How To Start Online Grocery Store With Wcomm?

Start an online retail store which would resemble a retail outlets where your customer can try different types of food and household products on the shelves of the store. People now a days love to shop online their grocery items because it gives convenience shopping experience, where they can shop grocery stuffs without moving out of house.

With wcomm, starting a grocery store is simple and cost efficient. You can basically run an online retail store for just 1/3rd of the price than what other Ecommerce Service provider Charges you. Let’s see the list of features that you need to focus on before starting up an online groceries store.

Arrangement and managing the stocks

Your online groceries store would have thousands of different products each will be varied by weight or counts. It’s a challenging process to maintain your products inventory and to run the store smoothly. But with wcomm groceries store inventory management features, you can easily manage heap amount of products in a single window. Our Inventory managements system will ensure that the store has optimal amount of goods and also make sure that store won’t have either too much products or too little in your inventory will avert a great loss towards your online groceries store.

Infrastructure of your store

Your store look must be appealing the consumer to purchase the products. wcomm premium themes will make your store to achieve this. Wcomm themes make sure that the stores layout and appearance would perfectly match the environment of a physical groceries store so that the customer won’t miss a thing what they get while on the physical store.

Wcomm lets you to categorize the products based on Type of products, edible or non edible, personal care, home care and many more. Customer can also browse specific products based on the offers and products bundles. More over your store lets you to display food products’ expiration dates so that your customer will be aware of the best before dates before they make purchase.

With wcomm themes you can show off the popular and most demanding products in prime places like home page carousel slider and even at recommended products block on the products pages and view cart page. This will not only let your customer aware of the products availability but also increase the sales rate.

Every product pages are carefully crafted to provide a seamless purchase experience on your store. For each product you can add unlimited images, unlimited attributes, short description, long description, eye catching Buy Now button and many more. Your customer would get all needed information to purchase those products.

Branding with SEO

Branding not only lets you to increase your sales but also creates fame on towards your store’s name. Branding creates a ripple for the store among the customer which would leads to reorganization of the store that brings trustworthiness. Wcomm supports wide range of marketing strategy and Search Engine optimizations.

Provide On-page optimizations data like Meta tag, Meta title and Meta descriptions Image Alt tags and many more. You can eventually modify anything to make your store favor for popular search engine indexes. Another medium you can utilize is email marketing. There is a strong bond between ecommerce stores and email marketing channels. With Email marketing you can send promotional emails which let your customer to engage on your products. Creating a perfect email marketing strategy is one of the best methods to engage your customer and convincing them to buy the products.

On the other hand social media is considered as best medium to engage the customer and make good amount of sales. Letting your customer to share your stores product on their social media store will provide a chance of spreading the products over their own social media accounts. With this method the products would get popularity without even receiving visitors to your store.

Behavior stats

Monitoring and gathering reports of an online stores activity is a recommended practice on any ecommerce store. wcomm has inbuilt stats system which provide fine tuned tracking and reporting events like items that added to the cart, the orders that have completed purchase, total number of coupon used and many more.

Wcomm stats provide powerful reports with visualizations in Beautiful GUI, Tracking and opportunities to learn about your store better and solve the confusion about your store activities. With the help of wcomm store stats you will come to know more about your stores current status and you can set your future goal towards your store development easily.

Shipping and Delivery

An online store isn’t fulfilled until the shipment service is Setup properly for your store based on the region. Once your products leave the store for shipment to its important that the package reaches safely to the designated customer. A single fault in the shipping system will bring great loss towards your business.

Wcomm give ability managing shipping process by tracking inventory or tracking shipments, deciding on a shipping services or printing labels, generating invoices and even implementing drop shipping feature that reduce your pressure on shipping segment on the Business.

With wcomm you can handle enormous amount of orders easily and can generate invoice receipts without any problem. Wcomm lets you to change charge of carries rates. Charging perfect real time shipping rate of various carriers service provider lets the customer to choose and pay the exact carrier service they want.

Wcomm shipping management lets you to calculate the exact shipping rates based factors like package size, package weight, departing country and destination country. You can set up multiple carriers options for single products which would help your customer to determine which carriers service is better for their region.

