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Shopify’s New In-App Shopping Feature on TikTok — Merchants can now sell directly to TikTok audience

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Shopify and TikTok are partnering to scale social commerce — with Shopify’s new in-app shopping feature. The eCommerce stalwart is the first in the niche to introduce the ultimate shopping experience by bringing shopping tabs and organic product discovery features to social media platform — TikTok. This new partnership and integration will allow both Shopify merchants and creators to connect with their consumers on TikTok and drive sales through TikTok Shopping. 

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“Shopify views the future retail is everywhere. We don’t think retail in the future will be done just online or offline. It’s all going to be about consumer choice.”

“More and more Shopify is becoming the world’s retail operating system, and for the 1.7 million merchants and stores and brands that use our product, we want to make it easy for them to sell anywhere.” 

Harley Finkelstein – Shopify President 

Why will TikTok and Shopify’s partnership scale eCommerce growth?

Having an eCommerce business is one thing, and leveraging is another. You need to build excellent content, connect with your audience, and engage within the community to do the latter. And with social media platforms like TikTok — engaging with your community and audience to grow your business becomes more manageable if you become a creator and jump on the opportunity to showcase your brand, products, or services via the platform. 

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Shopify's New In-App Shopping Feature on TikTok — Merchants can now sell directly to TikTok audience 3
Shopify's New In-App Shopping Feature on TikTok — Merchants can now sell directly to TikTok audience 4

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media entertainment platforms in the world. With million-plus active users on TikTok, Shopify has witnessed a 76% increase in installs and social media commerce. And with the Shopify-TikTok partnership, Shopify merchants can now connect and reach their customers as and when they need to. 

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Shopify’s new in-app shopping feature and product discovery experience on TikTok will give the commerce scaling opportunities to creators to diversify and boost new-age entrepreneurial goals and vision. 

If you are a Shopify merchant, have a storefront powered by Shopify and a TikTok profile. You can add a shopping tab on your TikTok profile by first creating a TikTok for Business account then syncing your product catalog. Once you’ve synced your catalog, you will be able to develop your mini-storefront on TikTok and link your Shopify store directly.

Sellers can link their products directly in videos through tagging, allowing TikTok users to shop now and purchase their products from videos alone.

Shopify — TikTok Shopping Pilot 

The TikTok Shopping pilot — for the timbering is open to the US and UK-based Shopify merchants only, with a select few from Canada. You can seek early access to the pilot by sending a request through Shopify’s TikTok Channel. 

The TikTok Channel for Shopify is an app that you can install to create video ads and manage and track your orders. You can use the app to promote your products on TikTok, target your audience based on their location, demographic, optimize marketing campaigns, and more. 

The future of commerce is not binary. It’s where your consumers are at, where they want to spend their dollars, where they want to shop — And that’s where “social commerce” comes into being. Now that Shopify merchants can link and tag their products on TikTok organically, their consumers will develop trust and connect organically and not by force. 

How You Can Employ AI In Your Digital Marketing Today: Small Business Marketing

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What is Artificial Intelligence and how can we use it in digital marketing strategies?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is way beyond a robot or advanced machine that is stereotyped in all movies and TV series (read: I, Robot, RoboCop, Tron and so on).

What is artificial intelligence?

No, it’s nothing like the RoboCop. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of computer systems and machines to complete human tasks. Its performances included language translation, decision making, speech recognition, visual perception and more.

Artificial intelligence is changing consumer-brand relationship dynamics

The shifting paradigm of digital media from the web to virtual reality proves that AI can enhance the digital marketing world today.

Cambridge and Stanford Universities conducted several studies related to the connection between digital marketing and Artificial Intelligence. And most of them assert the fact:

Computers are capable of comprehending human beings in higher clarity than human themselves.

Examples of artificial intelligence and its use in digital media

How to use Artificial Intelligence in your small business digital marketing strategy?

Content Personalization Machines will author 20% small business content by 2018 – Gartner

Content is the backbone of every business and digital marketing plan. One of the crucial elements of an engaging and result-driven content is an impactful Call-To-Action. Call-To-Action or CTAs increase the conversion rate by 42%.

