Marketplaces Riverside, CA
If you have an ecommerce website and you’re also selling on one of the large marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, or eBay, then you probably want to read this page about marketplace optimization as it may open doors you didn’t know existed.
Most of our customers who have ecommerce websites sell in marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, or eBay and they make a killing! This is not just hyperbole, once our marketplace experts optimize an account and create advertising campaigns our customers almost immediately begin to see the amazing impact on their marketplace sales.
While the marketplace optimization space is relatively new, there are few marketing agencies that offer a fully rounded strategy like Affordable Marketing offers. The reason we can offer these services is because we are experts in each of them, our depth of knowledge and understanding of each marketplace far outpaces the top agencies.
Marketplace connections are product feeds that take products from your ecommerce store and add them into your marketplace account. Installing feeds in your ecommerce store can be very misleading for the merchant. But its not the merchants fault because merchants are often led to believe that vendors who offer these feeds such as ecommerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce plugin vendors are giving them a complete solution to their marketplace account needs.
It’s unfortunate for merchants who need more help than just a connection, as they are on their own once the connection is made with little help in marketplace optimization. This is where Affordable Marketing experts step in to complete the proper setup and configuration of the merchants marketplace account. We optimize your product feed to send accurate data, and make sure that you send only data that you want in your marketplace accounts. Often merchants don’t want to send 100% of their products to a marketplace account due to vendor restrictions, or they may want to change prices or inventory between their ecommerce store and their marketplace account, we can do that.
Connecting your ecommerce store with your marketplace account is so much more than just making a connection, in fact the connection is just the beginning since marketplace optimization is not automatic. Once the connection is made, the feed itself needs to be configured and optimized. This is where most ecommerce platforms and plugin software vendors neglect to inform merchants of the limits in their connection, leaving merchants to incorrectly believe their account is complete. The reality is that the job has just begun, especially for merchants who have strict vendor controls over what they can and cannot sell in marketplaces. The last thing you want is an angry call from a vendor telling you to take down products that are not supposed to be on a marketplace. This is also not a one-time thing, every time a software vendor updates their code, your feed can reset and that means stepping in to ensure that your original configuration remains correct.
Don’t be fooled by slick marketing that makes it look like its so easy to get your products from your ecommerce store into your marketplace account, because that is simply not the case. Talk to the experts to find out more, we offer a free Zoom consultation to get you headed in the right direction, saving you time and money.
Marketplace advertising can drive amazing sales, but it can also drain your profits if you’re inexperienced in marketplace advertising and exceed your advertising budget. With some marketplaces such as Amazon and Walmart, there are so many competitors all competing for the same demographic it makes it almost impossible to generate substantial sales without advertising and that means another added cost. Its easy to see with so many potential clicks and competitors, the risk of overspending on ads becomes a serious consideration.
Understanding that advertising in marketplaces will be necessary to generate substantial sales, you should first decide on an advertising budget. While considering your ad budget you should also consider the marketplace merchant fees. You can’t get around the basic merchant fees, and you will also have to pay a service fee for using the marketplace credit card gateway. With all the additional costs associated with your marketplace account, your advertising campaign needs to be carefully planned and managed to increase sales without overspending and wiping out your profit margins. This is where an expert marketplace advertiser can make or break your profit margins.
If you have not done so already, you will need to formulate an acceptable acquisition cost, then you know what you’re willing to spend for each sale. Once you have your acquisition cost and add your merchant costs, you simply factor in your expected profit. You will be left with a reasonable advertising budget, which scales once your sales start to increase. The bottom line is that you will need to carefully consider who is managing your marketplace account and advertising campaigns to ensure consistent profits MoM.
While advertising your products in a marketplace is essential to achieving increased sales if you have not yet optimized your marketplace account you could easily overspend on clicks. Since most marketplace advertising is charged by the click or PPC, products that have been optimized have a far better chance of selling with fewer clicks than those which have not been optimized. The marketplace account that is not optimized will always pay for more clicks to produce fewer sales than an optimized account, and that will drive your acquisitions costs higher and your profits lower. To learn more about optimizing your marketplace account, continue reading the next section for MPO.
Are your marketplace products not performing very well? Are your accounts disappointing the effort you spent in getting your products listed? If you answered yes, then you are not alone as most merchants don’t know about marketplace optimization. Most merchants who create marketplace accounts don’t have much insight or experience in how to optimize their listings to achieve the buy button or get a better ranking than 344,598. And marketplaces can be a bit complicated, with so many rules and policies it can seem impossible to make everything work in your favor. The fact is marketplaces don’t exactly make it easy for merchants to increase their ranking or revenue.
What you need is an optimized account, whatever was done to get your products listed probably was just the beginning. Affordable Marketing (MPO) marketplace optimization experts not only optimize your account and products once but continue to make changes as needed and monitor your account for issues that might disrupt your progress.
