social Media
9 Twitter Productivity Tools

January 5, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Many people consider Twitter an enormous waste of time. "Why would I care what someone had for dinner?" is a question often asked by those who do not use Twitter for personal communications. Granted, if improperly managed, Twitter can be a huge black hole sucking up lots of time. What...
Social Media
How to Rescue Posts from Facebook’s Spam Filter

January 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio

In October 2010, Facebook introduced automatic content filtering to business pages (sometimes called Fan pages) in an effort to help stop Wall spammers from successfully posting unwanted or dangerous messages to dozens or even hundreds of pages daily. For social media marketers, the fi...
Business
10 Resolutions for Your Pay-Per-Click Account

December 30, 2010 • Scott Smigler

With a new year come new opportunities. It is also a good time to start looking forward to making 2011 more profitable. Here are ten steps to take for the new year to accelerate your pay-per-click advertising efforts. 10. Create After-Holiday Sales As we move into the new year, there...
Social Media
Social Commerce Top 10 for 2010; Outlook for 2011

December 29, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Two social commerce topics that created the biggest stir this year were location-based social networks like Foursquare and Facebook Places, and group coupon deals championed by sites like Groupon and Living Social. Groupon became the year's leading social commerce newsmaker when it repo...
Email & Text Marketing
Ask an Expert: Which Email Providers Allow Purchased Lists?

December 22, 2010 • PEC Staff

“Ask an Expert” is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about email distribution providers that allow purchased ...
Social Media
The 12 Ways of Facebook Commerce

December 21, 2010 • Paul Chaney

One of the most-loved songs associated with the yuletide season is "The Twelve Days of Christmas." In an effort to pay homage to the song and the season, here are 12 ways to market your ecommerce business using Facebook, during Christmastime or at anytime. 1. Create a Facebook Page C...
Social Media
10 Free Facebooks Apps for Ecommmerce Merchants

December 13, 2010 • Paul Chaney

The best things in life are free. Or so The Beatles sang, in Money. Here is a list of ten free Facebook apps that I recommend for ecommerce businesses. I've divided them into four categories: Landing Page Creation, Email Marketing, Facebook Shopping Carts, and Other. Landing Page Crea...
Marketing & Advertising
Ask an Expert: Should I Register My Site with Search Engines?

December 10, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about registering websites with search engines. It comes from Lee Wright, president of Ma Mi Skin Care, a retailer of skin care products f...
Social Media
Amplify.com Combines Blogging, Social Networking, News Clipping

December 9, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Blogging is popular among social media users. But many small businesses still do not use it for marketing. Most lack either the time or commitment required to make blogging a successful marketing strategy. But there is a now a way to incorporate blogging that doesn't require the same d...
Email & Text Marketing
How to Hide Email Addresses From Spam Bots

December 8, 2010 • Matt Ferner

Ecommerce merchants have several options to hide or obscure that email address from spam bot programs and still make it accessible and user-friendly for customers. Below is a listing of some of the more popular methods and simple step-by-step instructions on how to employ them, each one progressively more hidden, or "obfuscated.
Email & Text Marketing
The Power of Triggered Emails; 6 Examples

December 7, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

In the natural progression of most email programs, there comes a time when an ecommerce site is ready to tackle the power of triggered emails. Although a challenge to set up, they can be a crucial element in your overall marketing communications strategy, and for good reason. Triggered ...
Business
The PEC Review: Slash the Web with Blekko Search

December 6, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Internet users conduct billions of web searches every month. In fact, comScore reported that Americans alone queried Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and other search engines some 18.6 billion times in October 2010. What's more, the number of searches is growing. comScore reports that Americans ...
Social Media
Social Media’s Effect on Holiday Sales

December 2, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Ecommerce is playing an increasingly important role in holiday sales. But how much of that growth can be attributed to social media? I asked Hitwise, the competitive intelligence service, how much traffic ecommerce sites received from social media. A spokesman for Hitwise responded vi...
Google Ads
Microsoft adCenter: An Initial Reaction

December 1, 2010 • Scott Smigler

In late October, Microsoft’s Bing began powering all of the natural and paid search results in Yahoo!. Now, advertisers who wish to purchase sponsored search ads in either Yahoo! or Bing must do so through Microsoft adCenter. Given that the alliance has a combined market share of almost...
Social Media
Facebook Requests Home Page Status; Effect on Ecommerce Merchants

November 24, 2010 • Paul Chaney

When people log onto the Internet, they tend to go one of three places: Google, their email inboxes or, increasingly, Facebook. Now, Facebook is reportedly positioning itself to become the home page for its users. According to articles in TechCrunch and The Wall Street Journal, Facebook...
Social Media
LinkedIn’s New ‘Company Pages’ Showcase Products, Recommendations

