Product Catalog Data Feed Strategy: Why an Online Merchant Should Feed to Several Shopping Comparison Sites

I have received many mails about where online merchants should feed their product catalog data to get the most sales and drive traffic back to their online storefront. 

My answer is simple.  I don’t know...AND FRANKLY...no one has the exact answer....even the so called "experts."

The reason I say this is because there are many, many shopping destination sites that can help you get sales and drive traffic back to your online storefront/your website. I believe that the best way to find out which sites work best for you is to experiment and use a tool based solution that lets you experiment.

It is true that the big four, namely, PriceGrabber, Shopzilla, Yahoo! Shopping, and Shopping.com drive almost 70% of all “pay per click” traffic to storefronts.  Add in Amazon and that probably goes up to 75%.  Add in an eBay store, that you can set up and feed your product catalog into, and a feed through an affiliate, as Linkshare, Performics, Commission Junction, and that number might go up to 80%.  And then add in three FREE listing sites as Google Product Base, TheFind.com, and MSN Live Search (not their marketplace) and you certainly reach 80%.

But does just listing your product catalog to these marketing channels lead to more sales?  Or does it lead to more exposure and clicks with little sales?  The only way to find out is to:

1. experiment
2. analyze and then,
3. choose!

Outside of the better known sites, there are over 150 other shopping destination sites that, while small and less well known, are none the less destinations that have potential buyers. 

These sites don’t have 10,000 merchants selling the same products, sometimes they have only 25.  These sites certainly don’t have the “traffic” of the bigger sites, but they do have consumers looking for products, and are a cost-effective alternative that just might lead to a higher ROI (return on investment) = less clicks but more clicks lead to sales.  So why not try them?

As I have said many times over, it is always critical to first master the science of getting one data feed properly to a shopping channel and then to master the art of marketing that feed properly into that channel.  If you do not do this then the likelihood of realizing the effectiveness of that marketing channel diminishes greatly. 

But, I am always surprised that online merchants think that they only can, or should, feed their marketing data to just a few destinations to realize sales.  If you understand and actually market your feeds properly, why would you not take the opportunity to market your product catalog to as many places that might work for you?  Why limit yourself?

If I said to you that you had the opportunity to open up a brick and mortar store in 10 cities cost effectively, as opposed to just 3, wouldn’t you try it?

If I said to you, that when you do open those stores that you are not obligated to stay in that city for more than three months and would have no more obligations, if you decide that those store fronts were not performing well?  Wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you try it?

Of course you would. 

Any person, advisor, expert, or company that tells you that you can only make money feeding your product catalog to shopping destinations that “they” choose is absurd.  You certainly can make money feeding your product catalog data to just a few places, just as you can make money feeding your product catalog to just one marketing channel – but why limit yourself -- especially if you know how to use shopping destination sites.

My advice?  Don’t limit yourself to just a few marketing channels, as the marketing channel you don't try just might be the one that "could" have worked the best for you and ensure that any advisor or company that you work with gives you:

1. choice
2. the ability to analyze how your marketing efforts are performing in real time = never market without the ability to understand how effective those efforts are, and
3. the ability to change how you market your product catalog into each unique channel

If you have figured out how to optimize your feed correctly for 1 or 2 of the more of these well known sites (either on your own or though a service based or tool based company), why not take a few minutes to try different ones?

You might be surprised that you do better, or just as well, in terms of ROI.  And at the very least, you will get more exposure, branding, and a better education for yourself on how all of these sites can work for you. 

To help you all, I will continue to list shopping destination alternatives here at www.eTaildTail.com, that you can experiment with as time and resources permit.  Some of those channels may work magic, others may not work at all – but any scenario, never limit yourself. 

Oh yeah, and if you are wondering if you can afford to experiment with other channels, after you understand how to work with 1 or 2 channels effectively, here is a quick financial analysis that shows you can:

Example:

Sample 12 month marketing feed spend campaign: $3,000 per month/$36,000 per annum

Per month:
$ allocated to affiliate feed marketing (Commission Junction, Linkshare, Performics) = $500 (pending your type of product catalog = not always a recommended strategy)

$ allocated to adword/key word marketing (Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com etc) = $1,000

$ allocated to a product catalog feed based tool = $150

$ allocated to FREE channels (Google Product Base, TheFind.com, MSN Search) = $0.00

$ allocated to commission based sites (Amazon, Underbid, JellyFish.com, Shop.com) = $0.00

$ allocated to larger destination sites (Shopzilla, Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber) = $1,000

$ allocated to smaller destination sites (see MerchantAdvantage for list) = $350

Makes sense. So now what? 

1. You are insane if you do not list all of your products to Google Product Base, MSN Live Search, and TheFind.com = all FREE and you can do this easily by using a tool based feed solution for $145 per month. 

2. You are insane if you do not list “higher margin products” to commission based marketplaces as Underbid, JellyFish and, if you can get them to agree to work with you, Shop.com and Amazon.com with the following caviat: always make sure you know their all in costs for commissions because sometimes it can be high.

3. You are insane not to try 2-4 marketing channels outside of the big ones listed.

More Help = tool based solutions in the marketplace to help execute the above

If you want help to make sure your feeds are perfectly optimized to one or many shopping destination sites try the following companies. 

They are tool based offerings, cost-effective, and will save you tons of IT headaches as they solve the taxonomy issues for you – each company works differently and has drastically different levels of support, webinars, newsletters, sophisticated online triuble ticket support, analytics, etc…, so make sure you compare:

www.MerchantAdvantage.com (the pioneer in the industry)
www.SingleFeed.com
www.FeedPerfect.com
www.GoDataFeed.com
www.ChannelBrain.com
www.SmartFeed.com

Also, there are service based companies such as: www.ChannelIntelligence.com , www.ChannelAdvisor.com, and www.Mercent.com.  They are all very good but can be expensive.  Ask them how they charge, i.e. SKU count, revenue share, transaction costs...other. 

ChannelAdvisor and ChannelIntelligence have also introduced tool based offerings, which are similar to the ones above but are more expensive and there "all in costs" should be clearly understood and demarcated before signing.  Check them all out to see what works for you.