 |
| |
 |
 |
| |
August 25, 2009 |
|
| Online Marketing Channels Commentary |
Product Data Feeds Drive Online Channel Marketing
by Chip Arndt, EVP & Co-Founder
Miami, FL (August 25, 2009) – We all know that there are a myriad of ways to market your online storefront to attract customers to your Website, to make sales, build your brand, and to let the world know you exist. Some of these strategies include traditional and often cost prohibitive methods of:
- Snail mail - yes, people still do this
- Literature, coupons, and referral incentives included with new orders - a must
- Magazine ads - expensive
- Radio - this can be inexpensive if done properly
- Billboards - who can afford to do this?
- Television - local cable is really the only cost-effective method
- Trade shows - yes they can help but are expensive
- Targeted local events - which can be fun and often very effective, and
- Being a member of your local and national chambers of commerce – why not?
…and cost-effective online methods of:
- Email, video email, and variations of traditional email
- Newsletters and writing articles for distribution on other Websites as an “expert”
- Social media such as blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and YouTube
- Ad placements with social media sites particularly related blogs, Facebook and YouTube
- Ad word buys on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Search (combined with Bing now)
- Mobile applications
- Affiliate marketing, and
- Marketing on consumer shopping engines and any shopping destination site marketing channel
Phew, so many choices from which to choose, where do I start? There is no one method which is best, rather MerchantAdvantage suggests that you pick a few methods and do them right! Focusing on and executing a few marketing methods and then seeing them through for 3-6 months is the best way to see if they work for you. If a marketing strategy does not work, then move on to another one.
What Marketing Methods Does MerchantAdvantage Focus On?
MerchantAdvantage focuses on working with companies, agencies, and ecommerce merchants that rely on product data feeds to:
- Execute online marketing strategies across a myriad of different marketing channels, and
- Facilitate companies working together in a seamless mode of communication
MerchantAdvantage focuses only on these areas of marketing because we want to ensure that we are the best at what we do and we have become quite adept at understanding how ecommerce related companies can make money, build their brand, and leverage online marketing channels and third-party vendor relationships that rely on product data feeds.
Product Data Feeds Drive Many Online Marketing Strategies.
Recently a client of MerchantAdvantage called in to ask if we could format a product data feed to send to a third-party software vendor that specializes in site search to increase online conversions into sales. The problem was that the proper working relationship relied on a perfectly formatted data feed, updated daily that adheres to strict specification requirements. The answer to the client’s question was simple: YES!
MerchantAdvantage’s Channel Management tool was designed to empower an ecommerce merchant, agency, or company, to work with any third-party that requires a product data feed. This includes:
- Consumer shopping engines, such as Google Product Search, Like, PriceGrabber, Pronto, Shopzilla, and many others
- Affiliate sites, such as Avant Link, Commission Junction, LinkShare, and many others
- Marketplaces, such as Amazon, Shop.com, Underbid, and others, and
- Third-party companies that provide value-add marketing solutions to their clients, such as IMN newsletter an ad retargeting platform, PowerReviews, SLI Systems Site Search, Veruta ad retargeting, and many others
The proper formatting, conversion mapping, set-up, optimization, and ongoing updating of product data feeds into any marketing channel when working with any third-party company is essential to ensuring that product data feeds mirror what exists on your Web storefront in real time.
Moreover, when working specifically with consumer shopping engines, affiliate marketing sites, and other marketing channels, it is vital to have functionality at your ready to analyze, update, and manipulate product data feeds immediately across those channels to stay ahead of the competition and maximize your return on ad spend.
The importance of an updated and properly formatted product data feed cannot be overlooked to maximize online marketing strategies across a wide array of marketing relationships and vendor relationships.
MerchantAdvantage encourages companies to analyze how they source their product catalog feeds in the most efficient and cost-effective manner and to contact your MerchantAdvantage technical representative to learn more on how to use Channel Management with Chanalytics(sm) to execute these marketing strategies and relationships, regardless of whom you are working with today and into the future.
|
| |
| Advice, Tips & Tricks |
The Technical Implementation of Product Data Feeds
By B. Thomas Romeo, Sr. Technical Engineer
Miami, FL (August 25, 2009)— Anyone can format one product data feed, BUT…
- Can you format 3, 5, 10, 25, or 50+ product data feeds easily and update these files to reflect new marketing strategies in real time?
- Do you want to control your marketing campaigns instead of relying on third-party, marketing agencies? Or…
- Are you frustrated that you don’t have a tool that can make the technical implementation and ongoing updating and optimizing of product data feeds easy and cost-effective, which can lead to saving hundreds of “people hours” and thousands of dollars and allow you to expand your marketing campaigns with limited effort?
MerchantAdvantage was built to resolve the above issues and empower ecommerce merchants to use a tool-based technology that:
- Enables you to work with any company and third-party vendor to facilitate the formatting, conversion mapping, set-up, and optimization of a product data feed to disparate systems in a seamless mode of communication, and
- Empowers ecommerce companies to analyze and update product catalog feeds to ensure feed purity and maximum efficiency when executing pay-per-click or other marketing strategies that require a product data feed.
How Do We Do This?
MerchantAdvantage has developed a proprietary technology that empowers ecommerce merchants to control the import and export of data without worrying about technology dependencies placed on the ecommerce merchants by either their shopping cart technology or the marketing destination Website.
We are able to work with multiple shopping carts or ecommerce platforms because we custom import product inventory data based on predetermined fields in our system, based on the shopping cart or ecommerce platforms.