November 23, 2010 • Paul Chaney

LinkedIn has released a new version of its company profiles called "Company Pages," which provides a place for businesses to "showcase their products, services and associated recommendations," according to LinkedIn. Heretofore, LinkedIn company profiles served only a research purpose ...
Email & Text Marketing
Remarketing 101, Part 2: Targeted Emails

November 18, 2010 • PEC Staff

Remarketing is an advertising concept to bring back consumers who have visited ecommerce sites and left without purchasing. In general, the remarketing services fall into two camps. We discussed the first remarketing camp, targeted banner ads, in “Remarketing 101, Part 1: Targeted Banne...
Marketing & Advertising
Search Optimization, Social Media and the Foreign Language Internet

November 16, 2010 • Christian Arno

With social networking, blogging, microblogging, social bookmarking and video sharing, people from all corners of the digital world are brought together under one virtual roof. Social media has landed; and it’s here to stay. And the beauty of social media is it is largely free. So it’s...
Social Media
New Firefox Extension: Social Marketing While You Browse

November 16, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Mozilla Labs Messaging Group has released a new Firefox extension that makes it simpler to share content from around the web on Facebook and Twitter. Social media marketing seeks to make new or more loyal customers by engaging with them, not just pushing products. Usually, social marke...
Social Media
3 Group Coupon Companies for Purely Online Merchants

November 15, 2010 • Paul Chaney

A lot of activity is occurring around the group-coupon-deals space in recent days. Facebook launched "Deals," which, according to Facebook, "local businesses will be able to offer you deals when you check in to their place on Facebook." And there's Groupon Stores, which allow merchants ...
Social Media
8 Steps to Social Media Success

November 9, 2010 • Paul Chaney

"How do I get started?" is a question I often hear regarding social media marketing. In this article, I provide eight steps to help. Think of it as a checklist of must-do items that will put you in the best position to integrate social media into your overall marketing mix and take adva...
Email & Text Marketing
Optimizing Your Email Frequency: A 5-Step Plan

November 3, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

Frequency is always an important topic for email marketing. As marketers, we are afraid to overload our customers. We often forget that email is a channel that requires consumers' permission before communicating with them. As consumers, we don’t opt in to viewing Staples television com...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: 12 Tips to Boost Holiday Performance

November 2, 2010 • Scott Smigler

A well optimized pay-per-click advertising campaign can lead to gigantic increases in both revenue and profits. Conversely, a campaign that is neglected can lead to missed opportunities or significant financial losses. To help you prepare for this holiday season, here are 12 tips that ...
Social Media
7 Blog Platforms for 3 Methods of Blogging

November 1, 2010 • Paul Chaney

The last time I compared blog platforms on Practical Ecommerce was in 2005. In "Blog Platforms: Choose One that Fits Your Need," I reviewed four of the most used at that time: Blogger, TypePad, MovableType, and WordPress. While those are still popular, others have since appeared. Over...
Social Media
Tips for an Effective Twitter Profile

October 27, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Twitter can help ecommerce merchants. It provides a conduit to connect with their customers and communicate with prospects. Merchants should be careful, however, when using Twitter to market their products, and I addressed that in "4 Rules for Marketing on Twitter." And seemingly mino...
Social Media
4 Rules for Marketing on Twitter

October 26, 2010 • Paul Chaney

In last week's "5 Timesaving Social Networking Tools," I discussed efficient ways to manage your social media engagement efforts. However, social media is not merely a "tool set" to be used any way we see fit. It is also a mindset. For merchants wanting to use Twitter to market their ...
Marketing & Advertising
Facebook Privacy ‘Breach’ Versus Public Information

October 20, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Facebook in Privacy Breach" is the title of the recent Wall Street Journal article. It describes the transfer of Facebook user IDs from Facebook application providers to data gathering companies. But Facebook user IDs are public and are otherwise embedded in the URLs of Facebook acco...
Social Media
5 Timesaving Social Networking Tools

October 19, 2010 • Paul Chaney

A concern I often hear from those new to social networking is the amount of time it takes to manage engagement activities, such as tweeting or posting status updates to Facebook and LinkedIn. While there's no cost to use these channels, time is valuable and, therefore, the more efficien...
Social Media
The 4-Step Twitter Strategy

October 12, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Twitter is the "Swiss Army knife" of social networking because it is a simple tool that can be used in many ways. Businesses are utilizing Twitter for such things as brand reputation monitoring, product promotion, customer service, and sales. The key to maximizing Twitter's value, how...

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