Why your Product Information Marketing May be Failing.

Successful eCommerce requires an Integrated Marketing approach.

Marketing is as much an art as a science, and marketers have traditionally struggled with measuring ROI. Awareness activities don’t always generate clicks that you can track to revenue. If you double your Twitter followers (which is measurable), how many of those new followers actually clicked on a tweet that led to a site that led to a purchase? (Therefore tracking to revenue.) And if they did click and purchase, do you really think that one tweet was so powerful that it enticed someone, or a business to part with their money? Maybe. But probably not. What was the entire journey before the purchase?

There are marketing automation tools that can help, but even they aren’t perfect. This article is not about martech. It’s about the eCommerce journey itself, about Product Information Excellence, and how marketing functions must work together to get results. If your marketing department is in siloes, you’re not getting the return on your investments, and you’re probably missing out on a lot of purchases. 

Let’s look at a simple example. Your social media team has a comprehensive strategy and content plan. They send a tweet. 

It’s a good tweet, and it links to product information content (blog, white paper, etc.) on a landing page on your website. At the end of the content, there’s a call to action and a link to a product display page where your potential customer can make a purchase. That product display page (PDP) could be on your website, a channel site (a distributor or reseller) or on a marketplace site (such as Amazon). 

This one example has linked together your Digital Marketing team (who leads the social media strategy) and your Content Marketing team who is cranking out engaging blogs and white papers. If the tweet was announcing an exciting new product, then you’ve linked in Product Marketing. If the PDP is on a reseller or marketplace site, your Channel Marketing team is also connected since they are responsible for those relationships and the prominence of your products on the reseller site. Your PDP should be optimized for search. The quality of the content on the PDP comes from your Product Information Management (PIM) team. The SEO probably comes from your Market Insights team through to the PIM team. And the content had better be consistent with your brand promise, so that’s your Brand Marketing team.

Ok – suppose that we now know and agree that our marketing efforts need to be coordinated. But how do they impact and influence the overall results at a deeper level?

If the Content Marketing team is doing a great job, then people will be reading, liking, and interacting with your content. They’ll stay on the site to finish reading the piece.

The SEO team should be helping them to optimize the content of the blog or the whitepaper for search. If the landing page or site is loading quickly and optimized for mobile, that’s even better. Now your content gets high scores from Google and will show up better in search – and not just that one content piece. Now you and your content are more relevant and your level of expertise in Google’s eyes is higher. If you are updating the content regularly and you have good engagement, these are signals that you have authoritativeness and trustworthiness in your space. Your Content Marketing, PIM and Web teams are helping your SEO metrics perform better, even though that wasn’t their primary objective.  They aren’t just coordinating efforts; they are interconnected and they are driving better return.

Now let’s say that your product display page is on a channel site (reseller or marketplace). How are you working with that channel to ensure that your products show up best and first? Are you placing your longer content pieces on the channel as well? They could be embedded in your PDP, or they could be showcased elsewhere on the site – as thought leadership, as advertising, or as co-branded with the partner. How is your partner promoting your content? How are you promoting your content through your own channels directly or indirectly to the channel site? Some sites (like Amazon for example) like it when outside traffic is directed to content and will reward you with higher search prominence on their site.  Here again, your results are exponential. 

Your Channel Marketing team may be measured on the quality of relationships with your partners, how the products are listed on the partner eCommerce sites, and/or how efficiently they are managing advertising or market development funds with the partners. But we can see from this example, there’s more to it. Channel Marketing should be interacting with the partner’s Content and SEO teams. Market development funds can be used more strategically than just for banner ads or events. Is your reseller partner an influencer? Is your YouTube video strategy connected to your product display pages on your own and on your partner sites? How are you working with your partners to educate and enable their sales teams?

Get out of Your Swim Lanes

Harvard Business Review calls it “Getting out of your swim lanes.”  A well-functioning marketing team with a coordinated strategy and execution will see the “assisted effects” of multiple activities yielding superior results.

This is particularly true in the world of eCommerce. If you are focusing solely on keywords and sponsored ads to be found, and great copy and images on your product display pages to convert a sale, you are only part way there. There’s more competition than ever and SEO tools are available to everyone. Even marketplaces like Amazon will tell youwhich keywords are performing the best – and they’re telling your competitors, too. 

Companies who understand the interconnectedness of marketing across the full stack, who are using data to drive their decisions and activities, and who are committed to Product Information Excellence will provide the best customer experiences. The customers’ journeys will be smoother, customers will discover more relevant content, and they are more likely to find just what they are looking for- which ultimately means they’ll be back. The business case for integrated marketing is the shift from becoming a competitive player to a profit powerhouse.  

In the world of eCommerce, Product Information Excellence must be an integrated concept. It has to have hooks across the entire marketing function, integrating with Content Marketing for relevancy, expertise and freshness), Advertising, Digital Marketing (integrated social media marketing, Influencers, YouTube and video strategy), Channel Marketing, Brand Marketing, and even Corporate Communications (think of adding that industry award logo onto your product page). And on top of all of these, it’s integrated with your offline business and your sales teams. Your sales team is likely using your Product Information Content themselves. Integrating across the business is how marketing wins.