Copywriters and marketers have been creating personalized call-to-actions in various blog posts, landing pages, newsletter and marketing materials.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gradually taking the baton from the hands of digital marketers and writers. Now, with the help of AI, you can generate CTAs and content to drive sales, traffic and boost conversion.

The new phenomenon called Programmatic Advertising. Artificial Intelligence is slowly taking over every protocol of digital marketing. In fact, it is making the process less strenuous and more efficient.

What is programmatic advertising?

It is the process of programmatic marketing, advertising and media buying. It involves real-time algorithmic selling and buying of ad space, via the use of the software. More and more marketers are opting for programmatic advertising because it’s customer specific and targeted.

Visual content marketing strategies for the holidays

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Traditional marketing called for pushing content and information into the face of consumers. Marketing today is all about the consumer will, enthusiasm, and – something that I call – attention span. And with the holidays knocking at the door, it becomes essential for small businesses and marketers to grab audience attention within a 10-second window. The most effective content marketing strategies involve visual content. Whether in email campaigns, social media, or paid advertisements, it is absolutely crucial to focus on visual content.

Here’s an infographic – The Vanishing Attention Span Of Consumers – pretty much sums up the importance of developing visual content marketing strategies.

Holidays are the best time to work on your marketing strategies and align them with your business goals. They are also an ideal source of opportunity to make the most of the visual content. Take a glimpse into these 12 Brilliant Visual Content Tips To Lighten Up Your Holiday Marketing.

It’s November, but malls, stores, and even offices are splurged with the Festive Color RED, mistletoes, and more. Marketers are already sipping eggnogs and brainstorming on strategies that will help hit their Holiday Sales and ROI. Don’t lose out on your A-Game and discover the innovative use of Product Videos for your business.

Here are 5 Visual Marketing Strategies to use, especially during the Holiday Seasons: 

1) Switch up Product Photos based on the social media platform

In the eCommerce market, your visuals are what separate you from your competitors. It is the ultimate deciding factor, especially for your customers. You need to make sure that your product’s images are on-point.

So, try mixing up your product images with lifestyle photos. Promote your products through email channels and social media to stay fresh in people’s minds. You could also showcase products for specific holidays or events.

2) Re-optimizing your holiday imagery for search

Anyone who works with SEO knows how vital image optimization is, especially when it comes to site ranking. As an eCommerce owner, you already have tagged images, but when you are ramping up your seasonal strategy, remember to update your tags as well. Do keyword research related to search terms around the holidays and optimize your images.

Also, try tagging the products with the brand, category, and seasonal messaging on top. Image searches should not be ignored and are prevalent when seeking out items. It is a simple change, but this might help you get more page views, especially during the busy seasonal period.

3) Do not limit your visuals to only photos

Photos are a great way to connect to your customers. But other than that, there is a world of different visual strategies that you can explore. Graphics, charts, typography, infographics, and illustrations are all options you can look into when planning your seasonal strategy. 

Infographics are liked 3X more than any other type of content, especially with the easy-to-digest information and ideas. So, you need to look into seasonal infographics to help support your holiday marketing campaigns. 

But, creating an infographic does not need to be hard work. Start working with Venngage’s infographic pre-made templates to help you kick start your campaign.  

4) Seasonal videos

A seasonal video is a great way to send out the season’s greetings to customers, especially around the holidays. But it also reminds customers of your brands’ presence and drops hints at the upcoming sales. 

So, keep in touch with your customers with a short video to ensure that your brand stays in their minds. You could use platforms like Moovly to help you start the process of video creation. Get creative with your ideas and share them on your social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. 

But, remember to think about your target audience and create videos that will connect with them. Also, remember to create videos that are sensitive to the sentiments of existing and potential customers. The worst thing to do during a seasonal campaign is to have a racially ignorant or culturally inappropriate video.

5) Remember to add Value

When creating visual strategies for your seasonal campaign, make sure that you do not litter your social media with illustrations just for the sake of it. Make sure you add an exact value and purpose to the content you create. Add visuals that your customers will connect with and make sure that they showcase your products.