The term Marketplace Optimization or MPO is like SEO, as it involves reviewing every aspect of your account to find opportunities for increasing your products sales performance. An MPO reviews critical account performance factors such as product configuration, shipping, connections, advertising and more. MPO’s find the big things and the little things that are impeding your marketplace accounts progress in achieving higher sales numbers. The fact is that marketplaces, when managed by experts perform significantly better, becoming a new leg of revenue that merchants can start to depend on. After all, isn’t this why your started your marketplace account in the first place?
If your marketplace account is not meeting its potential in generating revenue, we can help. Let our marketplace optimization team show you how we can optimize your account and start to increase the revenue in your marketplace.
Is your ecommerce store listed in Google Shopping? Here is the Internets best kept secret, Google Merchant and Google Shopping are the same thing. Not only are they the same, but Google Shopping is the most viewed marketplace getting more views than Amazon or Walmart.
If you have an online store that sells and ships products, then you already qualify to sell on the Google merchant platform. This platform encompasses the following Google properties: Google Merchant, Google Shopping, Google Ads, Google Maps/Places, YouTube, and Images. All these are combined to give Google customers an environment to search for products while immersing them in a content rich experience. In short, if you need to be selling your products here.
But before we proceed let’s clarify the names for those who may be new to the platform. Google Shopping is the customer facing part of this platform, this is where customers view ads on Google and can view the shopping platform much like an ecommerce store. The merchant facing part of this platform is called Google Merchant, this is where merchants can interact with the Google Shopping platform by creating their merchant account and adding products from their ecommerce store. As we dive into this exciting Google platform, we will look at both Google Shopping and Google Merchant.
Google Merchant accounts are not the type of advertising that you can configure and then walk away, these accounts require daily attention to maintain and optimize. Our Google Merchant Management Service allows merchants to continue running their account at the highest levels possible, while feeling confident that the revenue steam created by your Merchant account will continue to grow.
Unfortunately, we do not offer Google Merchant account training. This platform can be complex even for experienced account managers and while we do offer you and your team an account overview of the services, training is not a service we can provide. In these cases, we will highly recommend the merchant use our management services to avoid unfortunate situations such as account suspension.
Along with our management service, we also provide a monthly briefing with full reporting to the merchant. This is where you can get a wide-angle view of your accounts performance. If you use our management services, you will also be assigned an account manager who will be available daily for questions and concerns.
Affordable Marketing Google account managers are experts in every single aspect of the platform, with years of experience managing and optimizing Google Merchant, and Ads accounts. Schedule a free ZOOM consultation today with Affordable Marketing and see if our Google Merchant services are a good fit for your company’s needs.
Optimization is the place for experts, this is where your account is reviewed from top to bottom for anything that might cause a hiccup in the performance of your account. This is also where your Google account experts look for every opportunity to enhance your account for maximum sales.
This could mean diving into your website and making site to ensure everything matches your Google account, and looking for opportunities within your Google account and on every Google platform where your products will be displayed.
If you have an existing Google Merchant account that is not performing as well as you think it should, then we can help. Often low performing Merchant accounts can be attributed to configuration issues, or website content that is not syncing with your Google Merchant account. Sometimes a low performing Google Merchant account can be due to being in a very competitive space. We love these types of challenges because we always win. We know what to look for in your competitors accounts, we can see where they have gone wrong and what they have done right. Competing on Google Merchant means being an expert in the technology, and this includes Google Ads.
Also, don’t fall into the trap that you can’t possibly change agencies, many of our clients changed agencies to Affordable Marketing and are grateful they did.
B2B marketplaces are a great tool for increasing sales without disturbing your current sales chain, and if you want to increase sales without waiting for new relationships to mature then marketplaces can be essential. Marketplaces are often faceless, which makes doing business easier without the need for traditional relational management. While B2B marketplaces usually have far fewer customers than Amazon or Walmart for instance, the trade-off can be worth it to find new customers and increase sales.
If you have B2B marketplaces where you want your products to display, we can help to propagate your products onto these marketplaces and even help with the account setup, configuration, and management. Keep in mind that due to requirements B2B companies have, the setup can be more complicated in B2B marketplaces which might be a bit too much for typical marketers without the technical knowledge.
Once you have found the right fit for you products on a B2B marketplace and your account has been created and products uploaded, the real work has just begun. As with any online property that sells merchandise, you will need an account optimization and advertising strategy to generate sales. While having these extra sales funnels seems like a great idea, they can be very competitive and have fewer customers, which means your B2B will need take advantage of every opportunity to increase sales and make the marketplace account profitable.
Whatever your needs may be as you venture into the B2B marketplace, we can help to clarify your expectations by creating a plan for increasing sales. Contact us today to schedule a free ZOOM consultation, we’ll answer all your questions.