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  February 27, 2007
PART 2: DO CSE's AND MARKETPLACES WORK FOR ONLINE MERCHANTS?
by Chip Arndt
10 Comparison Shopping Engines Unedited Responses to 10 Most Asked QuestionsMiami, FL (February 27, 2007)—This edition is continued from the January, 2007 newsletter. Click here to review "PART 1: Do CSE's And Marketplaces Work For Online Merchants?"
In the prior newsletter, we gave download access to a complimentary copy of "10 Comparison Shopping Engines Unedited Responses to 10 Most Asked Questions", where leading CSE's like Yahoo Shopping, Pronto, and PriceRunner unveil their strengths and secrets. We also summarized the most effective way to compete on CSEs and Marketplaces; which include:
  1. Know your marketing channels
    a. There are a lot of them!
  2. Know what products sell into these channels
    a. Each channel markets their brand in their unique way to attract certain consumers
  3. Make sure your data feeds are configured/optimized correctly
    a. You are dead in the water if your data is not accurate
  4. Experiment with many marketing channels
    a. Each channel appeals to different types of consumers
    b. Some channels you think work don't!
    c. Some channels you think would never work do!
  5. Analyze how your products are selling
    a. Be proactive--use the Chanalytics(sm) tool available to you FREE with Channel Management
  6. Pick and choose those strategies that work
    a. Be proactive = feed -> analyze -> strategize -> feed -> repeat process!
  7. Work intelligently and proactively
    a. "What works today changes tomorrow."
Now let's break the points down:
1. Know Your Marketing Channels
There are numerous channels from which to choose and all can be very effective. MerchantAdvantage encourages you to try as many channels as you can for 60-90 days and see what works for your brand and product line.
There are some obvious channels to market to, but there are also many marketing channels that you think won’t work but do. And there are some that you think will work but don’t. The only way to truly find out is to try them and then analyze how your feeds are doing using Channel Management’s Chanalytics(sm) tool.
To help you further, in the appendix of this newsletter we’ve included unedited comments from 10 CSEs about how e-tailers can best make use of their marketing channels. It includes a brief introduction by MerchantAdvantage and then a section of questions that these CSEs have answered directly to help you, the merchant, better understand the added value CSEs can provide.
Remember that this is only a list of 10 CSEs. There are over 80 others that we know of in the marketplace. Hopefully, by the middle of this year we will be able to summarize them all for you, but in the meantime, check out this link for a complete list of who we feed to now-- there are more than 30!
2. Know What Products Sell Into These Channels
The only way to know what sells is to understand how the CSEs position their brand in the marketplace and thus, what type of consumer comes to that CSE. For instance, ShopandPrice.com specifically targets consumers of electronic goods, yet Shopzilla.com markets everything. Shop.com recently changed its marketing strategy to focus on professional, upscale women shoppers to create a unique brand in the marketplace. Thus, sending your “boogie” boards to Shop.com might not be a good decision, while sending your elegant, ski parkas would be.
Another way to know what sells is to utilize your Chanalytics(sm) tool, provided FREE as a part of Channel Management. On a daily basis, you can monitor your feeds and see what products sell and are clicked on for any channel. After 60-90 days you will have some very good data to determine what channels are working best and what products sell and which ones don’t. From this information you can then make more informed, forward-looking strategic business decisions.

  • Save time and money organizing, configuring and scheduling feeds.
  • View Up to the Minute Performance of Your Channels, Storefronts, Categories, and Products with Chanalytics(sm)!
  • Send your catalog feed to ANY shopping comparison site or marketplace immediately.
  • Adjust catalog feeds and product updates across your marketing channels in minutes, and
  • Analyze how your marketing campaigns are performing on a daily basis.

