1) Integrate Facebook Like button to your product description page

This is a must for any e-Commerce site. It is easy to implement, and an instant win for any ecommerce site. Also, it is the most used tactic already on eCommerce sites.

2) Advertise on Facebook to drive traffic directly to your product pages

Paid advertising on Social media is often mixed with social media activities. However, it is a totally different discipline and is much easier to set up and run than any social media activity. However, remember following four advise when advertising on Facebook;

• Don’t let your online media planner run static / boring advertising on this media. Facebook advertising should be managed in savvy hands who have a good understanding on advertising on Facebook
• You should understand that the real cost on Facebook advertising doesn’t lie on the amounts paid to the media, but costs are in managing the campaigns in the required detail with a savvy team
• Automated solutions can help you reduce costs, but don’t try to lower your managing budget with automated solutions and cut on headcount for managing the campaigns, because automated solutions when not audited can cause much more harm than help
• Manage product launches differently than your everyday campaigns; don’t fall into the basic mistake of stopping or modifying everyday campaigns during product launches. Also keep in mind that during a product launch a social media activity backed with advertising is much more effective than just advertising on social media

3) Use Facebook Login for your e-Commerce site

Facebook Login is a great way to authenticate people on your eCommerce site. This functionality does not only enable the easy sharing of thoughts and likes on your products, but is also a great win if you want to increase your user base fast. It is an ease of use for visitors in order to quickly login to your site in one click.

4) Build your eCommerce application on Facebook

Companies are planning to develop their own applications on Facebook. An e-Commerce application on Facebook has three major advantages,

• Presence: Your customer is already there (They don’t come to your web site every day)
• Ease of use: There is an opportunity to increase ease of you on two dimensions; first the real ease of use by making it simple to shop, second the perceived ease of use by just being on Facebook
• Trust: People will have less trust issues on Facebook domain than your company-specific domain to share their information with you

These three advantages will increase your potential buyers, since there is a target population who find it difficult to shop on different sites or are still afraid to shop online from e-commerce sites. For any online retailer with serious online revenue eCommerce application on Facebook is a great way to increase sales.

If you have not already applied social commerce tactics for your company or are resisting social commerce reality, please see the data below. Both are recent (June, 2010) survey results of US online marketers on Social Plug-ins & Social Commerce plans.

1) Facebook Social Plug-ins implemented by online marketers
2) Facebook Social Commerce Plans for online marketers

Banner Advertisement

The reason why the “Radical Marketer” advises his brands to spend more on Paid Search, instead of the internet banners are proven with data now.

However, where the McKinsey study lacks is; this chart doesn’t get into detail of which banners are annoying. We advise companies to use banners only to selected, targeted consumers with a respect for their interest (this translates to good media planning and targeted banner creation for each specific media).

One of the major obstacles on the move towards new marketing is the lacking decision making in the choice of digital agencies.

Recently, iMediaConnection had an article on this issue. (To see the full article please visit; A CMOs guide to hiring a digital agency – iMediaConnection.com.)

You can find my takeout and thinking on this article below.

Three things not to miss when choosing a digital agency:

1) Understand that nobody serves a perfect full service and you need either a great team or a lead agency.

from the article: “Do you opt for a “specialist” agency — a social media shop, for example — to work in a highly technical area, or do you hire one agency that can bring it all together at the risk of sacrificing some key knowledge in an emerging area?…

… If you have the time and staff to orchestrate across multiple specialists, then you have the option to spread the love. If youre like most organizations, however, and youre short-staffed and time-crunched, then you should find and assign a lead agency and have them sub-contract for the specialists.”

2) Don’t try to catch up with each trend yourself, it doesn’t pay off

from the article: “digital creates new communication channels faster than advertisers can figure out how to use them…

…If you try to have a specialist for every niche, you’ll constantly be searching for a specialist for the next new thing,”

3) Look for thought leadership and be courageous to empower the thought leaders (even if they are outside of your company).

from the article: “If you have a lead agency responsible for bringing holistic thinking, then they will have the responsibility to be constantly searching for those specialists and providing you with thought leadership and success.”

Also, the article correctly pointed on an often problem creating area; the view of the CMO and the marketing team.

“the assumption that the onus is on the agency to make its client happy won’t get a CMO very far in the long-run”

That is so correct, and just a change in this view might change the total outcome of the marketing efforts (needless to say, if the company was smart enough to choose the right agency).

Couple years ago, an eConsultancy study found  that nearly half of all respondents (45.5%) do not have a structured approach to managing their web projects. You can reach the study at Web Project Management: Best Practice Reports . This was in May, 2007 , unfortunately not much has changed so far.

As the report correctly states;

“Companies without a structured approach are the least likely to achieve their project goals, least likely to deliver customer satisfaction, are least able to deal with change during the course of the project and are less likely to achieve deadlines, meet budgets and deliver positive ROI.”

The difference between the “visionary” marketing managers and the “doers” is;

First, a good understanding of the web (the team members must be living in the new web)

And second, a good team with a project management skills (of course this comes with web project experience)

Your team with good project management skills will be using probably a good project management system as well. Below are the Top 10 open source web project management softwares by CyberCiti;

1: Codendi
2: Redmine
3: ProjectPier
4: Trac
5: Project HQ
6: Collabtive
7: eGroupWare
8: KForge
9: OpenGoo
10: ClockingIT

See the complete list and download information at: Top 10 Open Source Web-Based Project Management Software

and the upcoming events for 2008 are as following (imediaconnection events are not included);