• by Roger Barnette , June 1, 2012

Retailers, more than most marketers, have a wealth of data and information at their fingertips. Retailers also have more product, geographical, and inventory diversity than marketers in other industries.  Thus, being able to leverage all data is crucial.  By leveraging your data across all aspects of paid search optimization you can do some amazing things. 

Leveraging your data so it can work together is one of the most important steps towards integrated marketing.  Both third-party technologies and search engines have made great strides in creating innovations to allow retailers to use their data for more successful marketing campaigns. 

A few examples of data you already have that can be leveraged include:

Product data feeds: As a retailer, you track everything about your products and inventory. You know which products are sold out, and in a perfect world your search campaigns would act intelligently and sell only the products you have in stock. By using product data feeds to automate campaigns, you can do exactly that. Why bid on ads for products that you can’t even sell? This wastes money and provides a poor user experience. Product feeds also help in keyword/ad expansion for new products that are hitting the site, so retailers are able to maximize these immediately.

Location:  Retailers with brick and mortar presence can also drive business with location extensions. You know where your stores are, you know where you can provide products in person -- you can easily leverage this data with location extensions. With location extensions, you can add your store’s address and phone number and dynamically update your ad copy to include other information that matches the user’s location. With this capability you can target multiple locations and tailor ads to match a user’s interest based on physical location or places mentioned within a search. This ability increases relevance and effectiveness and offers multiple ways for a customer to reach you -- online, physical location or phone number to call and place an order.  Finally, location is also important in mobile targeting, where people on the go who are looking for a nearby location can be directed to your store, with a map, address and directions.

Margin information: It’s a fact of life; some products generate more money than others. But should you bid on all keywords equally? It is possible to close the feedback loop between bid tech and profits by leveraging per-product margin data. Feeding in gross margin data will help factor in not just performance in terms of spend and revenue associated with each keyword, but also the cost of goods and revenue each product generates relative to the keyword or keywords that map to these products. Retailers can optimize their paid search bids based on gross margins to allocate media spend where they can make the most impact on the bottom line.

These are just a few brief examples of how, as a retailer, you could leverage data you already have to optimize your paid search media. It also highlights the importance of integrating and centralizing your data. While integrating marketing data is important for every marketer, the benefits are clear and abundant for retailers. When all of this data is in one place, you can work smarter and provide a better customer experience.