Many of these shopping cart technology platforms are pre-configured in the MerchantAdvantage Channel Management with Chanalytics tool so that final setup to use Channel Management is limited to customizing the tool to your relevant inventory/product set. Once the ecommerce merchant and MerchantAdvantage sets up an importable, well-formatted, data file and feed that corresponds to the ecommerce merchant’s product catalog, this data file and subsequent feed is scheduled on a regular basis to reflect updates made within the ecommerce merchant’s shopping cart inventory. These changes are then reflected on data feed imports scheduled within the Channel Management with Chanalytics software.
Now that the product inventory is available within the Channel Management with Chanalytics tool, the ecommerce merchant optimizes and exports the relevant product catalog data to any marketing channel, CSE (consumer shopping engine and comparison shopping engine), shopping destination site, or third party vendor in whatever format desired.
Added Bonus: Clients of MerchantAdvantage have also utilized the Channel Management with Chanalytics tool to specifically import extraneous reporting data and export formatted data into unique and proprietary formats required by third parties.
Examples include:
- An XML export needed for a secondary shopping cart, and
- A data export required to write a tab delimited report needed for marketing plan decisions.
Another common use of the Chanalytics reporting module, included free in Channel Management, is the use of generated reports that provide important information related to altering and updating product data feeds for both product sub-set selection, as it pertains to a shopping marketing channel and conversions of internal data for a more consumer-friendly appearance on the channel being fed. This information enables ecommerce merchants to identify a poorly performing category or to export extra data descriptions from another data column which, in turn, empowers clients to have better control over their marketing strategies in real time.
How Does MerchantAdvantage’s Technology Save Time, Money, and Increase Return on Ad Spend?
MerchantAdvantage’s primary value-add is found when working with two distinct market segments:
- Consumer shopping engines, affiliate sites, marketplaces, and any shopping destination site, and
- Third-party companies that provide value-add marketing solutions to their clients
For the first market segment, MerchantAdvantage’s technology allows ecommerce merchants to review feed specification data, make decisions about what data and what format they want that data to be fed, and to adjust data feeds based upon performance, and Chanalytics reporting. Since the process is automated on both the feed import and the export, once the feed is set up and scheduled – the merchant can focus on reviewing the performance of marketing strategies, return on ad spend, and make adjustments accordingly.
For the second market segment, MerchantAdvantage’s technology allows merchants to work seamlessly with the defined data feed specifications required to present product inventory data. Based on pre-configured, template setups with the a third party company, the ecommerce merchant can format data feeds based on both the feed specifications of the third party channel and subsequent updates required by the ecommerce merchant. Most third-party marketing channels require a simple feed of fixed or optional fields and Channel Management with Chanalytics is flexible enough to adjust the data feed to include exactly what is required for the third party feed. These third party marketing entities can be any company who accepts a data feed and this feature allows the client to extend the reach of product inventory above and beyond just standard shopping sites.
We hope that this summary gives you a better understanding of how MerchantAdvantage resolves the technology pains of working with any number of marketing channels and partner companies in a cost-effective, timely, efficient, and seamless mode of communication so that you can focus on the most important aspects of any marketing strategy:
- Return on ad spend
- Increasing sales conversions, and
- Growing your marketing reach with your partners
|
| |
| Webinars & White Papers |
Webinar:
2 Proven & Innovative Ways to Market Online -
Increase Your Sales with Video and Comparison Shopping
(On Demand Webcast)
View Webinar >>
Webinar:
Getting F.I.T. in 2009 part II-
Best Practices for CSE Marketing & Site Search
(On Demand Webcast)
View Webinar >>
Webinar:
Getting F.I.T. in 2009-
Focused Intelligent Targeting for Online Marketing
(On Demand Webcast)
View Webinar >>
Webinar:
The Blueprint for Multichannel Success
(On Demand Webcast)
View Webinar >>
Webinar:
How to Afford Comparison Shopping Engines
(On Demand Webcast)
View Webinar >>
White Paper:
2 Steps to Increase Return on CSE Ad Spend
Download >> |
| |
| Industry News |
| Industry News |
Manufacturer's clearance announces online retail partnership with nostalgia electrics
Target's web plan ends amazon pact
Card spending drives online shopping rise
Amazon vs. EBay, saving money shopping online
U.S. Q2 online retail sales keep sliding -comScore |
|
About MerchantAdvantage
MerchantAdvantage (www.MerchantAdvantage.com) is an e-commerce software solutions company that focuses on working with companies, agencies, and e-commerce merchants that rely on data feeds. MerchantAdvantage takes a systematic, controlled and proactive approach to online product marketing by providing long-term, cost effective, Web-based software tools that enable an online business to grow by reaching the widest audience possible via online, broadband, and wireless devices.
MerchantAdvantage's applications are designed to connect the online retailer to their marketplace partners in a seamless motion of communication, allowing online merchants to take control of their e-Commerce and m-Commerce channels, marketing strategies and IT solutions. MerchantAdvantage currently markets over $3 billion worth of product value daily, representing over 1,000 online storefronts and is changing the macrocosm of ecommerce by staying ahead of the curve in providing business solutions to the growing online retail marketplace. They are here because your commerce future is online and wireless. For more information, please visit MerchantAdvantage.com, e-mail us at sales@MerchantAdvantage.com or call us at 1.800.550.9466.
MerchantAdvantage – Take Control of Your Marketing Channels! |
PAGE TOP |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
