Maximize Your Online Shelf Space Is it too late to make a difference this holiday season?	Visited: 3290 4.8/5.0 (36 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Brian Easter November 16, 2006

What is online shelf space?

Online shelf space is exactly as it sounds. Similar to the shelf space at a store, online shelf space is easily accessible and appears in more than one location. For example, when you walk down the aisle at your favorite grocery store you may see Guinness at the front of the store in a Guinness display, in front of the beer aisle in another display, and in the beer aisle itself. The same principle applies online. When people go to the major search engines, shopping comparison sites, news outlets, or other sites that are relevant to your target market, you want them to see your products and/or services quickly and easily in an effort to persuade them to buy into your brand, product or service.

Initiatives still available this holiday season

It may be late in the game, but there are still available options to ramp up your online holiday sales this season. Some initiatives that could still prove to be effective in increasing holiday sales include multi-channel ecommerce campaigns, pay per click advertising, and even optimized press release creation and online distribution. Unfortunately, time has simply run out on other proven revenue-generating tactics such as search engine optimization, banner advertising, SEO PR and more.

Multi-Channel Ecommerce

One way to increase your online shelf space quickly is with multi-channel ecommerce feeds.

Multi-channel ecommerce providers integrate sales across various multiple online arenas. In other words, they allow you to push your inventory directly into sites like eBay, Amazon, Froogle, Shopzilla and many more!
Moreover, firms like Marketworks specialize in providing multi-channel ecommerce solutions by pushing your inventory seamlessly to multiple online channels, thus maximizing your online shelf space. These firms also automate back office functions needed to ensure an efficient, streamlined ecommerce engine. Although there is not a lot of leeway, there is time to start driving your products across multiple channels this holiday season.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a quick and direct way to reach your target market, and simple campaigns can be set up very quickly. PPC advertising is a method of sponsored advertising which places a website’s ads in a search engine’s paid results, generally located to the right of the results page. PPC works like an auction in that advertisers bid against each other; advertisers pay when users click on their ads. PPC ads rely on the use of effective ad copy, extensive keyword research as well as bid management.

Depending on the size of your campaign, there is still time to get your PPC campaigns up and running before this holiday season gets in full swing. More sophisticated campaigns such as those that use keyword specific landing pages are probably not likely to be implemented in time, but effective campaigns can still be created.

Optimized Press Releases and Online Distribution

Another great way to get immediate exposure is with optimized press release creation and online distribution. By optimizing and distributing press releases online (assuming the right online wire service is used), not only will the release have the opportunity to get picked up by thousands of sites the day of release, but it will often be picked up and archived by Google News, Yahoo! News and by a multitude of other sites that pull relevant news feeds.

This means that the press release’s message gets instant online visibility. It’s crucial to incorporate strategic keywords into the release’s copy, with the most important ones linked to your website with relevant anchor text. Relevant links and anchor text increase the likelihood that the search engines will display your press release and/or your website when someone types in one of your keywords.

A word of caution, the press releases need to be newsworthy. Simply sending out keyword-filled releases will not only be ineffective, but will cost time, money, and serve to de-value your brand equity. However, if you have newsworthy items I strongly suggest creating optimized press releases and releasing them on online wire services such as PR Web or WebWire.

Initiatives for 2007 and beyond

Some initiatives simply take time. Although each industry has different conversion rates across online media, some initiatives stand out as highly effective at driving traffic and sales. Below are some online shelf space building ideas that increase brand awareness, drive targeted website traffic and increase sales, but cannot realistically be executed this holiday season.

Search Engine Optimization

Although Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is generally accepted as offering the lowest cost per conversion when compared to other online and offline demand generation options, SEO takes time. Once an optimized website is launched, it can take anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months to reap the full benefits of your work.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of altering a website so that it does well in the organic listings in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and more. In other words, SEO is an online marketing initiative that attempts to increase the chances that a website will rank at or near the top of the search engines when someone types in desired keywords. For example, an owner of a Web hosting firm offering dedicated hosting like VIA USA would want his or her website to be found whenever a potential customer searches for “dedicated hosting.” Similarly, an online sock outlet targeting diabetics, such as Socks4Life, would want to be found when someone searches for “diabetic socks.”

Moreover, many projects require “off the page” search engine optimization which can take even more time. “Off the page” SEO usually consists of link building, online PR, content generation, and more in an effort to increase the amount of quality links pointing back to a website.

Banner Advertising

Banner advertising is generally considered an expensive enterprise in terms of cost per conversion when compared to SEO, PPC and multi-channel ecommerce. However, the return on investment (ROI) is largely contingent on the click thru rate (CTR) you get from your ads and the conversion rate you get from your landing pages.

Hence, creating an integrated online ad campaign with compelling creative and conversion-likely landing pages takes time. If banner advertising is an area you want to explore, make sure you set aside enough time in your project plan to thoroughly investigate your target media buy, create compelling creative, and perform simple A/B testing.

SEO PR

Search Engine Optimization Public Relations (SEO PR) is a very effective way to create online shelf space, ensuring your Web properties, or news about your firm, is at the top of the search engines for specific keywords.

SEO PR is a blend of search engine visibility and traditional public relations that disperses a company’s message across the Internet by way of online media outlets and search engines. SEO PR not only helps disseminate an organization’s messages, but it also incorporates search engine-friendly communication through techniques such as optimizing copy in online content such as press releases, articles, whitepapers, blogs, RSS feeds and websites. For example, a firm like Tidwell DeWitt would want their site and/or their press releases, articles, etc. to come up when Web searchers look for SAS 70 related terms in the major search engines or when they are searching news online.

As you could tell from the definition above, SEO PR takes time and energy. These efforts not only take time to execute, but the success of each activity is often best measured over time. Once again, SEO PR is something to strongly consider adding to your marketing budget, but it isn’t likely to have an impact this holiday season.

Conclusion

In summary, much can still be done to increase your online shelf space and to ramp sales this holiday season. Your choices are limited, but initiatives such as PPC advertising, multi-channel ecommerce and optimized press release creation and distribution can give you that much needed edge. Other highly recommended campaigns cannot be implemented given the time constraints this season, but nothing is stopping you from incorporating them for next year and beyond. Additional ideas to increase your online shelf space are on our interactive marketing blog and other online marketing media outlets such as iMedia Connection, Promotion World, Search Engine Watch and more.