Payment method

Setting a payment gateway favorable your customer is a challenging part and increase successful purchase on you store. Wcomm support 5+ different types of payment gateways which would accept payment from multiple currencies throughout the world. Wcomm is an official partner of popular payment gateway EBS and PayU money. Store owners who opt-in for EBS and PayU biz for their online store would be awarded with special discounts.

By default all wcomm store are integrated with COD and PayPal payment gateway. This will let to start selling products instantly after setting up the store. wcomm stores undergoes with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry – Data Security Standard) compliance. Your store would accept payment from Visa, MasterCard, American Express and many more cards. By this wcomm reduce the chances of store’s customer information from being stolen.

Customer service Support

As a Popular Online store keeper you should provide bold response towards your customer when they need help regarding your store and products. A negative impression can affect hundreds of new customer from making a purchase. Wcomm store will let you to support your customer through various systems like Email support, support tickets and live Chat.

Providing an awesome customer experience will increase your stores creditability and trustworthiness among your customers which leads to revisit for repeated purchase of your products.

Conclusion

What we talked above is just the part of wcomm online groceries store development. Development of a customized ecommerce store starts from just $749 with 310+ features and 150+ fully customizable templates. Wcomm Ecommerce store development will make sure that a seamless run of online business.

What is Pay per click ?

Pay-per-click (PPC), also called cost per click (CPC), is an internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a website owner or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.

Pay-per-click is commonly associated with first-tier search engines (such as Google AdWords and Microsoft Bing Ads). With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. In contrast, content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system. PPC "display" advertisements, also known as "banner" ads, are shown on web sites with related content that have agreed to show ads and are typically not pay-per-click advertising. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have also adopted pay-per-click as one of their advertising models.

However, websites can offer PPC ads. Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to, above, or beneath organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and others have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.

Purpose

Pay-per-click, along with cost per impression and cost per order, are used to assess the cost effectiveness and profitability of internet marketing. Pay-per-click has an advantage over cost per impression in that it tells us something about how effective the advertising was. Clicks are a way to measure attention and interest. If the main purpose of an ad is to generate a click, or more specifically drive traffic to a destination, then pay-per-click is the preferred metric. Once a certain number of web impressions are achieved, the quality and placement of the advertisement will affect click through rates and the resulting pay-per-click.

Construction

Pay-per-click is calculated by dividing the advertising cost by the number of clicks generated by an advertisement. The basic formula is:

Pay-per-click ($) = Advertising cost ($) ÷ Ads clicked (#)

There are two primary models for determining pay-per-click: flat-rate and bid-based. In both cases, the advertiser must consider the potential value of a click from a given source. This value is based on the type of individual the advertiser is expecting to receive as a visitor to his or her website, and what the advertiser can gain from that visit, usually revenue, both in the short term as well as in the long term. As with other forms of advertising targeting is key, and factors that often play into PPC campaigns include the target's interest (often defined by a search term they have entered into a search engine, or the content of a page that they are browsing), intent (e.g., to purchase or not), location (for geo targeting), and the day and time that they are browsing.

Flat-rate PPC

In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the publisher has a rate card that lists the pay-per-click (PPC) within different areas of their website or network. These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher PPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors. However, in many cases advertisers can negotiate lower rates, especially when committing to a long-term or high-value contract.

The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards.^[5] However, these rates are sometimes minimal, and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility. These sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories, allowing a high degree of targeting by advertisers. In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads.

Bid-based PPC

The advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot.

When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page (SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword that is being bid upon occurs. All bids for the keyword that target the searcher's Geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc. are then compared and the winner determined. In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on the page are influenced by the amount each has bid. The bid and Quality Score are used to give each advertiser's advert an ad rank. The ad with the highest ad rank shows up first. The predominant three match types for both Google and Bing are broad, exact and phrase match. Google also offers the broad modifier match type which differs from broad match in that the keyword must contain the actual keyword terms in any order and doesn't include relevant variations of the terms.