But try not to be too salesy in your pitch. Let the content flow into the visuals and let them connect with your customers. 

Wrapping Up

Visual marketing is a great way to connect with your customers over the holiday season. Whether in the form of infographics or videos, you need to make sure that they create a connection with your audience.

Make sure that your visuals have a similar theme running through but also remember to add value to it – no one will spend time looking at visuals that have nothing to offer.

Small Business Marketing Tips For The Holidays

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Halloween kick-starts the holidays. ‘Tis the time to be jolly and cash in on the consumer’s spending spirit. Holidays give way to marketing campaigns, sprouting faster than mushrooms. Every business works out marketing campaigns. However, not all succeed. Holiday small business marketing is all about Smarketing or Smart Marketing.

Here are a few examples of significant brands cashing in with the intelligent Holiday marketing campaigns. Check these 19 excellent holiday campaigns and use some of the strategies in your small business marketing campaign.

Holiday marketing campaign success stories

Another fantastic source of inspiration is Shark Tank. The show not only sharpens our innovation and creative streak but also helps hone your selling skills. Businesses that pitch on their special holiday episodes also provide tremendous insight into the opportunities that you can tap into niche or theme products.

The Living Christmas Company is a live Christmas Tree Rental company – to Tipsy Elves and their quirky, signature, Ugly Christmas and Tacky Christmas Sweaters. These and many others are a great example of how we can tap the Holiday Market. Watch here.

Scotty – from The Living Christmas Tree Rental gets a sweet deal from Mark Cuban for a 40% stake in his company and $150,000 investment. Tipsy Elves, on the other hand, last year itself had $900K in sales!  Watch here.

Another excellent holiday campaign that took the world by storm was the WestJet Christmas Miracle. The Canadian airline embarked on a project to perform 12,000 mini-miracles. The campaign celebrated the true spirit of giving with this campaign.

Next, we have the REI OptOutside campaign, where REI made a bold move and closed all their retail stores on Black Friday. Employees were given a day off, and the customers were encouraged to reconnect with one another and nature. While the campaign was risky, people raved about it long after Thanksgiving was over.  

Target’s ‘My Kind of Holiday’ offered its customers a personalized shopping experience. They combined their unique value offers with desired products to help people extraordinarily celebrate the holidays. The campaign extended to social media to spread the word with its own hashtag #MyKindOfHoliday. 

Here are 11 tips to start your Holiday marketing campaign immediately. 

11 tips to jump-start your Holiday marketing campaign

1) Emails Overhaul Hallmark

Emails overhaul Hallmark this holiday season. The fact that was using an app or email to wish your colleagues, near and dear ones – no doubt about it – is a lot easier than snail mail and traditional greeting cards. So, here is a brief Holiday Email Marketing Report that you can download and get ahead of the game.

You can also keep it simple and make it fast with this excellent Email Marketing Holiday Calendar and Planner 2016 – 2017. Or trust the champs – MailChimp – of email marketing with their season’s best tips and advice for your email marketing campaign strategies.

2) Adjusting Social Media for Holidays

Utilizing social media to reach your audience, especially during the holiday season, is a great and effective way to increase your sales. Here’s a tip you could follow, start frequently posting on Instagram. Why? Because according to the Holiday eCommerce Revealed study by Shopify, Instagram ranks as the #1 most successful non-paid platform to acquire new followers or subscribers. 

So, post social media content for a holiday. Add new creatives with discounts or deals for holiday-related products. You could also share lifestyle tips or new ways to improve gift-giving during the season. 

3) Publish Holiday Content

If you already have a blog or newsletter, then this is the perfect time to tweak it. Add content that targets your customers’ needs during the holidays. For example, if you see cookware, add new holiday-themed recipes that customers can make using your products. But, whatever you do, remember to include relevant keywords to improve your rankings for organic search.

Publish guides, how-to’s, and best gift ideas to show your customers you care. Adding comprehensive and quality content will attract new customers and remind previous customers why they chose you in the first place.

4) Partnering with other Businesses

As a small business owner, you need to get your business out there as much as possible. One of the best ways to do that is by teaming up with other companies. Look for complementary businesses that work with your brand, and connect with them to develop a comprehensive strategy that will help you both.

