5 Steps for Ensuring PLA Success This Holiday Season
As the autumnal sun wanes on the horizon, one thought grows stronger in the minds of retailers everywhere: preparation for holiday sales. Online retailing is gaining a larger portion of total merchandising sales, with paid search ads driving more traffic than organic. Within the online retailing world, product listing ads (PLAs) are gaining much more traction since their introduction, with clickthrough rates growing nearly 20 percent year-over-year.
For the uninitiated, PLAs are search ads that include concise product information such as product image, price and merchant name without relying solely on text ads to entice online shoppers. PLAs are proving that a picture is truly worth a thousand (key) words, as they're consistently driving increased clickthrough rates and conversions.
Given that the holiday season is quickly approaching, it's now more important than ever for merchants to understand how to maximize PLAs. Here are some tips on how to most effectively use PLAs this holiday season. Check them once or check them twice to make sure your return on ad spend is perfect at any price.
1. Ensure you have a robust and comprehensive merchant feed. Only products included in your merchant feed have the chance to appear as a PLA. As such, this step is of utmost importance. First, make sure every product in your catalog is included in your merchant feed. You should also populate as many fields as possible in the merchant feed, as more populated fields create more matching opportunities and improve the quality of the matching between query and product.
2. Optimize your merchant feed. Once your merchant feed includes your entire catalog, it's time to optimize and enrich it. To do this, you can't assume that the data generated from your inventory or merchandising system is sufficient to make your PLA campaign successful. Rather, you need to think like a consumer. What search terms would you enter into search engines? Which item titles would you be more likely to click on when multiple PLAs appear?