Advantages

• PPC can generate traffic quickly to your website: If a company wants quick results to their campaigns, PPC is one of the ways. It gives faster results than organic search traffic.
• PPC marketing helps to set budget: A company can allocate specific amount that it wants to spend towards PPC marketing. For example, in Adwords daily budget can be spent.
• PPC gives measurable results: PPC marketing helps companies to measure the results of the campaigns because PPC networks, such as Google Adwords, will provide certain metrics that enable website owners to see if their ads are really converting and giving them a reasonable ROI.
• PPC ads gives exposure to the business locally and globally: It helps both local and international businesses to target the right audience because it is not profitable for a local business brand to showcase the ad to global audience.

Disadvantages

• PPC can cost a lot if you can’t manage the campaign properly: PPC can indeed let companies to allocate proper budget for PPC marketing, but the same PPC campaigns can backfire on the budget, if the company is not careful.
• PPC campaign may not be successful always: Investing in PPC marketing may not always give higher conversion rates or increase in sales. PPC campaign efforts may be futile if it is not managed properly.
• PPC ads are not permanent: PPC Ads Disappear when the Campaign ends. The ads will not show in the search page when the budget allocated to it is over. A company with huge budget for advertising may not face this problem.

What is Search engine marketing ?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.

Market

In 2007, U.S. advertisers spent US$24.6 billion on search engine marketing. In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S. search engine spend. As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider. It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency.

History

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers for search engines. In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance. The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.

Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Methods and metrics

There are five categories of methods and metrics used to optimize websites through search engine optimization.

1. Keyword research and analysis involves three "steps": ensuring the site can be indexed in the search engines, finding the most relevant and popular keywords for the site and its products, and using those keywords on the site in a way that will generate and convert traffic. A follow-on effect of keyword analysis and research is the search perception impact.Search perception impact describes the identified impact of a brand's search results on consumer perception, including title and meta tags, site indexing, and keyword focus. As online searching is often the first step for potential consumers/customers, the search perception impact shapes the brand impression for each individual.
2. Website saturation and popularity, or how much presence a website has on search engines, can be analyzed through the number of pages of the site that are indexed by search engines (saturation) and how many the site has (popularity). It requires pages to contain keywords people are looking for and ensure that they rank high enough in search engine rankings. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. The following are major tools measuring various aspects of saturation and link popularity: Link Popularity, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Link Popularity and Search Engine Saturation.
3. Back end tools, including Web analytic tools and HTML validators, provide data on a website and its visitors and allow the success of a website to be measured. They range from simple traffic counters to tools that work with log files and to more sophisticated tools that are based on page tagging (putting JavaScript or an image on a page to track actions). These tools can deliver conversion-related information. There are three major tools used by EBSCO: (a) log file analyzing tool: WebTrends by NetiQ; (b) tag-based analytic tool: WebSideStory's Hitbox; and (c) transaction-based tool: TeaLeaf RealiTea. Validators check the invisible parts of websites, highlighting potential problems and many usability issues and ensuring websites meet W3C code standards. Try to use more than one HTML validator or spider simulator because each one tests, highlights, and reports on slightly different aspects of your website.
4. Whois tools reveal the owners of various websites, and can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues.
5. Google Mobile-Friendly Website Checker: This test will analyze a URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design.

Paid inclusion

The image displays the difference between paid advertising in Google search results and organic results

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages. Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies either in the main results area, or as a separately identified advertising area.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator. Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be cataloged on a regular basis. However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently. A per-click fee may also apply. Each search engine is different. Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success. More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!, mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling. Others, like Google do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable. Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users. Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages. In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index. Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization, since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months. Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

Comparison with SEO

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO. SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO). SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done. A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time. SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising, particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition. Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM). SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.^[18] Some of the latest theoretical advances include search engine marketing management (SEMM). SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO). SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO. For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor. SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

Ethical questions

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy, and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports by Consumer Reports Web Watch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement. The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years. In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term. Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.

On April 24, 2012 many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links for the purpose of passing off the rank. The Google Update was called Penguin. Since then, there has been several different Penguin / Panda updates rolled out by Google. SEM has, however, nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic SEO and PPC management. As of October 20, 2014 Google has released three official revisions of their Penguin Update.

