By Ethan Goodman, The Mars Agency
Is it OK to randomly search retailer websites to check on your brand’s performance?
Actually, no, because doing so can have a negative impact on both your organic and paid search perform- ance. The more often you search your brands, the harder it might be to find them the next time around.
Most ecommerce platforms are highly intuitive and assume that every shopper who initiates a search is in a buying mindset. Therefore, when you as a “shopper” search for a product and don’t then add it to your cart, the platform assumes that the product wasn’t relevant. This leads to SKU suppression and lower visibility for that product when the same keyword is used in search again.
“Window shopping” the keywords you’ve acquired for a paid search campaign is also detrimental because it will negatively affect your main KPIs by lowering your Share of Voice (SOV), Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
So while it may be a great exercise in times of personal reflection, searching yourself is not a good idea on retailer websites.
What should you do instead? Rely on your agency and/or analytics partner to provide you with regular reports on SOV*, the primary metric for gauging digital shelf visibility.
For more tips on effective search strategy, read Digital Commerce Roadmap: Winning Search.
* Share of Voice (SOV): The number of times your brand products appear on the first page of search results divided by the total number of results on the page.
About the Author
The Mars Agency’s SVP-Commerce Media, Ethan Goodman is a renowned marketing strategist with deep expertise in digital commerce and shopper marketing. He’s been named a “Young Influential” by Adweek and a “Who’s Who in Shopper Marketing” by the Path to Purchase Institute, where he also serves as a Distinguished Faculty Member. Prior to his current role, Ethan built, grew and managed The Mars Agency’s Ecommerce and Innovation practice groups, and also guided the team that created SmartAisle — the world’s first voice-powered shopping assistant for brick & mortar retailers.