Considering Advertising on Comparison Marketplaces? Look At Margins
Paid advertising on comparison marketplaces (i.e. Shopzilla, Nextag, TheFind, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber and Yahoo Shopping) can be a great way to generate orders and new customers. This is especially true if you are competitive on pricing. However, this form of advertising requires careful evaluation to determine return on investment. If you have many products, you may become overwhelmed when it comes to setting budgets. Naturally, you want to maximize your return on investment while at the same time, minimize your risk. Bidding on items that have a higher profit margin is a great way to get your feet wet with these advertising channels. If you are bidding on lower profit margin items, you’ll want to make sure those pages make an attempt to upsell the customer on some higher profit margin items. Another important component to consider is conversion rate. If you have certain product pages that convert really well (perhaps they have great customer reviews or a unique video) include those products in your feed. As with any paid advertising that you do, be sure you are tracking conversions and order amounts for these channels. If you are not tracking conversions, you are bidding in the dark!
Tip: If you would like to rate and review the various comparison shopping engines based on experience from a merchant perspective, please submit a review in Nexternal’s new App Marketplace.
Tip For Existing Nexternal Clients:
You can take control of your feeds by excluding certain products (possibly your lower profit margin products) from your Automated Marketplace Feeds. These options are available when creating or editing a product in the Order Management System (Edit Product/Next/Marketplace Options/Exclude from Marketplace/Next).
This option is also available via the Product Import file (Products/Import).
Shauna has a background in information technology and is currently a Senior Account Executive at Nexternal . She has been creating and cultivating client relationships with brands since 2007, offering her clients both eCommerce and online marketing insight.
