Archive for the ‘Marketing’ category

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7 Free Advertising Channels For eCommerce Retailers

June 24th, 2011

How do you get more traffic to your eCommerce store? Advertising can be costly… Here is a list of 7 free comparison shopping engines which you should utilize to get free traffic to your store.

#1 – Google Shopping

Google Shopping is the king of free comparison shopping engines. It sends the most traffic out of all the CSEs listed in the post. You will need to create and account and submit a feed using the Google Merchant Center.

#2 – Bing Shopping

Bing Shopping is the Bing alternative to Google Shopping. Although they have less market-share, free is free. You’ll want to get set up here as well. NOTE: Bing has placed a temporary hold on new merchant signups, keep your eye on this page for updates. When they do allow new merchant signups, use this guide to setup an account within adCenter.

#3 - TheFind

TheFind.com has been growing quite a lot over the past year. Their model allows you to list your product for free. If you add their UpFront badge to your site, you will get better placement. Sign up at TheFind.com Merchant Center.

#4 - Oodle

Oodle is not really a comparison shopping engine, it is more of a classified listing site. However, they allow you to upload your product catalog via FTP with a datafeed, so you may as well submit your products here.

#5 - SortPrice

SortPrice has a different model from all other comparison shopping engines. They charge a flat fee for every merchant and you get whatever clicks you get. In addition to this, they offer to list a percentage of your products for free. More info is here.

#6 - ShopMania

ShopMania offers a free account with the option to upgrade to their premium packages. The free plan can only be used if you install their “We’re listed on ShopMania” site seal. Sign up and get more info here. ShopMania also offers a free Facebook Store for merchants listed on their program.

#7 - GoShopping

GoShopping.com is similar to ShopMania, they offer to list your products for free if you install their badge on your site. You can sign up here.

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Posted in Comparison Shopping

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How To Add The Google Plus One Button For Magento [+1]

June 23rd, 2011

Introduction: What is the Google +1 Button?

Until someone creates a Magento extension for the Google +1 button, like there is for the Facebook Like button, here is a quick and easy way to add it to your Magento store in two steps:

Step #1

Add the JavaScript code to your Magento config: System –> Configuration –> Design –> HTML Head –> Miscellaneous Scripts.

<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Step #2

Place this tag in your template phtml files where you want the +1 button to render (example location: /app/design/frontend/XXXXXX/XXXXXX/template/page/html/header.phtml)

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

Please Note: Google has several styles of this button, you can select the proper code when you get the code here.

6 comments »

Posted in Platform, Social Media

Google AdWords Will No Longer Display Google Checkout Logos

June 1st, 2011

Google AdWords/Google Checkout Badge


Google has recently decided that displaying the Google Checkout logos by all merchant who accept the payment method makes the SERPs look cluttered. Google will stop displaying the Checkout logo as of tomorrow, June 2. Below is an email we received from Google:

Hello,

Please be aware that beginning on June 2, 2011, the Google Checkout badge will no longer appear on your ads on Google search results.

We’re making this change to improve the user experience on Google search results pages.

For more information, please visit https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=1323905

Sincerely,

The Google Checkout Team

2 comments »

Posted in Search Engine Marketing

Get A Free Facebook Store From ShopMania

June 1st, 2011

ShopMania offers free product listings which is a great way to get started on comparison shopping. Aside from the benefit of free listings, they offer an easy to set up Facebook Store. Once you have a ShopMania account, all you need to do is add the application to your Facebook page. Click here to get started.

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Posted in Social Media

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Increase Engagement On Your Email Marketing Campaigns

April 5th, 2011

We have covered some hot email marketing tips in the past. Here are some additional handy tips to help you get the most out of your mailing list.

Welcome Email Campaign

One of the most overlooked parts of a successful eCommerce mailing list is sending out a series of welcome emails. The best thing would be to send an email right when the customer signs up with a thank you message, an exclusive promo code and some bullet points as to what they can look forward to.

After that, it would be a good idea to send another email a couple of weeks later with additional information such as shopping tips for your website/industry as well as links to important sections of your site.

The main idea of the Welcome Email Campaign is to get the customer accustomed to receiving emails from your store. When someone is expecting to receive emails from you, you’ll get much more engagement from them.

