If a product is out of stock on your site, immediately remove that product from your feed. If not, you’re potentially paying for clicks that have almost no chance of converting. If you’re a large merchant with abundant resources and approach the comparison shopping game from a branding/mindshare perspective, then go ahead and spend strategically.
If you’re a small merchant with limited resources, I wouldn’t even recommend using the handy ‘out of stock’ marketing message available on many engines…just remove that product from your feed or if you control the bidding through your feed, bid the SKU to $0.00.
Great tip Brian
Customers will click through on those hard to find products if you’ve listed them in your feed though they appear as “out of stock”
As for spending strategically, it shouldn’t be limited to merchants with abundant resources. In a study we’ve just completed we’ve found as much as 80% of all our customers use comparison shopping before making a purchase; 80%!! With maybe 5% actually clicking through and buying. Meaning, CSEs are not Direct Marketing channels, they do not drive immediate sales and merchants must test the platform on their own to determine the impact they have on total sales.
A simple test? Shut your feeds off for 1 month (when seasonality isn’t a consideration) and see what happens to total store sales and those through other marketing channels.
Comment by Paul — January 23, 2007 @ 12:46 pm