Examples

AdWords is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords which can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service. This project is highly practical for advertisers as the project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing, thus the payment of the service only applies if their advert has been clicked on. SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO services. This promotion has helped their business elaborate, offering added value to consumers who endeavor to employ AdWords for promoting their products and services. One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested. Moreover, SEM companies have described AdWords as a fine practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on Internet advertising. The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for presenting to clients the performance of their canvas from click to conversion. AdWords project has enabled SEM companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass. The assistance of AdWord canvass could contribute to the huge success in the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s websites, by as much as 250% in only nine months.

Another way search engine marketing is managed is by contextual advertising. Here marketers place ads on other sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of browsers who are seeking information from those sites. A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the relationships amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines. Search engines were not important to some industries in the past, but over the past years the use of search engines for accessing information has become vital to increase business opportunities. The use of SEM strategic tools for businesses such as tourism can attract potential consumers to view their products, but it could also pose various challenges. These challenges could be the competition that companies face amongst their industry and other sources of information that could draw the attention of online consumers. To assist the combat of challenges, the main objective for businesses applying SEM is to improve and maintain their ranking as high as possible on SERPs so that they can gain visibility. Therefore, search engines are adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers. This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

What is Native advertising ?

Native advertising is a type of disguised advertising, usually online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff. The word "native" refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform.

Product placement (embedded marketing) is a precursor to native advertising. Instead of embedded marketing's technique of placing the product within the content, in native marketing the product and content are merged. Because of this merger of advertising and content, the legal status of native advertising is uncertain, and the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop on advertorials and other disguised advertising in 2013.

Forms

Despite the ambiguity surrounding native advertising's invention, many experts do consider the Hallmark Hall of Fame, a series which first aired in 1951 and still runs today, as among the earliest instances of the technique. According to Lin Grensing-Pophal, "The award-winning series is arguably one of the earliest examples of 'native' advertising—advertising that is secondary to the message being delivered, but impact through its association with valued content."

Contemporary formats for native advertising now include promoted videos, images, articles, commentary, music, and other various forms of media. A majority of these methods for delivering the native strategy have been relegated to an online presence, where it is most commonly employed as publisher-produced brand content, a similar concept to the traditional advertorial. Alternative examples of modern technique include search advertising, when ads appear alongside search results that qualify as native to the search experience. Popular examples include,Twitter's promoted Tweets, Facebook's promoted stories, and Tumblr's promoted posts. The most traditionally influenced form of native marketing manifests as the placement of sponsor-funded content alongside editorial content,^[5] or showing "other content you might be interested in" which is sponsored by a marketer alongside editorial recommendations.

Most recently, controversy has arisen as to whether Content marketing is a form of native marketing, or if they are inherently separate ideologies and styles; with native market strategists claiming that they utilize content marketing techniques, and some content market strategists claiming to not be a form of native marketing.

Advertising Disclosure

As it is the nature of disguised advertising to blend with their surrounding, a clear disclosure was deemed necessary when employing native marketing strategy in order to protect the consumer from being deceived, and to assist audiences in distinguishing between sponsored and regular content. According to Federal Trade Commission, means of disclosure include visual cues, labels, and other techniques. The most common practices of these are recognizable by understated labels, such as “Advertisement”, “Ad”, “Promoted”, “Sponsored”, “Featured Partner”, or “Suggested Post” in subtitles, corners, or the bottoms of ads. A widespread tendency in such measures is to mention the brand name of the sponsor, as in “Promoted by [brand]”, “Sponsored by [brand]”, or “Presented by [brand]”. These can vary drastically due to the publisher's choice of disclosure language (i.e. wording used to identify native advertising placement).

In 2009, the Federal Trade Commission released their Endorsement Guideline specifically to increase consumer awareness of endorsements and testimonials in advertising given the rise in popularity of social media and blogging.

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) released updated guidelines in 2015 reaffirming the need of publishers to distinguish editorial and advertising content. The ASME approach recommends both labels to disclose commercial sponsorship and in-content visual evidence to help the user distinguish native advertising from editorial.