Test Subject Lines

It’s always a good idea to A/B test. One area that can use A/B testing is your email subject line. You can do this by sending test copies of your email to two smaller segments of your list with different subject lines. After a few hours, you’ll be able to see which resulted in a higher open-rate. You’ll want to use this subject for the rest of your list.

Some email service providers have this functionality built-in, but most of the smaller platforms do not. Either way, it’s worth the extra work, especially with large mailing lists.

Clear Call To Action

Once you got the consumer to open your email, how do you get them to your site? The main idea is to have a clear call-to-action as soon as the consumer opens the email. Some merchants make a mistake of putting the call-to-action in a place where consumers do not notice it right away. Take an extra few minutes to get this right.

Photo Credit: 姒儿喵喵

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Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing

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New Google AdWords Blimp Ads

April 1st, 2011

When you login to your Google AdWords account this morning you’ll notice a pop-up notification:

Usually, I tend to ignore these type of pop-up notifications… but I’m glad I didn’t miss this one. Click through to get more info on their next great advertising format that arrives this May: Contextually relevant blimp ads.

From their announcement:

Introducing gBlimps

After years of meticulous design, our brand new fleet of blimps is finally ready to take to the skies. Soon you’ll be seeing Google blimps (a.k.a. gBlimps) flying over major cities, displaying AdWords ads to a larger audience than ever before.

Take your ads to new heights

If you already have an AdWords account, using Blimp Ads is easy. Our gBlimps are designed specifically to display your existing text ads in their original format.

Rethink the way you target

With Blimp Ads, you can target your audience in exciting new ways. Specify the height and location of the blimp, as well as the time you want the ad to run. You can even target special events like football games, outdoor concerts, meteor showers, and more!

You can sign up here. Or you can laugh because it’s a pretty funny April Fool’s joke.

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing

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New AdWords Account Snapshot Dashboard Available

March 15th, 2011

It seems Google has launched a new version of the “Home” tab in AdWords. I don’t use the dashboard tab much myself, but it can be very useful to get a high level overview of your campaigns. Here is a quick tutorial on how to activate it and setup custom modules.

Here is what the old interface looked like:

Google AdWords Account Snapshot Old Interface

You will notice a new link on the top left that says “New version”, click on this to activate the new version. Note: When I clicked on this link the page just seemed to hang, I reloaded AdWords and was able to access the new interface.

Google AdWords Account Snapshot - New Version Link

Once you successfully activate the new interface, you should see a sleek modern dashboard that looks like this:

Google AdWords Account Snapshot - New Interface

You have the ability to add new custom modules by setting up saved filters in the standard campaigns tab. Any saved filter will be populated into this box:

Google AdWords - Custom Modules

Enjoy the new dashboard…

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing

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10 Things You Should Know About Comparison Shopping Feeds

March 9th, 2011

This post is by Andrew Davis, Marketing Director of CPC Strategy, a full service shopping feed management agency. He is the co-author of the first-ever Merchant Comparison Shopping Handbook, a free 21-page ebook to optimize merchant comparison shopping accounts and regularly posts on the CPC Strategy blog to help merchants optimize shopping feeds.

Greetings eCommerce Circle. Michael J Kaye was nice enough to give me the opportunity to share with you some important tips about shopping feeds and shopping feed optimization. Below are 10 things you should know about shopping feeds.

Top 10 things you should know about shopping feeds:

