Do you wake up at night thinking about how to increase sales? Boost product exposure? Maximize ROI on your marketing investments?
The options to market your products online has increased considerably. Find out how retailers are leveraging their catalogs to sell more products on shopping channels and marketplaces.
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What’s New In Product Feed Marketing?
- Instagram Product Feeds for Shoppable Posts
- Enhanced price comparison shopping on Google and Bing
- Snapchat Product Feeds for Product Ads, Story Ads, Snap Ads and Collection Ads
- Using keywords to sell using Amazon Product Ads
The Customer Journey has Changed
As mentioned in Competing on Customer Journeys, the classic customer journey has evolved to a shortened process where buyers are quicker to consider and evaluate brands.
Smart eCommerce retailers understand that to capitalize on the new customer journey, their products need to be in front of their customers at the right time, and in the right place.
“Instead of reacting to the journeys that consumers themselves devise, these companies are shaping their paths.” — David C. Edelman and Marc Singer
What is Product Feed Marketing?
Product feed marketing is a method in which a product data feed is used to distribute and sync product information from a retailer’s website to multiple online marketing and distribution platforms.
Product Feed Marketing Process
Online distribution channels used in product feed marketing include: search engines, online marketplaces, comparison shopping sites, retargeting services, review sites and affiliate marketing partners.
Examples of Online Distribution Channels
Each channel requires their feed to be formatted differently.
Here are some examples of product data feed requirements for some popular channels:
Why Explore Product Feed Marketing?
Your products need to be everywhere because your competitors’ products are everywhere. Retailers are increasingly looking to channels like Google Shopping to promote their products.
Google Shopping Ad Spend Growth
- Google Shopping Ad spend growth up 47% YOY.
- The holiday season drove Google Shopping Ad spend growth up to 53% QOQ.
Feeds are the most effective way to distribute your product information to channels like Google Shopping and Google Merchant Centre. It’s not the future of online marketing. It’s the present.
“With the growing amount of online distribution channels in the digital sphere, retailers have the opportunity, and challenge, of maximizing their product visibility. Product feed marketing, done the right way, can achieve this task as part of a larger omnichannel marketing strategy.” — Giovanni Guardalben, CEO, Highstreet.io
Who Uses Product Feed Marketing?
Most companies that sell products on-line, with a sizeable catalogue, can benefit from marketing with product feeds:
- Retailers with a catalogue of 500 + items
- Companies looking to increase product visibility for multiple products
- Businesses interested in marketing flash sales and other types of promotions
- Retailers wanting to learn more about their customers’ shopping patterns
- eCommerce sites looking to drive traffic back to their website
How to Get Started with Product Feed Marketing
There are four methods to market your products with feeds. You can hire an experienced product feed management company or use internal resources to create feeds using the following techniques:
- Manual Process: Add your product information to a standard file format (CSV, TSV or spreadsheet). Upload or download the spreadsheet to your chosen platform making sure that you have followed all of their requirements.
- Programmatic Feed Generation: Create a procedure to dynamically develop a product data feed based on a set of variables.
- eCommerce Platform Plugin: Use an eCommerce plugin to connect your product data from your eCommerce platform to your chosen distribution channel
- Remote synchronization to your eCommerce platform: Use a third party platform to synchronize and optimize your product catalogue data remotely with online distribution channels.
Next Steps
Here’s a quick recap. From a marketing and technical perspective the concept of using feeds to market products seems logical.
What are the benefits?
- Solution for the new omnichannel customer journey
- Addresses the challenge of increasing product visiblity across multiple channels quickly & seamlessly
- Cuts down on manual work to market products across the globe in multiple languages and currencies.
- Creates opportunities to execute new types of promotions like flash sales
- If outsourced to a product feed management company, allows IT and marketing departments to enjoy the increased exposure of their products without having to manage the details
Have you tried product feed marketing? What’s your experience? If you have questions on how to maximize this method of advertising to get the best ROI for your campaigns send us an email and we’d be happy to help you.
Google Shopping Feed Tips You Don't Want To Miss
Avoid getting your campaigns disapproved in the first place and achieve the best performance for your ads by reading our Google Shopping Feed Optimization Guide.
- Your product listings will show up higher in search results
- Your customers will spend less per click and less per sale
- Your will win greater trust, credibility, and referrals
Next Step
To set up a call or get more information about Google Shopping’s shipping changes or how we can help you optimize your product feed, input your contact info in the form below.