A study published by University of California researchers found that even labeled native advertising deceived about a quarter of survey research subjects. In the study, 27% of respondents thought that journalists or editors wrote an advertorial for diet pills, despite the presence of the "Sponsored Content" label. Because the Federal Trade Commission can bring cases concerning practices that mislead a substantial minority of consumers, the authors conclude that many native advertising campaigns are probably deceptive under federal law. The authors also explain two theories of why native advertising is deceptive. First, schema theory suggests that advertorials mislead by causing consumers not to trigger their innate skepticism to advertising. Second, advertorials also cause source-based misleadingness problems by imbuing advertising material with the authority normally assigned to editorial content.

Categories of Online Ads

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the primary organization responsible for developing ad industry standards and conducting business research, published a report in 2013 detailing six different categories for differentiating types of native advertisements.

1. In-Feed Ad Units: As the name denotes, In-Feed ads are units located within the website’s normal content feed, meaning they appear as if the content may have been written by or in partnership with the publisher’s team to match the surrounding stories. A category that rose to popularity through sites like Up worthy and Buzz feed's sponsored articles due to its effectiveness, In-Feed has also been the source of controversy for native marketing, as it is here the distinction between native and content marketing is typically asserted.
2. Search Ads: Appearing in the list of search results, these are generally found above the organic search results or in favorable position, having been sold to advertisers with a guarantee for optimal placement on the search engine page. They usually possess an identical appearance as other results on the page with the exception of disclosure aspects.
3. Recommendation Widgets: Although these ads are part of the content of the site, these do not tend to appear in like manner to the content of the editorial feed. Typically delivered through a widget, recommendation ads are generally recognizable by words which imply external reference, suggestions, and tangentially related topics. "You might also like"; "You might like"; “Elsewhere from around the web"; "From around the web"; "You may have missed", or "Recommended for you" typically characterize these units.
4. Promoted Listings: Usually featured on websites that are not content based, such as e-commerce sites, promoted listings are presented in identical fashion with the products or services offered on the given site. Similarly justified as search ads, sponsored products are considered native to the experience in much the same way as search ads.
5. In-Ad (IAB Standard): An In-Ad fits in a standard IAB container found outside the feed, containing "...contextually relevant content within the ad, links to an offsite page, has been sold with a guaranteed placement, and is measured on brand metrics such as interaction and brand lift."
6. Custom / Can't be Contained: This category is left for the odd ends and ads that do not conform to any of the other content categories.

Digital Platforms

Native advertising platforms are classified into two categories, commonly referred to as "open" and "closed" platforms, but hybrid options are also utilized with some frequency.

Closed platforms are formats created by brands for the purpose of promoting their own content intrinsically on their websites. Advertisements seen on these platforms will not be seen on others, as these ad types are generated for its sole use, and structured around exhibiting ad units within the confines of the website's specific agendas. Namely, advertisements distributed on closed platforms originate from the platform's brand itself. Popular examples include Promoted Tweets on Twitter, Sponsored Stories on Facebook, and TrueView Video Ads on YouTube.

Open platforms are defined by the promotion of the same piece of branded content across multiple platforms ubiquitously, but through some variation of native ad formats. Unlike closed platforms, the content itself lives outside any given website that it appears on, and is usually distributed across multiple sites by a third party company, meaning that the advertisements appearing on open platforms namely are placed there by an advertiser.

Hybrid platforms allow the content publishing platforms to install a private marketplace where advertisers have the option to bid on the inventory of ad space either through direct sales or programmatic auction through what is known as Real-Time Bidding (RTB). Therefore, advertisements distributed on hybrid platforms are placed there by the platform itself, the space having been sold to an open platform advertiser.

What is Content Marketing ?

Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. Content marketing is also defined as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. Content marketing can further be characterized as a step from earned to owned media. This means that by establishing own brand channels, brands increasingly act like media companies and fulfil corresponding functions like entertainment, information and social interaction. Ultimately, brands can become their own communication-medium and thereby replace paid-media channels.

The type of content businesses share is closely related to what they sell. However, the content's main focus is on the needs of the prospect. This information is consistently delivered and can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs etc.

History

Advertising has long used content to disseminate information about a brand and build a brand's reputation.