Collaborations are a great way to amplify your brand presence and to get people to buy. So, try pairing with products or services that go hand-in-hand with your brand. For example, if you sell cookware, then team up with a furniture store or a cafe.

5) Collaborate with Bloggers and Influencers

We all look actively look for gift ideas just before the holiday season, or we turn to our influencer gurus to give us ideas about what’s trending in the market. To get your business the value it needs, you need to collaborate with bloggers and influencers. That does not mean that you should connect with anyone and everyone who has a large audience. You need to collaborate with those people who connect with your brand.

Let’s say you sell cookware. It would not help if you collaborated with beauty bloggers or influencers. You need to connect with food bloggers or food influencers who have fans interested in food and cooking.

6) Develop a particular holiday product

Next on our list of tips is creating a unique holiday product. This tip may not help really small businesses, but it is a great way to get people interested in your brand. Let’s say you run a clothing and accessories line; you could create a holiday-themed collection that is stylish and in-vogue.

Another good idea is to create products that are not overly tied to the holidays but is also available during other periods, like limited-edition speakers. You can send out pre-order emails with discounts or deals and generate a buzz of excitement during the holiday season.

7) Decorate your website

To ensure that your customers know that your brand is going big this holiday season:

  1. Decorate your business for the holidays. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, then start decorating the store based on the holiday.
  2. If you sell through a website, add holiday-themed creatives to your site.
  3. Add decorative pieces to your emails and newsletters.
  4. Highlight the holidays with collections and pieces that are specific to the season. 

But, remember, while being creative, you need to make sure that your website or your store is not hurting others’ sentiments. Make sure you understand the holiday and plan according to it before you actually start the process of decorating for the season.

8) Join the community

People will always support others who support the community. For the holiday season, consider partnering with your community. Try giving back to the people who helped build your business. Depending on what you sell, you could always make a one-for-one donation, like TOMS shoes, or donate a percentage of the purchase to an organization like Everlane.

During holiday seasons, people are looking for worthy causes to fight for, so helping your customers give back to the community will help convince them to make a purchase and help make them happier. 

9) Create Unique Holiday Value Props

When creating different holiday strategies, remember to explain to your customers why they should buy your products in the first place. Make sure you tell them how your products solve their problems, especially during the holiday season.

Think about what makes your products unique, especially during the holiday season. Make sure you include those factors, especially when targeting a holiday audience. Start by updating your website to reflect the holidays, and make sure that you add value props to all social media posts, promotional materials, and email campaigns.

10) Offer Special Gifts for Holiday Season like Gift Wrapping

Shopping for the holiday can be extremely tough and stressful. So, going the extra mile by offering your customers a bonus will help increase sales and reward you with loyalty points.

So, you could offer customers gift-wrapping or seasonal decorative items to make sure they have all their bases covered.

You could also include holiday-themed cards with season greetings. If you offer delivery services, then you could also have free delivery options. If your customers buy in bulk, then you could offer them a small free product or service—anything to make customers understand that your brand is big on special events.

11) Host a Special Holiday Event

Hosting an event is a great way to connect with customers and visitors to your business. You don’t need to spend too much money, but a little goes a-long way. You could add unique games or wheel pop-ups to your site to make it more exciting. You could offer unique gifts or hidden surprises when people shop at your store. You could even host free tutoring sessions or webinars to help connect with your customers.

If you have an online business, you could also try partnering up with a popular retail store and host an event.

Wrapping Up

When planning your Smarketing list, make sure that you consider the products you sell and the audience you target. Ensure that you target the right audience; otherwise, you just might be showcasing Christmas-themed products to Hanukkah celebrating households.

Digital Marketing For Small Businesses: Weekly Round-Up – V2

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Lots happened last week. The pressure was undoubtedly high in Silicon Valley, with Peter Thiel double endorsement for Trump and Mark Zuckerberg defending The association. Silicon Valley is experiencing a Political Evolution, with its complete support for Hillary Clinton. Let’s get into the weekly update digital marketing for small business update and bypass this political fiasco for few minutes, shall we!

