Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
Archive for February, 2009
Google This…Google Product Search for Free Search Listings
Bryan Stapp, Loud Amplifier Marketing
Here’s a nice way to get additional listings for your product on Google, and all the clicks are free. Upload your product catalog feed to Google Base and have your products listed in the organic search rankings through Google Product Search. To borrow from the old Dire Straits song, get your “money for nothing, and your clicks for free”.
Google Product Search (you may remember this as “Froogle”) helps shoppers find and buy products from merchants across the web. When you list your products in Product Search, shoppers can quickly and easily find your site, delivering you more traffic and helping you to increase sales. And if you accept Google Checkout for payment, the Checkout badge will appear on your Product Search listings, driving even more traffic and confident shoppers to your site.
Listing your products in Product Search is completely free, with no set up or hidden costs. Because Product Search delivers unbiased and objective search results the same way Google Search does, the ranking is based solely on the quality and relevance of your product listings.
One really nice feature is the ability to upload your product catalog in bulk via XML feed. Several shopping carts support Google Product Search and will generate your feed and upload it with just a few clicks. You can update the feed as often as you like, but you must maintain it monthly as all listings expire after 31 days. See my reviews on the GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart and Volusion’s e-commerce platforms as both of these make it easy to use Google Product Search.
One shortcoming is the confusing number of names that Google uses for these products. “Base”, “Product Search”, “Shopping”, “Checkout” all are part of the same set of tools you will need to work with. I think someone there could simplify the naming conventions for dumb marketing guys like me. Drive more clicks for free at http://base.google.com/base/help/sellongoogle.html.
Five Easy Tools for Market Testing a Concept
Skip Shuda, Team and a Dream
At Team and a Dream, we strongly advocate market testing services/products or concepts to gain market feedback. We’ve been doing a lot of this recently as part of our Internet Marketing Strategy offering, mostly testing out different messages to see what resonates with our clients’ target market. Besides the traditional A/B testing approach with Google Adwords (which can be a bit complicated if you’re not familiar with it), here are other tools you can use for market testing or to de-risk an idea:
1. Facebook Advertising – Unlike Google Adwords, Facebook allows you to target your exact audience. Within their advertising platform, you can drill into specifics such as age, gender, location and a lot more. It’s a simple process – you create your ad, choose your audience, price your ad and you’re all set. For more information, check out the Facebook Advertising page. Better yet, try it for free by downloading Visa’s Business Network application and receive $100 worth of free Facebook advertising.
>>Finish reading this article at Cheap Revolution.
Previous Posts
