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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 Marketing | Google Ads | Influencers & Affiliates | Social Media
  • Social Media

    Blogs and Email: A One-Two Marketing Punch

    May 21, 2008 •

    I have long been an advocate of using blogs and email as complementary online marketing strategies. Blogs serve a customer acquisition function, while email serves a customer retention role. That belief was recently reinforced when I attended a webinar jointly sponsored by a new company...

  • Google Ads

    Pay-Per-Click Tools Improve Productivity

    May 19, 2008 •

    Daily pay-per-click management routine is not a lot of fun. Thankfully, there are a few tools out there that make the work much more efficient and allow search engine marketing professionals to look at the big picture. Below is a list of software tools that every pay-per-click account o...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    SEO Report Card: Pawleyfarm.com

    May 12, 2008 •

    This month's report card website is Pawleyfarm.com, a small site that sells personalized country photographs and note cards. The home page says, "Just as a home-cooked meal nourishes body and soul, our custom matted and framed artwork carries along a bit of peace and contentment." The d...

  • Social Media

    A Social Media Symphony

    April 28, 2008 •

    How often do you find a classical musician who is not only a virtuoso on his or her appointed instrument, but who demonstrates Internet marketing virtuosity as well? Allow me to introduce you to classical pianist Grace Nikae and her website, Gracenikae.com. From looking at her website, ...

  • Social Media

    Online Reputation Management

    April 17, 2008 •

    Like it or not, people are talking about you online. They're talking about your brand, your products, industry and competition. Do you know what they are saying? If not, why not? Can you afford not to listen? There is a relatively new industry burgeoning on the Internet. It's called ...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing: Avoid This "Deadly" Mistake

    April 14, 2008 •

    Over the years, I've seen many ecommerce store owners make one simple but deadly mistake when they get started with email marketing: They send emails to old, obsolete email addresses. Does this sound like you? You started your ecommerce store a few years ago. Even back then, you had t...

  • Google Ads

    Alternative Pay-per-click Advertising

    April 9, 2008 •

    When should you consider advertising your products on sites other than on Google, Yahoo! and MSN? By properly identifying and evaluating various second-tier PPC advertising options, you may uncover a diamond in the rough. Investigate options Investigating your options is not as hard a...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    When SEO Isn't Really SEO

    March 31, 2008 •

    A potential client recently asked a good question. She regularly reads various search-engine-optimization websites, and she was confused as to the current meaning of the term "SEO." What, she wondered, was the difference between SEO and online marketing? Search engine optimization, or ...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Interview: ‘Ask.com Search Results Are Different’

    March 17, 2008 •

    Interactive Corp., or IAC, owns many large Internet-based companies. These companies include Lendingtree.com, Realestate.com, Match.com and Ticketmaster.com. IAC also owns Ask.com, the search engine that competes with Google, Yahoo! and MSN. IAC's chairman, Barry Diller, is attempting ...

  • Social Media

    Social Networking: Build Your Own Community

    March 17, 2008 •

    There is not a day that goes by that I don't reflect on how to leverage social media, including social networks, for marketing purposes. I have tried a number of approaches, some of which have been successful and some of which have not. This month, I want to share an idea that I think h...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    SEO Report Card: Seenon.com

    March 10, 2008 •

    This month's report card website is Seenon.com, an ecommerce site that tracks the fashion tendencies of the famous and sells those garments and accoutrements to interested consumers. The site is pleasant to the eye and has an exciting, almost urgent feel to it, but how does it do in ter...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Field Test: Social Networking, 3 of 3

    February 25, 2008 •

    In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is social networking. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Field Test: Social Networking, Part 2 of 3

    February 20, 2008 •

    In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is social networking. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Field Test: Social Networking, Part 1 of 3

    February 18, 2008 •

    In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is social networking. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing Report Card: Delight.com

    February 11, 2008 •

    Delight.com sells gifts, fashion accessories and home decor items. It claims to make the online shopping experience quick, fun and simple. But what about its email marketing? Delight.com requested a review from Practical eCommerce of its email marketing activities, which we are please t...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    SEO Report Card: Agoodyarn.net

    February 6, 2008 •

    I don’t knit, but around the holidays I was given a fantastic sweater knitted by the gift-giver. It’s warm and unique, and just to be in the spirit, I’m wearing it as I write this. Uniqueness, of course, is also an issue in terms of search engine optimization; every page of a website ne...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Choose A Platform And Blog, Blog, Blog

    February 4, 2008 •

    Because search engines tend to reward blogs in several ways, corporate and ecommerce sites ought to look at the possibility of adding one or more blogs. As Stephan Spencer underscores "SEO: Blogging Your Way To The Top", search engines’ ranking algorithms revolve around links, and the b...