  1. When choosing an eCommerce platform, make sure it has the ability to easily update and export your shopping feed so you can easily manipulate it for free online marketing channels.
    Good places to start are Google Product Search, Bing Shopping and TheFind.
    More info: Google Product Search AKA Google Shopping | Bing Shopping | TheFind
  2. Each shopping feed has different product attributes in different columns, like product title, merchant product ID, and product categories. Some shopping engines will require certain attributes to list products on their website, like Product Title, Product Description, Merchant Product ID, Category, Product URL and Image URL. Sometimes the order of your columns matter, sometimes they don’t. If you make any header or column changes to a shopping feed, make sure you format your shopping feed so the shopping engine reads it correctly.
  3. You’ll need to use an FTP program to download and upload your shopping feed from various locations. Some good free programs are FileZilla or CuteFTP.
  4. Depending on your stock levels and number of products, you’ll need to update your inventory and shopping feeds often to ensure your product shopping is accurate. You don’t want to submit products to marketing channels that are out of stock. One way to update your inventory in your shopping feeds is to add a Stock Status column and use the values True or False to denote whether the product is in stock or out of stock.
  5. Each shopping engine has a set of specifications that you can use to optimize the shopping you send them. We’ve compiled a shopping feed specifications and examples page that you can use to send shopping feeds to Google Product Search, Bing Shopping, TheFind, and more.
  6. Each marketing channel or shopping engine can be tracked with different tools. Some shopping engines have their own tracking pixels that merchant can use for free to track sales, clicks, revenue and conversion rates. You can also append the product URLs in your shopping feed with tracking shopping for Google Analytics. This data can be used to optimize these accounts and should be installed in your order confirmation page so your shopping feed products can be tracked.
  7. Some shopping engines like Shopping.com let you list a regular price and a sale price in your shopping feed. The engine then crosses the regular price with a big red X and displays the sale price in red below. This gives your listings an extra pop against your competition. More info: optimize Shopping.com shopping feed.
  8. Categorization is important. Each of your products needs to be categorize with specific category information to get as much qualified traffic as possible. For Google Product Search, your product_type attribute defines your category. Each shopping engine has their own categorization. Be sure to look it up and match your products as accurately as possible for best results. If you’re unsure how to categorize your product, as your account manager at a shopping engine or post a question in a help forum. The extra time you take to figure this column out is worth it. More info: shopping feed categories.
  9. Adding brand information to your products can greatly increase their findability. Even a step further, append your brand column in front of your product titles so your products can be searchable by those keywords.
  10. UPCs and MPNs are very important pieces of data to get more traffic on the shopping engines. More importantly, UPCs and MPNs let you SKU up, or list on comparison pages with your competitors. Without unique identifiers on electronics and other hard goods, you’ll lose out on traffic because your listing will be separate, away from the main comparison page. Don’t have UPCs? Look on Google Product Search for the products you have that don’t have UPCs and view the product details. Most hard goods have UPCs, you can strip them and add it to your shopping feed.

For more information on shopping feeds be sure to check out the CPC Strategy blog, the most active shopping feed optimization blog online.


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Posted in Comparison Shopping

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Top Comparison Shopping Engines Revisited

December 28th, 2010

Back in July 2009, we looked at the top Comparison Shopping Engines by traffic. Here is an updated chart:

  • Google Shopping – Free Program
  • NexTag – CPC Program
  • TheFind – Free Program
  • Shopzilla – CPC Program
  • Shopping – CPC Program
  • PriceGrabber – CPC Program
  • Bing Shopping – Free Program

Some notable changes in the Comparison Shopping world since last year: TheFind.com has seen tremendous growth and are now ranked within the top 3 CSEs. Since around one year ago Yahoo! Shopping, has been outsourcing their product listings to PriceGrabber. Bing Shopping is no longer offering cash back and can now be managed through the Microsoft adCenter portal.

Some other smaller but notable CSEs are:

  • Become – CPC Program
  • Pronto – CPC Program
  • Smarter – CPC Program
  • SortPrice – Flat Monthly Fee

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Posted in Comparison Shopping

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How To Import All Your Google AdWords Campaigns Into Microsoft adCenter In Less Than Two Minutes

December 15th, 2010

If you have many Google AdWords campaigns it can be a pain to copy them all into Microsoft adCenter. To Microsoft’s credit their are several tools to help with this process, some easier than others. I will concentrate on the simplest way possible: Using Google AdWords Editor to export a CSV which can then be imported in Microsoft adCenter Desktop. There is one caveat, this process is Windows only and will not work on a Mac or Linux.

Step 1 – Export your campaigns from Google AdWords Editor by clicking File –> Export Spreadsheet (CSV) –> Export Campaigns. This will prompt you to save a CSV file of your AdWords campaigns.

Step 2 – In the Microsoft adCenter Desktop tool you can click on the “Import” button pictured below. This will open a dialog asking you what kind of file you want to import, select “Import from Google.”

Step 3 – Browse and select the file you exported from Google AdWords Editor.

Step 4 – Review all fields to make sure that are mapped to the correct Microsoft adCenter fields.

Step 5 – Review and approve the results.

Once you have successfully imported the campaigns into adCenter desktop, all you need to do is upload the changes to Microsoft adCenter. You should be set!

As always, if you have any questions, please post them below.

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing

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