A common problem; advertisers who promote products that are not in stock. It seems like an open door: if a product is not available, it is not promoted online...
Unnecessary costs and bad user experience
In practice this is often not the case. Out of stock products are
still part of online campaigns. They are advertised in Google
AdWords, on Marktplaats.nl or are present on comparison sites.
Result: unnecessary campaign costs and a bad user experience.
Example
1. Search for a hifi set on Google, for example the 'Philips
MCi500H'
2. Acesdirect.nl advertises via AdWords (situation March 16th
2010), and clicking the ad results in:
3. The product is no longer available; let's go to the
competition!
Tracking down problems using statistics
When checking the statistics, it will be obvious that a product is
no longer available. The bounce rate for traffic from campaigns
will be significantly higher. In this way, a statistics tool can
reveal problems with out of stock products. Preferable a solution
is used that avoids advertising products that are not
available.
Avoid problems
A system focused on 'inventory management' can help keeping
non-available products out of campaigns. Tribal Internet Marketing
developed AdChieve for this purpose.
Other suppliers, like Fredhopper, offer solutions too. Using such
system it is well feasible to exclude products with zero
availability from campaigns.
No advertising with low availability
Another option is to exclude products with a low availability. The
remaining stock of high-volume products are easily sold through
other channels, like direct website visits or organic rankings. In
those cases it is better to invest the marketing budget in a
different way.
And what to do on the website?
A difficult question is what to do on the website itself with
products that are out of stock or expected soon. Of course it is
possible to exclude products from campaigns, but direct and organic
visitors will remain and should be served in the best possible
way.
Possible solutions are accepting pre-orders or offering the
possibility to subscribe to an alert service. Whoever knows the
best solution should let us know!
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