Click Here to Schedule Your No Obligation Demo Today

or CALL 1.800.550.9466

www.merchantadvantage.com

3. Make Sure Your Data Feeds Are Configured/Optimized Correctly
MerchantAdvantage invented Channel Management with Chanalytics(sm) to allow you to experiment with ANY marketing channel without worrying about the technical feed specs and formats that each channel requires.
“Michael Golden, president and CEO of Home Decor Products Inc. states that one of the simplest ways to sell well into CSEs is to ensure that your data is clean, meaning that it has correct pricing data, up-to-date availability information, and clear product descriptions with photos. When merchants send bad data, this affects their rankings on CSE’s.”
Golden goes on further to state: “Make yourself an expert in the technology…[and] if merchants have the budget, they should assign programmers with top Web-coding skills to manage their feeds.” (Source: Wall Street Journal, Startup Journal).
MerchantAdvantage agrees. We’re now the only company that provides all of this functionality and, for the same price, allows you to feed to any channel without hiring expensive teams of programmers or spending a lot of money on outsourced solutions. This approach saves you time, IT headaches, money, and lets you focus on marketing strategies rather technical nightmares.
Finally, by ensuring that your data is “clean” MerchantAdvantage ensures that those sites which “spider” your merchant storefront (unknowingly to most merchants) “crawl” all of the correct data, thereby ensuring that your site and product offerings get listed accurately, thus protecting your image and brand.
4. Experiment with Many Marketing Channels
MerchantAdvantage will support and work with ANY and ALL marketing channels. If you tell us about a channel we don't know about we will configure that channel for you immediately. All channels offer the merchant a revenue opportunity and it is our mission to help each merchant realize the potential benefits such channels may offer.
By using Channel Management with Chanalytics(sm) the merchant can send, optimize, analyze and react to information coming through their product catalog feeds in real time from and to ANY and ALL marketing channels instantly and affordably.
By relieving you of the feed spec and set-up requirements, MerchantAdvantage allows you to identify, test, and market to these channels. So why not test them all and then see which marketing channels work best?
5. Analyze How Your Products Are Selling
Sending your correctly optimized product catalog feed will always help with branding and customer awareness, but if you are interested in making profits, you must know how that channel is performing for you on a daily basis.
Most CSEs send you feedback reports on how their channel is performing, but none of them allow you to see how all of your channels are performing against other channels. There are also third-party solutions, which are excellent, but often out of your price range.
MerchantAdvantage’s FREE Chanalytics(sm) tool allows you to compare the sales performance of each feed to any and all others on one spreadsheet. Chanalytics(sm) also provides charts and graphs at a touch of a button that summarize how your products and categories are selling across a wide array of parameters within each channel. This allows senior management to respond to marketing strategies in real-time and makes marketing managers smarter!
6. Pick and Choose Those Strategies That Work
Merchants use CSEs and marketplaces to increase brand awareness and traffic, grow partnerships and revenues, and maximize advertising budgets and customer acquisition.
Depending on what you want to accomplish, you should know if your strategies are working on your chosen marketing channels. MerchantAdvantage recommends that you decide why you want to use a marketing channel and then analyze the data which speaks to that strategy. From this data, you will expand on successful strategies and change your focus, or marketing campaigns, that do not work.
7. Work Intelligently and Proactively
Simply being online leads to little. Merely pushing your data feed to a CSE is short-sighted. Merchants today must proactively work their online marketing campaigns to be successful.
To do this, larger merchants often rely on third-party companies with brilliant people that help increase online sales and customer acquisition. They also rely on excellent companies with research and data who analyze many important facets of CSEs and the world of e-commerce. The problem for the small to mid-sized business lies in the cost to work with these companies. You can’t afford them and you feel left out.
MerchantAdvantage exists to solve this dilemma. We provide you with affordable tools to work intelligently and information and advice that enable you to use those tools proactively.
We believe that you can compete online, that you are smart, that you understand your customer, and that you want to execute your marketing strategies to any marketing channel on your own in an affordable manner. Now you can with MerchantAdvantage.
MerchantAdvantage Wrap Up:
Business Growth:
CSEs open the doors for small to mid-sized businesses to reach literally millions of potential customers. Working with CSEs does cost money, but so does any marketing campaign. As they say, nothing is free.
Think about how much your off-line marketing campaigns cost today and then compare that cost to working with CSEs and the potential “traffic” that comes to your storefront. To take this to the next level, then think about all of that online traffic which you can now also target on many CSEs by zip code, city, county or state. At the end of the day, the costs associated to experiment with CSEs are often very affordable compared to other methods of advertising and marketing, especially if you work intelligently and proactively.
Brand Awareness:
The ability to reach millions of people with your company name and logo is very attractive when working with CSEs, regardless of the revenues associated with the leads CSEs generate. When a merchant launches an internet marketing campaign, it is both as an opportunity to market your products and a form of public relations. The exposure and traffic a merchant gets when working with CSEs should be factored into the overall pay-per-click costs associated with each marketing campaign and then compared to the other methods a merchant has used in the past to get the same exposure.
Traffic:
If no one comes to your site when you are working with CSEs, then a merchant should definitely not use them. MerchantAdvantage has found that this is very rarely the case. In fact, each of our clients reports an increase in traffic. That is the great news.
CSEs and marketplaces do deliver high volume traffic, especially if the merchant spends a little more money to be positioned in the top rankings. The important factor, of course, is driving qualified traffic to your web site and then knowing how to remarket to that “captured traffic.”
Ensuring that your traffic is qualified usually means reaching the client on the CSE or marketplace who is looking for the products you offer. That means merchants must ensure that their data is “clean” and perfect so that the CSEs and marketplaces can place your data correctly within their search profiles. This includes making sure product descriptions and pictures are accurate, that marketing language is updated, that the right keywords are used and that any special offers are followed up on immediately.
One additional factor that leads to failed marketing campaigns is insufficient research. MerchantAdvantage helps you with this through our FREE newsletter and technical advice section. Please ensure that you review our FREE and archived newsletters as well as read the new editions that come out each month.
Finally, if you still are wondering the right time to start using marketing channels, it is now. It is not a question of whether CSEs and marketplaces drive quality traffic to your site and have a significant share of online shoppers’ attention--they do. Rather it is time to start working these channels intelligently. MerchantAdvantage offers you affordable tools, information, and advice which collectively gives smaller online merchants the same options as the bigger companies, with much bigger budgets, to compete for your share of the growing world of e-commerce.

