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Last month's Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago had all the elements of a healthy trade show -- attendance was at record levels with over 10,000 paid attendees; the exhibit floor was packed with booths and customers; and the sessions were well attended. It seemed like everyone in the industry was at the show.

A common gripe among U.S. soccer fans is that vuvuzelas, the South African horns heard buzzing throughout the World Cup tournament, are obnoxious noisemakers. But for 365 Inc., the plastic trumpets represent the sweet sound of success. Late last year, the 10-employee online retailer ordered several thousand vuvuzelas on a hunch that they'd become popular among U.S. soccer fans. The Birmingham, Ala., company then promoted the instruments mainly using paid-search advertising on Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. amid minimal competition for relevant search terms such as "soccer horn" and "stadium horn." Since then, the small firm has sold nearly 30,000 vuvuzelas for about $8 each, pulling in roughly $240,000 in revenue.

In a session at this month's Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, Paul Holstein, vice president of CableOrganizer.com, an online retailer of cable, wiring and equipment management products, listed three ways that retailers can use feedback from their customers to better their operations.

For multichannel retailer Deb Shops, a seller of junior and plus-sized apparel and accessories for women aged 13 to 25, combining the power of two of online retail's most profitable channels — social media and search — has brought increased brand awareness, more site traffic and ultimately increased sales.

To those on the fringes, paid search engine marketing (SEM) can appear to be black magic. There are so many variables to get right — keywords, ads, bids, landing pages, offers, etc. — and the competition can be brutal. Before you know it, you're spending more than you can afford just to stay in the game.

A new trend seems to be popping up in the world of retail: a greater 
emphasis on local marketing by national retailers.

Do you know which keywords are driving phone calls to your business? Are the pay-per-click (PPC) keywords “red shoes” making the phone ring? Or perhaps calls are coming from searches initiated with “black pumps” or “wedge sandals”? Whether you’re spending $600 a month on PPC or six figures, it’s imperative to know how your online marketing efforts affect your offline sales conversions.

B-to-B companies are notoriously cheap, so here are some free tools and services that can improve your online marketing know-how and creative efforts.

The U.S. Commerce Department kicked off an initiative to take a close look at how the privacy of individuals is impacted broadly in the Internet economy with the goal of providing advice to the White House on how both the president and government policymakers might regard the topic. The U.S. government plan comes after 10 countries took Google to task for perceived failings in protecting personal information of those who use its Internet-based services, but the Commerce Dept. isn’t saying there’s any connection to that. According to one Commerce source, the idea for a broad-based privacy-policy review related to the Internet has been mulled for a few months.

Last week we saw highlights from the "Think with Google: Future of Multi-Channel" summit. Today we learn from Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist at Google, about measuring offline marketing impact online and measuring online impact offline. Watch the short 5-min video on non-line driven analytics.