In 1895, John Deere launched the magazine The Furrow, providing information to farmers on how to become more profitable. The magazine, considered the first custom publication, is still in circulation, reaching 1.5 million readers in 40 countries in 12 different languages.

Michelin developed the Michelin Guide in 1900, offering drivers information on auto maintenance, accommodations, and other travel tips. 35,000 copies were distributed for free in this first edition.

Jell-O salesmen went door-to-door, distributing their cookbook for free in 1904. Touting the dessert as a versatile food, the company saw its sales rise to over $1 million by 1906.

The phrase "content marketing" was used as early as 1996, when John F. Oppedahl led a roundtable for journalists at the American Society for Newspaper Editors. In 1998, Jerrell Jimerson held the title of "director of online and content marketing" at Netscape. In 1999, author Jeff Cannon wrote,“In content marketing, content is created to provide consumers with the information they seek.”

By 2014, Forbes Magazine's website had written about the seven most popular ways companies use content marketing. In it, the columnist points out that by 2013, use of content marketing had jumped across corporations from 60% a year or so before, to 93% as part of their overall marketing strategy. Despite the fact that 70% of organizations are creating more content, only 21% of marketers think they are successful at tracking ROI.

Modern Examples

The rise of content marketing has turned traditional businesses into media publishing companies. As James O'Brian of Contently wrote on Mashable, "The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story."

Red Bull, which sells a high-energy beverage, has published YouTube videos, hosted experiences, and sponsored events around extreme sports and activities like mountain biking, BMX, motocross, snowboarding, skateboarding, cliff-diving, freestyle motocross, and Formula 1 racing. Red Bull Media House is a unit of Red Bull that "produces full-length feature films for cinema and downstream channels (DVD, VOD, TV)." The Red Bulletin is an international monthly magazine Red Bull publishes with a focus on men's sports, culture, and lifestyle.

The personal finance site Mint.com used content marketing, specifically their personal finance blog MintLife, to build an audience for a product they planned to sell. According to entrepreneur Sachin Rekhi, Mint.com concentrated on building the audience for MintLife "independent of the eventual Mint.com product." Content on the blog included how to guides on paying for college, saving for a house, and getting out of debt. Other popular content included in-depth interview and a series on financial disasters called "Trainwreck Tuesdays." Popularity of the site surged as did demand for the product. "Mint grew quickly enough to sell to Intuit for $170 million after three years in business. By 2013, the tool reached 10 million users, many of whom trusted Mint to handle their sensitive banking information because of the blog’s smart, helpful content."

What is Referral marketing ?

Referral marketing is a method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals, usually word of mouth. Such referrals often happen spontaneously but businesses can influence this through appropriate strategies.

Overview

Referral marketing is a process to encourage and significantly increase referrals from word of mouth, perhaps the oldest and most trusted marketing strategy. This can be accomplished by encouraging and rewarding customers, and a wide variety of other contacts, to recommend products and services from consumer and B2B brands, both online and offline.

Online referral marketing is the internet-based, or Software as a Service (SaaS) approach, to traditional referral marketing. By tracking customer behavior online through the use of web browser cookies and similar technology, online referral marketing can potentially increase brand awareness, referrals and, ultimately, revenue. Many platforms allow organizations to see their referral marketing return on investment (ROI), and to optimize their campaigns to improve results. Many of the newest systems provide users with the same experience whether they are on a desktop or mobile device. Offline referral marketers sometimes use trackable business cards. Trackable business cards typically contain QR codes linking them to online content for sale while providing a way to track that sale back to the person whose card was scanned.

Benefits of referral programs

A study conducted by the Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Pennsylvania, on referral programs and customer value which followed the customer referral program of a German bank that paid customers 25 euros for bringing in a new customer, was released in July 2010. According to Professor Van den Bulte, this is the first ever study published on the financial evaluation of customer referral programs. The study found that referred customers were both more profitable and loyal than normal customers. Referred customers had a higher contribution margin, a higher retention rate and were more valuable in both the short and long run.

On whether customer referral programs are worth the cost, the study says that it records "a positive value differential, both in the short term and long term, between customers acquired through a referral program and other customers. Importantly, this value differential is larger than the referral fee. Hence, referral programs can indeed pay off.