12 Step Program for Comparison Shopping Engine Management

Every month I write a newsletter for MerchantAdvantage.  The topic covers information, tips and advice, and coverage of other excellent companies that help the small to mid-sized business with their marketing and technology strategies, when working with over 150 shopping destination sites, comparison shopping engines and marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, and Underbid.

This month I am very happy to co-write the April newsletter titled: 12 Step Program for Comparison Shopping Engine Management with our good friend Rick Backus and his company CPC Strategy.  CPC Strategy offers excellent advice and will manage your marketing/channel feed campaigns for you, if you desire a managed solution rather than using Channel Management by MerchantAdvantage yourself.

All newsletters are archived on eTaildTail for all of you to read for free, just click on the link above or <<<here>>> for those newsletters.

Happy reading and I hope this helps.  If you have any questions please contact Rick at rick at cpcstrategy.com or find him at CPC Strategy.

From....April 22, MerchantAdvantage Newsletter, with guest Rick Backus and CPC Strategy

We are proud to co-author this month’s newsletter with our friends at CPC Strategy.

CPC Strategy is based out of San Diego, California and is a full service Comparison Shopping Management Solution. The team at CPC Strategy works directly with online merchants to develop data feed optimization strategies that fit their business model.

When online merchants don’t have the time or personnel available to implement marketing feed strategies on their own using Web-based tools by MerchantAdvantage, we recommend online merchants like CPC Strategy, who execute day-to-day management of comparison shopping engines and marketing campaigns to maximize ROI.

MerchantAdvantage and CPC Strategy speak with hundreds of online merchants everyday who understand the value of using comparison shopping engines (“CSEs”), but remain frustrated with the technical requirements to manage data feeds and struggle to realize higher return on investment when managing marketing channels available to them cost-effectively.

We hope that the following inside tips and our “12 Step Program” help online merchants:

• Understand better how to use CSE marketing campaigns efficiently
• Reduce the cost of working with CSEs, and
• Improve CSE ROI

So let’s get started and get some inside tips from industry experts at CPC Strategy, with comments from MerchantAdvantage.

1. Admit that you may have a Comparison Shopping Management Problem

Your sales are too low, your costs are too high, you're spending too much time on managing, optimizing, feeding and re-feeding data feeds, and overall performance using CSEs has fallen below expectations.

The very first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem, only then can we help to restructure your thinking for optimal CSE performance --so say it with us, "Hi, I'm ____, and I have a Comparison Shopping Management Problem." There that wasn’t too bad, now was it?

2. Focus more time and energy on Comparison Shopping Management

Just admitting that you have a problem doesn't mean that it's going to fix itself. We have always said that just feeding your product catalog data to a CSE does not necessarily lead to sales.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to continue to the other 10 steps....yes it is free to read, fun, and value-add!

:-)

-- Chip Arndt