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!

Many small ones make a big one. That is the principle behind the long tail theory. This also applies to selecting keywords in Google AdWords.

Travel companies can advertise on keywords like 'holiday' or 'flight'. These are keywords with a large search volume, but they are expensive. Moreover, these keywords are mostly used by people who are in the orientation phase rather than the buying phase.

A travel agency that offers a large number of accommodations and organizes trips to many different destinations, will want to be present in Google on his complete offering. And he will want to be found on many different keywords. When offering vacations in Bodrum in Turkey, the following combinations are relevant: vacation Bodrum, vacations Bodrum, travel Bodrum, cheap vacation Bodrum, etc. etc.

The obstacles

When advertising in this way in the long tail, some issues may arise:

1. How do I generate my keywords

The product feed offers the solution, since it contains all accommodations and destinations. Combinations for Google AdWords can be generated based on this input.

2. Keywords with alternative meanings

Accommodation names are often not suited as keywords. An accommodation named ' barbie' will attract a lot of visitors, but not very relevant visitors. Most people who  search for 'barbie' are looking for the doll. Advertising 'barbie' will not only lead to unnecessary campaign costs, but also affects the Google AdWords quality score.

3. Creating relevant ad texts

Google AdWords offers the possibility of keyword insertion. However, this only enables inserting the keyword as variable in the ad text, while ad texts become more relevant if also variables like price are used. This requires a large number of specific ads, which is hard to manage in practice.

4. Availability

Preferable only vacations that have sufficient availability are advertised. An availability index would help and enable further automation of the advertising process by only advertising available accommodations.

Automating AdWords campaign

All the above-mentioned issues can be solved to a large extend by automation. To achieve this Tribal Internet Marketing has developed AdChieve. The main challenge in the travel industry is to keep track of accommodations' availability. The automation can then be lifted to a higher level. In combination with human insight and creativity, smart campaigns can be developed with lower costs and higher sales.

Below is the presentation by Mark van Werven.

The travel industry & advertising in the long tail

The key message of the presentation is that 'long tail' has two important aspects in search engine advertising. First of all, companies can advertise on every product in their offering. For instance, an online bookstore can advertise on all book titles rather than just on generic keywords like 'online bookstore'. In addition, there is a big variety of keywords that can be used for every single product. A supplier of photo camera's can use many different keywords for every camera. For instance, the 'canon eos 450d' has other relevant keywords like '450d canon' and '450 d'.

Setting up and maintaining such AdWords campaigns is complex and labor intensive. As a solution, AdChieve is presented. This software tool, developed by Tribal Internet Marketing, enables an automated link between a companies product offering and a Google AdWords campaign. On the AdChieve website and in the video ADChieve on YouTube more details can be found.

As requested by many, Marktplaats.nl has decided to publish an Admarkt certified logo. This logo is comparable with the Google Adwords certificate. Just like with Google, a bureau may use the Admarkt logo if it employs at least two employees who passed the Admarkt exam. In addition, the bureau must manage at least three active accounts.

Natascha Chamuleau, Sales lead Admarkt, says the following:

"For quite a while there has been a demand for a certification program, especially by bureaus. Admarkt has now reached a stage where certification is possible. It is important for us that bureaus who use our system are good ambassadors of Admarkt and Marktplaats.nl. And it is important that users have a good grip on Admarkt and have proven to setup and maintain good campaigns.

Tribal Internet Marketing and Admarkt

Already in September 2007, Tribal's specialists worked with the first Admarkt pilot, so Tribal has extensive experience and Marktplaats.nl is used as an ad platform for several customers. For example, Tribal manages the Admarkt campaign for the largest internet retailer in The Netherlands: Wehkamp.nl. Through Tribal, Wehkamp.nl is active on Marktplaats.nl with over 1.000 advertisements per day. The combination with AdChieve is essential. AdChieve is a tool, developed by Tribal Internet Marketing, to manage a dynamic and large product offering on a website. Both in Google Adwords and (since this year) in Marktplaats.nl.

Roelof Lettinga, Lead Admarkt (left) and Nadine Willems, SEA-manager Tribal Internet Marketing

Why advertise on Marktplaats.nl?

With 6.000.000 unique visitors per month, Marktplaats.nl has an enormous reach. Every 3 seconds a new advertisement is published. Advertising by companies in Admarkt is a very good way to reach a large audience. Especially with sharp offers, the consumer often prefers a new product over a used product. Plenty of reasons for businesses to advertise on Marktplaats.nl using Admarkt.

A striking fact is that the brand Marktplaats.nl has grown enormously. For the first time since the rise of the Internet, two internet brands have a position in the the top 10 strongest brand names in The Netherlands: Google and Marktplaats.nl. This year Marktplaats.nl climbed from the 28th position to the 5th position. For more information, please refer to this article in 'Het Financieel Dagblad' on April 28th 2009.

What was happening?

There were many suppliers of, and people interested in everything that a webshop needs in terms of payment, webshop platforms, comparison sites, internet marketing, hosting, legal affairs, etc. In addition, there were more than 30 seminars on various subjects in relation to shopping on the internet.

Advertising in the Long Tail using Google AdWords

Mark van Werven (CEO at Tribal Internet Marketing) was one of the speakers during the first day. He talked about advertising in the Long Tail using AdWords. Lots of discussion remains on the correctness of the Long Tail theory, but the fact is that there is a lot to be gained with AdWords campaigns by advertising on specific product names and variations of these names. If the product offering is large and dynamic, this becomes an extremely complex task. And that is why AdChieve has been developed.

Video registration of Mark van Werven's presentation - Webwinkel Vakdagen 2009

'AdWords and the Long Tail' from Tribal Internet Marketing on Vimeo.

Product offering up-to-date in Google

What does AdChieve do? Simply said, it automates large SEA campaigns. It has been developed for large webshops that offer thousands of products with dynamic availability and prices. AdChieve makes sure that such SEA campaigns remain up-to-date and that the quality of the campaigns is automatically managed.

Now also for Marktplaats.nl (Admarkt)

Except for Google AdWords, AdChieve can now (since yesterday, 28/01/2009) be used for advertising on Marktplaats.nl. Advertising on Marktplaats.nl works different than in AdWords; for example, products must be mapped to one of the hundreds of categories. Tribal Internet Marketing developed, in cooperation with Wehkamp.nl, a connection between AdChieve and Admarkt (Marktplaats.nl's ad platform). Using this, large webshops can now keep their Marktplaats.nl campaigns up-to-date.

Promo video AdChieve