  • Google Ads

    Negative Keywords For Your PPC Campaign

    January 9, 2008 •

    Keywords are an integral part of any online advertising campaign. However, what is sometimes overlooked is the equal importance of negative keywords, which are word filters that disqualify ads from being triggered by users’ search queries. For example, if the term “iPhone” is one of you...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    SEO Report Card: Juvieshop.com

    January 7, 2008 •

    Juvie is a kid’s clothing store in Los Angeles, and it is balancing the hipness of Flash-based features (not particularly SEO-friendly) with the common sense of good textual content (always SEO-friendly) on the home page of its ecommerce site. The site focuses on hip, modern and stylish...

  • Google Ads

    Pay-Per-Click Account Tools

    January 7, 2008 •

    A daily pay-per-click management routine can sometimes be a source of frustration. Thankfully, there are a few tools out there to streamline the process. What follows is a list of software that every pay-per-click account owner should consider. AdWords Editor AdWords Editor is Google’...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Google Knol Looks To Take On Wikipedia

    January 2, 2008 •

    Online reputation is an important part of any SEO campaign. It can drive traffic and promote links, and when a new opportunity arises for such reputation management, it should be explored sooner rather than later. A few weeks ago, Udi Manber, Google's vice president of engineering, ann...

  • Social Media

    Social Media As A Marketing Strategy in 2008

    January 2, 2008 •

    2007 was a good year for holiday shopping. comScore reported that online shopping totaled nearly $28 billion, up 19 percent from 2006. Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday all had record traffic compared to previous years, according to Hitwise. Hopefully, your business experi...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing Report Card: Accepted.com

    December 10, 2007 •

    Accepted.com provides admissions consulting and application-essay-editing services that help people get into top business schools, medical schools and graduate schools. It produces a free monthly email newsletter called “Odds ‘N Ends” and the staff of Accepted.com has requested that Pra...

  • Social Media

    Social Media Comes Of Age

    December 3, 2007 •

    Seemingly, everywhere you look these days, people are talking about social media online technologies and websites that people use to share content, opinions, insights and experiences. It's Facebook this or MySpace that, and those are only two of the myriad of such sites that comprise th...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    SEO Report Card: Oreweb.ca

    December 3, 2007 •

    ORE stands for Office Resources and Equipment, and not surprisingly the website sells business office equipment. What is surprising about this Canadian company is the way its website is designed. It’s an interesting blueprint that uses JavaScript and frames to load pages into a single U...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    If Website Is Broke, Don’t Go Broke Fixing It

    November 28, 2007 •

    Traffic down? Conversions starting to wane? It could be any number of SEO issues. Finding free online tools to hone search optimization for an ecommerce site can be tough. There are a lot of them out there, often promotional in nature, and they offer varying degrees of features and reli...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    SEO Report Card: Back40books.com

    November 7, 2007 •

    According to the site’s “About Us” page, Back 40 Books is run by back-to-nature people and the books they sell on their site are predominantly focused on issues related to that lifestyle. It also sounds as if the website was put together by these same outdoor people with little help fro...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Baiting The Social Media Crowd

    September 27, 2007 •

    You may recall that Stephan Spencer (I am now taking over his two columns here at Practical Ecommerce) wrote about link baiting some months ago. To sum up his thoughts, inbound links are good. Search engines improve rankings of a given page or website based upon the number and quality o...

  • Marketing & Advertising

    Google AdWords: Structure For Success

    September 3, 2007 •

    As I work with many companies to improve and refine their conversion rate from paid search efforts such as Google AdWords, I have noticed a general misunderstanding about how the structural elements of Campaigns vs. Ad Groups should be used. Correctly structuring your Google account al...

  • Google Ads

    Critique Part Two: Pay-Per-Click Advertising

    May 30, 2007 •

    The Problem: A quick glance at Daddies Board Shop's Google account indicates in-depth keyword research was not performed. The Fix: It appears that the company chose keywords based on insider business knowledge but hasn't considered what terms people actually use to search. For example,...

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