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Many of us ecommerce merchants already know a thing or two about Pay Per Click (PPC). We pretty much know it’s a popular advertising model used on websites and that sometimes it works perfectly and other times… not so much. How can we really make sure that we’re using it correctly? Wondering what are some useful tips and tricks you can use to take advantage of it at its fullest?
 
First, let’s talk about the best approach for writing and formatting the ad text. As a basic rule, use well-written and clear language that revolves around the specific highlights of the product, this is a must! When possible, it’s important to add metaphors or “word pictures” that complement and enhance the ad. Phrasing your text as a question, telling a story with it or emphasizing an immediate or rapid result, works best.
 
Many companies use different techniques to attract customers depending on what they have to offer, for example…If there’s a free trial available, stressing the “try before you buy” proposition is a very good idea. If your ad is destined to advertise your product or service for a short time, challenging the customer to “discover or experience” it before time’s up could be an effective practice.

Here are a few quick tips:
•    Be creative
•    Create trust
•    Compare your product/service to another
•    Offer guarantees
•    Emphasize special offers
•    Use powerful words such as “how to”, “free”, “incredible”, “learn”, “save”, perfect”, “break-through”
•    … Just let your imagination go!
 
To optimize your use of space, whenever its necessary, abbreviate, use symbols and swap out words with a shorter synonym to make room for other text. Also make sure you highlight your special offers, in percentage, money, amount or “Free Shipping (Free S&H)”.
 
Effective ad texts that are proven appealing to customers include:

•    “Do you make this mistake?”
•    “The real truth about…”
•    “How to…”
•    “Tired of…?”
•    “The best kept secret is…”
•    “Are you aware of…?”
As you can see, it’s not difficult to use these texts to create a good-looking ad or even combine some of them to improve your results.  Think outside the box, it will surely pay off!

eBay is in its 15 year anniversary and Facebook just announced it has over 1/2 billion members. It’s amazing to me when I think back on all the things that eBay did over its 15 year course. Pretty amazing how this site changed the face of ecommerce on the web. However, one of the things that it did in the last few years, I find really interesting. Since John Donahoe become the CEO, what’s most interesting about eBay is to compaire its growth to others. If you look to the last few years of eBay and the last few years of Facebook, you can see how one man’s trash became another man’s treasure.

Facebook is right now the number one site on the internet with over five hundred million users in social media. It’s getting more traffic now than Google, as a landing page, and just a few years ago it was not even on the radar. What made Facebook grow so fast? It was the community. What made eBay grow so fast in the 90’s? It was the community. The last eBay Live I attended was themed “the Power of Us All” which was recognizing the power of the community.

Yet recently, eBay and John Donahoe have decided that the community is no longer important for their platform and they even rolled out the founder of eBay to help them trashed it. eBay told their community to basically f*ck off, we are NOT going to keep things fair and balanced. I think John Donahoe refers to the eBay community principle, as a “sacred cow” in this video with Pierre. At one time Peirre valued and treasured that cow, but guess they missed the meaning of the word “sacred” and messed with the magic formula. The new eBay says nope, we got other things more important to us than our community. They trashed all of the tools that the community would use to communicate with each other. Bought Skype and then figured out that they did not want the community to talk to each other. They changed all the open chat forums and boards and locked them down tight. So tight, that the community could no freely interact with one another the way they did in the past.

Donahoe and crew even removed the ability to blog on their platform, discouraged the sharing of photos in ads. Now just a few years later and all

of these kind of things that eBay threw away basically became Facebook, now you see how community is so important to a business model. They are building a business model around the community the same way that eBay built its business model via a community. The community is the most important nucleon of any business.

I remember back in the late 80’s, early 90’s, one of my most favorite shows was a show called “Cheers” and they had a song, and in the theme

song it said “A place where everybody knows your name” and no matter how good or bad the economy was or how good or bad people’s lives were. They always communed at this little bar called Cheers. So, cheers never had an episode about it going out of business or having money problem, because they could always sell liquor to their community.

Community is probably one of the most important factors in business so get it, understand it and use it for your benefit in your business. Don’t trash your community; learn from the mistakes of companies like eBay and from the successes of companies like Facebook. Embrace your community!

WOW!!! Two countries, four cities, three presentations and 40+ hours in airplanes makes for ONE tired black man. The experiences we had in Sydney, Melbourne, Kansas City and Hollywood (that was just for fun) have been amazing. It is way too much for a blog post, but I hope you will join me TOMORROW evening for a very special Late Night BETA show, register now FREE.