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"MerchantAdvantage is here to be your partner in growing your business in the multi billion dollar and complex world of online shopping. We are here because you are online.sm"

Michael Lambert, CEO


• Shopping for Trust:
A recent article points out some quick tactics for merchants looking to gain consumer’s trust without having a well known brand name. Suggestions begin with using site logos on the merchant’s site like BBB Online, TRUSTe, VeriSign, and HackerSafe. Other methods include using comparison engine confidence logos like PriceGrabber’s star ratings, Shopping’s Trusted Store, Bizrate’s Circle of Excellence, and CNet’s Certified Store.

• A Targeted Approach:
Using analytics to determine marketing strategy has once again been emphasized in recent studies. Research shows that selective merchandising is needed when placing items on shopping comparison engines. While sending all products may be profitable for a few merchants, the majority of stores see a substantial increase in return when products are selectively chosen and pushed to comparison engines based on their performance.

• Personalization- On-demand World:
In the on-demand world where many things are produced at the push of a button, there is an increased desire to tailor offerings to a customer’s desires. Merchants are seeing that nearly everything in the online shopping experience could and should be tested. Just as brick and mortar retailers lay out product displays in a precise manner, cross-sellers and check out pages should be constructed with maximum care. Just as product selection needs to be tailored to a marketplace, the product display and check out process should be tailored to the consumer. Even the smallest details, from the size of a check-out button, to a precise and searchable product description can add up to many more sales.

 


For information on how MerchantAdvantage may help your business grow, please contact us:
Chip Arndt
Executive Vice President
Business Development and Strategy
305.895.9466 x113
partnerships@merchantadvantage.com