52 ways to get the best out of your content marketing strategy. Joe Pulizzi from Content Marketing Institute in his recent research pointed out the Result-Generating-Period for a company’s content marketing plan. He says, “It takes 12 – 24 months to get results from your content marketing efforts.” But, you don’t have to wait for 2 years. Use these 52 ways and start witnessing the impact in your business!

Online Marketing PODCASTS to look out for. Visual and audio content are gradually stepping up over other content formats. Here’s a list of 10 peer-to-peer online marketing podcasts that can help you in creating result-driven strategies.

Boost brand influence and increase its exposure amongst your target audience with these top live streaming platforms.

It’s Customer Experience Day. And what better way to kick-start it, with these expert-recommended books on CX. Focusing on Customer Experience is key to the success of every business.

Today, the marketing is customer-centric. Given the rise of social and digital media, along with the transforming buyer behavior, it is only mandatory to prioritize customer experience above every other business goal. These books will provide you with insights, expert advice and guidelines towards delivering the best customer experience.

2017 – digital marketing experts and analysts bet – will be about interactive emails. The market is flooded with apps and smartphones. Statistics suggest that users are becoming less keen on downloading majority of these apps.

Email – though considered as an underdog – is slowing gaining a lot of popularity amongst different businesses. It’s, in fact is becoming a key channel for communication.

More and more newsletter and email content are being integrated with GIFs. So, the concept of interactive emails is a possibility.

Interactive or static, whatever content format you use for your email marketing plan, you need to engage your audience and convert them into potential leads. Here’s a list of ways you can increase email marketing engagement and succeed in your outlined plan.

Digital Marketing For Small Businesses – Weekly Round-Up: V1

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Digital Marketing is growing in Dog Years, instead of Human – It’s getting way ahead. Technologies and methods that are significant today become obsolete tomorrow. Keeping pace with the changing trends in this field requires more than just time.

So, we’ve decided to make things digital marketing enthusiasts. We will come up with a weekly post, where we will share everything related to digital marketing for business – from what’s trending, what’s hot, what’s not to what’s transforming the scene.

We hope to help entrepreneurs, marketers and everyone who are working to grow their business, build brand value and network.

News

HootSuite Academy has filled the gap between opportunities and prospects, with its Global Social Media Skills platform. Now, users can access certifications, resources, tools and videos and get certified by major institutions in social media. Partnering with organizations like, Mayo Clinic, Newhouse School of Syracuse University and others.

Eastern Michigan University is set to change the learning course in the field of digital marketing. It hosts its 6th Digital Marketing Workshop on November, 11, Friday at the Main Ballroom of EMU Student Center.

Google buys FameBit – a digital marketing platform that is built with the technology to connect brands with prominent YouTube personalities to create content for promotion and advertisement.

Resources

Facebook is always pushing its needle to stay in power and keep its users connected. With this purpose intact, it has created WorkPlace (which was earlier known as, Facebook at Work).

You can create a WorkPlace account and get connected with your colleagues, managers, team – in clear words – with everyone at your Workplace. Whatever you discuss, share and communicate through your WorkPlace account stays only with your workplace people. So, no more email communication, meeting room slot scheduling, etc.

AOL created Alto Mail, which is a mobile app for email management on Android and iOS. The app supports not only AOL Mail but also iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook. The app is ideal for marketers.

You get to integrate emails from different accounts in a single place, which are accessible in one go. The app allows you to read emails on the basis of message content, scroll files and attachments and get to segmentize as you browse along.

Trending

Content Marketing will be all about Virtual Reality in 2017. Google pushed its envelope with its recent VR launch. Google’s smartphone Pixel and Pixel XL, accompanied with VR headset – Daydream View – is set to transform the way users consume and access content.

Influencer marketing is the next marketing technology that will change the way we develop brand and customer acquisition strategy. A UK-based startup – FanBytes – is set to launch an influencer marketing programmatic Snapchat platform. Why should we look out for influencer marketing? Simple – It’s more social and powerful!

Mobile marketing is going to be huge. mParticle – a data and mobile marketing startup – has raised $17.5 million.