David Kirkpatrick says, “Ecommerce offers a great opportunity because it allows marketers to sell globally much more easily than opening brick-and-mortar locations around the world. This video from the MarketingSherpa video archive features Rob Garf, Vice President of Industry Strategy and Insights, Demandware, covering this topic with some tips on global ecommerce and insights from the frontlines of selling online in new geographies. Preserving brand value across multiple cultures According to Rob, global ecommerce is growing, and the first challenge is preserving brand value while meeting... [...]

Tom Manvydas says, ““Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Tom Manvydas, vice president of integrated marketing services at Experian Marketing Services. Whether by intent or not, big data is improving the quality of life on an unprecedented global scale. In recent years, we have seen data move beyond enabling more convenient and valuable digital experiences to fueling our national and global economy. Since 2007, data-related products and services have generated about... [...]

Brian Carroll says, “Michael Lanning invented the term “value proposition” back in the 80s. Since then, it has become a staple in the marketing lexicon, and volumes have been written on the subject, including Lanning’s own book, Delivering Profitable Value: A Revolutionary Framework to Accelerate Growth, Generate Wealth, and Rediscover the Heart of Business. I had the privilege of speaking with him recently about how the concept has evolved over the past three decades and what he thought about that evolution. “‘Value proposition’ has been widely adopted since the 1990s as a marketing... [...]

Amazon did over $74 Billion in revenues in 2014. And they are still growing. In December, over 60% of Amazon’s sales were made from mobile devices. Affiliates who ride this wave can grow with them. So savvy affiliates will take advantage of this massive and growing opportunity. Andrew Fox and his brother Chris Fox have created a series of videos they are sharing with marketers who want to get their share of this Amazon opportunity (and other opportunities, too; see below). The latest one is How to cash in on Amazon & Facebook with Zapable. Besides Amazon stores, you can build: • Local... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “Today, I’m very excited to announce that Moz’s Spam Score, an R&D project we’ve worked on for nearly a year, is finally going live. In this post, you can learn more about how we’re calculating spam score, what it means, and how you can potentially use it in your SEO work“. Spam Score: Moz’s New Metric to Measure Penalization Risk MOZ Blog  [...]

Yael Grauer says, “If you’ve been relying on password meters to determine how strong your passwords are, we’ve got some bad news. Their strength measurements are highly inconsistent and may even be leading you astray, according to a new study from researchers at Concordia University: In our large-scale empirical analysis, it is evident that the commonly-used meters are highly inconsistent, fail to provide coherent feedback, and sometimes provide strength measurements that are blatantly misleading. Researchers Xavier de Carné de Carnavalet and Mohammad Mannan evaluated the password... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “They can make or break a site, and many website operators and search marketers await their arrival with a certain level of anxiety. They have strange names like Panda and Penguin, and when they affect significant numbers of websites, they can be written about and analyzed for months. I’m referring, of course, to Google algorithm updates. But is it possible that the major Google algorithm updates that captivate us are largely a thing of the past? In a post on Search Engine Land, Nate Dame, the founder and CEO of search and content marketing firm Propecta, observes... [...]

Ezra Wyckoff has invented “the road less traveled” in the tee shirt business and his business has taken off, bringing him and his students big results. Now he is sharing this contrarian view on the tee shirt business in his new training, Tee Genius. This system focuses on increasing your success ratio by showing you how to consistently launch great tee shirt concepts and build the best audiences. The four keys to success in the tee shirt business are: • The niche you design your shirts for, • The actual design of the shirt, • The concept behind your business and how you approach the niche... [...]

Dan Brotzel says, “‘I’m sorry for writing such a long letter: I didn’t have time to write a short one,’ Blaise Pascal once said. Well, quite.  Probably the most common copywriting issue that people want to address on our courses is how to cut copy. ‘We have so much we want to say but our content’s way too long and clunky already.’ ‘How we can say what we need to say in half as many words?’ Reducing wordcount matters because the online space is a tough reading environment”. Nine surprisingly lengthy tips for cutting and editing your copy ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Dan Shure says, “For B2B or ecommerce, people often discover your brand with commercial queries like “dining room lamps” or an informational search like “how to fix a dishwasher”. Then they look around your site, your social profiles, get retargeted—before ever making a purchase—but in many cases that journey started with an non-branded organic search. Search is certainly not the only discovery channel. But important enough that investment in non-branded keywords is essential“. Music SEO – 7 Lessons in Brand Optimization for 2015 MOZ Blog  [...]