• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 17, 2012

Advertising on Google and Bing for retailers has become similar to merchandising. Create a paid-search ad that drops the consumer directly on a product-specific page, but give brands the option to merchandise through search. It prompted Marin Software to create a "searchendising" strategy, partnering with Mercent to deliver the goods.

Rather than drop consumers on a generic landing page from a paid-search ad, brands with product-specific ad copy or product-specific keywords should consider taking consumers to a specific product page, explains Marin VP of Marketing Matt Lawson.

"Imagine rather than walking in the front door of a store, the consumer shows up in the sweater section and pays for the merchandise there," he said. "They may never see the jeans, socks and shoes."

Features like Google's product listing ads support the move to cross-sell and searchendise, but also give advertisers an opportunity to cross-sell merchandise with recommendations on the brand's product page. Lawson said brands need to bid on product-specific keywords. Product feeds make it easier to pull out and bid on terms, such as "Nike Swoosh 11 shoe."

The Marin and Mercent agreement builds search campaigns specific to products in the feed, Lawson explains. It supports retailers manage shopping feeds sent to sites like Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping and affiliate networks, speeding the process of putting inventory and product descriptions online. The product feeds also support paid-search campaigns to match online descriptions with search engine marketing paid-search campaigns and product listing ads.

Seasonal merchandise can become a large portion of a company's product catalog, so translating descriptions into keyword groups and promotions becomes time-consuming. Price changes and out-of-stock items create other challenges the partnership solves when it comes to syncing information between search campaigns and catalogs descriptions, similar to a feature from Kenshoo.