I will be recapping all the information, tools and fun of my trip to Australia for the Professional eBay Sellers Association (PeSA) event there and also the Bonanazle Up event in Kansas City. Two selling communities and some really great people. Join me on the show and make sure you bring a drink! This is Late Night BETA, we kick it on a whole different vibe when I go late night. See you there, guys…

Register now for the PeSA eBay Summit highlights 2010 Show

Come back here during show time and I will be LIVE!!!

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

On their Q2 call, Amazon executives dropped a little number on analysts that was a pretty big surprised.  They noted they are adding 13 fulfillment centers (FCs)  to the ~38 they have now.  That’s a > 30% increase in fulfillment centers and depending on the size could be an even larger expansion from a sq-ft and thus capacity standpoint.  That’s a big investment and it left people scratching their heads – why, where, how big, and does this mean Amazon is seeing another leg of growth (vs. slowing down)?

Digging a little deeper on Amazon’s European Growth

Earlier this week, James Mitchell @ Goldman Sachs did some sleuthing and discovered that one of the large new FCs will be in Germany in the North Rhine-Westphalia area.  Here are some tidbits from a note he published on the topic Monday->

Amazon announced it will open a 600,000 square foot fulfillment center in Werne, North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany’s wealthiest state, with about a quarter of its GDP) in September. The center will employ up to 800 full time and seasonal workers. Amazon will add another 1 million square feet elsewhere in North Rhine-Westphalia sometime in 2011. Amazon already operates about 2 million square feet of capacity in Germany, in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig.

(1) We believe the fact that this center is in Europe supports our view that much of Amazon’s capacity expansion in 2010 is in less-mature international markets, rather than the US. See our prior note, Fulfillment centers spearhead Europe and China expansion, July 27, 2010. (2) The size and location of the center may allow Amazon to provide same-day shipping in Ruhr-Rhine cities such as Koln, Essen, Dortmund, and Dusseldorf, just as it already does in Greater London and Greater Tokyo. (3) The new center may also facilitate Amazon’s expansion into the Netherlands and Belgium, where Amazon began offering free shipping in 2009.

Excerpt from ChannelAdvisor Blog…Get the full text here…

ChannelAdvisor Expands Amazon solution to Germany and France

In fact, our UK customers have been asking for us to support Amazon DE/FR for the last two years as they see that as the next logical step.  We’re pleased today to announce that not only have we added support for these regions, we are also bringing our industry-first FBA support to the region.

Sell More through Amazon UK, and now France and Germany!

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 9am – 10am EST

Presented by:
James Scott, UK Managing Director, ChannelAdvisor
Scott Galvao, E-Commerce Integration Specialist, ChannelAdvisor

ChannelAdvisor’s Premium Marketplaces solution has expanded its support beyond Amazon US and UK to include Amazon France and Germany. Just in time for the holiday rush, online retailers can sell across Amazon UK, FR and DE from ONE platform, expanding their reach, saving time and automating the tedious tasks necessary to meet Amazon’s strict selling requirements.

Join our Amazon experts to learn:

• How you expand your business to Amazon FR and DE now to maximize holiday earning potential
• Why you should consider Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which ChannelAdvisor is the only 3rd-party solution to fully support
• How to make the expansion to these marketplaces seamless, and much more

Register for this webinar HERE.

Earlier, Amazon had their results call and two things are standing out here. 1st as you can see the Amazon year over year growth is up 76%, so compare that to the 2% eBay saw and it is plain to see that the crew at eBay should be hanging their heads in shame.

The second thing is that growth in the US market for Amazon beat the international markets, so we have a very strong ecommerce recovery in the US, but NOT on eBay…go figure right? See remember guys when you are listening to these 2 companies (eBay and Amazon) reporting, you want to remove all the other stuff and fluff. On Amazon, we 3rd Party Sellers could care less about Kindle sales and eBook adaption and la, la,la … on eBay calls, we don’t care about Paypal adoption and mobile payments and la, la, la. All of those things are totally no relevent to our businesses. That is great of stock holders, but has absolutely NOTHING to do with us.

