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Product Listing Ads (PLAs) have been a disruptive force on the retail landscape. They've fundamentally changed how consumers interact with paid search ads (with images, as opposed to with text only). However, and perhaps even more importantly, PLAs have fundamentally changed how retailers interact with paid search campaigns. Previously, in paid search, retailers had to "speak" in the language of search engines — that of keywords, match types and ad groups. Now with PLAs, retailers can speak in their own language — that of products and categories. They're quickly realizing that speaking in their own language is a whole lot easier.

Let's get down to business. Which social channels should you be using to generate the maximum number of leads? You have so many options to choose from: Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, SlideShare, Vimeo and the list goes on. Today I'm going to focus on three that I think are vitally important for B-to-B brands.

Since smartphones became one of the dominant devices for surfing the web, marketers have typically had two ways of dealing with websites for phones (well, three if you include a still prevalent strategy — do nothing — but that doesn't count):

In 2014, retailers will finally have a "it's not who you are in the inside, it's what you do that counts" moment regarding buzzy phrases like "omnichannel," "showrooming" and "big data." That is, retailers will intensively focus on how consumers interact with their brand in every way possible. As such, customer experience management (CXM) will move front and center in 2014, replacing omnichannel as the main driver for retailers. Expect customer-rich experiences anchoring retail goals throughout 2014.

As I sit here stuck in a hotel room in North Carolina while it snows for the second day in a row, I realized it was time once again for my annual guide to disaster planning for your business. Is your business ready for a natural disaster or severe weather? Here are some tips that I've published over the years based on firsthand experience. (I live in Florida, so I've seen a few hurricanes, floods, tornados and other severe weather.) 

The first computer I ever bought was a Tandy TRS-80 I got at RadioShack in the mid-1980s. There was no floppy drive, no operating system, no internet connection and no hard drive. I used a tape recorder to save data, but I still felt pretty cutting edge, even if it was largely an expensive paperweight, since I had no programming skills and used it like a big calculator. While those were also the halcyon days of RadioShack, the electronics retailer would like 2014 to be the start of a new golden age.

Gaining insight into how your customers think and behave is essential for an effective marketing strategy. Yet customer research can be expensive and time consuming. Should you hire focus groups? Conduct customer surveys? Enlist help from a data analyst? While each of those methods can be useful, the starting point to gathering customer intelligence should be easy and inexpensive for online retailers, who already have a window into customer intent and behaviors through the search function on their website. Site search data reflects what visitors actually do on your website.

With an ever-changing technology like mobile, it's important to stay up to date with the trends and take action on the already tried-and-true strategies. Let's take a look at some of these trends and must-do tactics.

Q: "I sell merchandise on eBay and via my own site, and have much better sales on eBay. How can I convert those eBay buyers to purchase on my website?"

Google must be seeing some success from its same-day delivery service because it's announced it will be expanding the service to the Southland. Right now, the trial run service will only be available for several hundred Google employees in Santa Monica, though should the company see success with this expansion, it could eventually be opened to the general public. Indeed, when Google launched its Shopping Express pilot in March 2013, it was only available for Google employees in Northern California. However, since September, the service has been available to all customers in San Francisco and San Jose.