Merchandising vs. Marketing: Length
Good marketing will be designed to attract and hold the viewer's attention--for about 10 seconds. If marketing content takes much longer than that to read, chances are it needs an aggressive edit. Merchandising, on the other hand, should definitely take longer than 10 seconds to read; should in fact encourage consumers to pay close attention. Put another way, marketing is all about stick and drive, while merchandising is about converting. ...read more >>
Building the Future of Content, One Chunk at a Time
Content, multichannel, and convergence. If your paycheck depends on keeping your product-marketing strategy ahead of the curve at product launch and your budget below it, these are days, and those are words, that are undoubtedly trying your soul. I was recently introduced to Sara Wachter-Boettcher and her book Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content, through an interview my colleague Trinity Hartman conducted on Content...read more >>
Content Merchandising Roundup #62
Below is a summary of the week's most interesting content merchandising-related posts from Content Ping as well as from other blogs and news sites. Enjoy. Merchandising vs. Marketing: Sick Unsure of the difference between merchandising and marketing? Make sure to check out our latest take on the topic. Flash Sales Work Wayfair has begun launching flash sales. The effort is not only intended to compete with flash-sales companies like Gilt Groupe...read more >>
Merchandising vs. Marketing: Sick
It is the job of marketing to get your attention and convince you to go to the store (or the pharmacy). To do this, marketing content needs to make you believe a product is worth your time--that the amoxicillin will cure what ails you. Marketing is about affecting opinion, how people feel about a particular product. Merchandising, on the other hand, delivers the goods. It aims to send you home with a product--the antibiotics, in this example. ...read more >>
New Content26 Service Accelerates Product Launches
We're excited to announce that we can now take care of all your New Item Setup needs. We decided to offer this service after seeing the problems our clients were having with this basic, yet crucial, aspect of content merchandising. New Item Setup refers to the spreadsheets each vendor is required to fill out prior to listing new products on retail sites such as Amazon, Walmart, and Home Depot. That's right, we'll take on those big ugly spreadsheets...read more >>
Matt Kumin: Using Content to Connect with Customers
In the competitive world of e-commerce, getting an online shopper to hit the "buy" button isn't good enough. Smart companies look for ways to go beyond the immediate sale in an effort to forge deep, long-lasting relationships with their customers. How can companies form meaningful connections with customers? One way is to offer relevant, helpful content. I recently caught up with PublishThis founder Matt Kumin. PublishThis is a platform which allows...read more >>
Content Merchandising Roundup #54
Below is a summary of the week's most interesting content merchandising-related posts from Content Ping as well as from other blogs and news sites. Happy reading. Philips Sonicare Case Study: Quickly and Effectively Creating Content for Multiple Retailers Working with content26, Philips was able to leverage existing content to create product-detail pages quickly when they were ready to sell through another channel. This case study examines the advantages...read more >>
Google Shopping Transitions to a Paid Platform
Today, Google officially replaces its free Product Search with a paid shopping platform. As discussed in an earlier post, the controversial change means merchants must now pay to be listed on Google Shopping's search results pages. Google's move to a paid comparison shopping engine sends a big message: the company is making a step toward e-commerce and taking on Amazon--the world's most popular "first stop" in shoppers' online product research. Critics...read more >>
Want to Compete with Amazon? Start Offering Remarkable Content
It's time for comparison shopping engines (CSEs) such as Nextag, Shopzilla, and Google Product Search to improve their content. This really hit home during the research I did for a guest post on the CPC Strategy blog. Most of the shopping engines I checked out were littered with single-paragraph product descriptions and unhelpful product images. I argue in the guest post that it's not enough to merely do a price check and then sends shoppers on to...read more >>
Anatomy of a Product Page [Slideshow]
When developing your product pages, it's important to remember that content standards vary widely between retailers. This means that your Amazon product detail page will look nothing like your Walmart.com page or your product pages on other e-commerce sites. We created this slideshow as a visual guide to creating effective site-specific content. Hope you enjoy it and, as always, we’d love to hear what you think. Six Easy Steps to Optimizing...read more >>