So on eBay you will focus in on thier US Marketplace numbers which came in a 2% up year over year and then compaire that to Amazon’s EGM (EGM stands for Electronics and General Merchandise – basically the non-media part of Amazon’s e-commerce business) which I use to get a closer apples to apples compairison for us. But it is only good for “guidence” cause it is still not a 1-to-1 comparison due to the many nuances of the differences in marketplaces. Still all in all, eBay is so far off course at this point I guess they are getting used to playing second fiddle and have given up the ghost. Well, these are just my early thoughts on the quarterly results. So they are temperal and subject to change as I go to get a glass of Scotch to end my work day

Today eBay released the 2nd quarter earnings. Banter was raised as eBay Inc. has a 6% increase over last year and Paypal has some strong earnings for the quarter…yippee, "whoop d sh*t". Sorry if you don’t find me too impressed. There is holes in this Swiss cheese and the real deal is this. eBay.com that’s the US marketplace is down from 6% growth in the first quarterly to a tiny 2% this quarter and overall down -12% from 2008. So they have suffered a -4% decline on the platform, had NO growth in ASP and zero performance with conversion.

The patron saint of Best Match has not blessed us with the promised land. Wow, am I to be surprise? Yeah, but wait to you hear all the other issue surrounding this news. Look it is too long for me to type here, so I lay it out in plain English for you. Is it just me? Are my assessments here wrong? This seems so ridiculously bad to me, I dunno?!?

Links to the earnings reports for 2010 (released today)  and 2009 for comparison.

Apple Reports Third Quarter Results

All-Time Record Revenue Earnings Increase 78 Percent

CUPERTINO, California—July 20, 2010—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 third quarter ended June 26, 2010. The Company posted record revenue of $15.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $9.73 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.83 billion, or $2.01 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 39.1 percent compared to 40.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 52 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter, representing a new quarterly record and a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 61 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.41 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of 3.27 million.

“It was a phenomenal quarter that exceeded our expectations all around, including the most successful product launch in Apple’s history with iPhone 4,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year.”

“We’re really pleased to have generated over $4 billion of cash during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue of about $18 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $3.44”

Consumers’ increasing appetite for mobile applications is driving online retailers to speed up their mobile marketing initiatives. According to a Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) study produced in partnership with Shop.org, the National Retail Federation’s digital division, nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of online retailers either already have or are developing a mobile strategy. One in five boasts having a fully implemented mobile strategy in place already. The survey of 109 companies is part of The State of Retailing Onlineresearch series, which provides eBusiness professionals with an annual industry benchmark for marketing and business investment and activities.

“It’s imperative for online retailers to stay on top of what their customers want, and these days it’s all mobile all the time,” said Scott Silverman, executive director, Shop.org. “Mobile commerce has tremendous potential and will no doubt grow to become a significant part of overall sales volume in years to come. Whether to increase customer satisfaction, grow their brand, or drive traffic and sales, online retailers are in this game to stay.”

“Mobile investment is modest now, but we see that it will pick up in the future, especially among the biggest brands that have already invested significant amounts in their mobile operations,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, vice president, principal analyst, Forrester Research, and lead author of the report.

Earlier this year, Forrester forecast US online retail sales to total $173 billion in 2010. According to “The State Of Retailing Online: Marketing, Social Commerce and Mobile Report,” Web retailers with mobile strategies:

• Are investing in features that support the cross-channel experience. Product and price information, store information, and coupons to support the in-store experience are among the most popular features that retailers are offering consumers.
• Have varied levels of investment. On average, respondents anticipated spending $170,000 on their mobile sites this year, large multichannel retailers are spending several times that amount, while smaller online pure plays on average are investing much less.
• Are experiencing modest gains. Retailers reported that their mobile browsers at this juncture are generating a little less than 3 percent of overall site traffic and just 2 percent of revenue.

Marketing And Social Media

Tried and true marketing tactics such as paid search, email, and affiliate marketing command the biggest percentage of an online retailers’ marketing budget. According to the report, retailers are spending nearly 40 percent of their marketing budget on paid search.

Retailers are finding value in social media marketing, but the ROI for driving online sales remains murky. Listening to customers is the most significant objective for social tools according to respondents, with 80 percent of retailers reporting that they are pursuing social strategies to experiment and learn. And while 28 percent noted that social marketing has helped grow their business, direct sales from social tactics are not widely measured.

“The State of Retailing Online: Marketing, Social Commerce and Mobile Report” is available to Shop.org members and can also be purchased directly at www.shop.org/soro. Forrester clients will be able to access the report as part of their subscription service one month from publication.