Why Product Data is Key to Your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Solution

You don’t have to be a data scientist to know that “fun and flirty 50s-style red dress with crinolines” is a more helpful description than simply “red dress.” The former provides a lot more information. So when it comes to your product data and descriptions that have the power to connect shoppers with specific needs to your products, more information is simply better. The more product data you have, and the more granular that data is, the better you can leverage it with on-site shoppers and off-site marketing. To illustrate, we offer these five ways that granular data can inform your search engine marketing (SEM) solution.

1. It Unlocks Those Long-Tail Keywords

One of the best uses of granular product data is to target “long-tail” keywords instead of only shorter, more general keywords. Look back at the example from the introduction: if you want to buy ad space for the term “red dress,” your ad will be surfaced to lots and lots of potential shoppers, but they may be much less likely to be looking for the specific style of red dress you’re selling.

An ad buy based on long-tail keywords (“red dress with crinolines”) might generate fewer clicks, but those who do click on it are much more likely to buy. You’re trading quantity for quality: fewer eyeballs on your ad with a much higher likelihood of conversion. The more granular your data for each product in your lineup, the more variations of long-tail keywords you can play with in your SEM strategy.

2. It Stretches Your SEM Budget

A second benefit to focusing on long-tail keywords is that they’re cheaper. Keywords are a classic example of supply and demand: the more competitors bid for a small pool of high-value, short-tail keywords, the higher they’ll drive the cost per click. Zeroing in on long-tail keywords that are specific to your product line sidesteps most of those competitors, reducing bid pressure on the words and phrases you actually want. Which, in turn, are more likely to result in conversions. As SEM strategies go, there’s a lot to like about paying less and getting more.

3. It Improves Your Page Quality

The relationship between SEO and SEM is variable, but improving one can often improve the other. Generating deep, granular product data — and lots of it — is a prime example of that. For one thing, it can turbocharge your product descriptions: product descriptions that contain plenty of specific, highly granular keywords score highly in search. “Going deep” on product data also makes it easier to differentiate between similar products, reducing duplication across your product pages. This aids your SEO as well.

So, what has that got to do with SEM? A couple of things. First, the quality of your designated landing page directly affects your cost per click, which in turn stretches your SEM budget. Secondly, it means shoppers who click on your ad will land on a more detailed, more helpful page. Score that as a win-win.

4. It Helps You Identify Your Strongest Niches

When you’re a medium to smaller retailer competing with the industry’s Goliaths, whether online or off, one of the most reliable strategies is finding a niche you can lean on more readily than your gargantuan rivals. You won’t usually beat Walmart or Target on generic sweatpants, for example, but if your bread and butter is stylish, attractive athletic wear for plus-size shoppers, you can zero in on that.

That’s an easy example, but identifying your most competitive niches isn’t always that straightforward. Having highly granular product data to draw upon makes it easier to track which of your products and their common attributes are the strongest, and that in turn suggests the keywords you can plan your campaign around.

5. Better Product Data Yields Better Marketing Data

If your product data is granular enough and detailed enough, it can actively inform your search engine marketing strategy. Lily AI’s proprietary machine-learning algorithm can generate dozens of tags for each item in your inventory, far more than you could generate manually.

With that depth of information in play, every interaction with every shopper generates larger quantities of customer data. Armed with more insights around what your shoppers gravitate toward, you’ll be in a position to target your ad buys better. The more targeted you can be in your marketing, the greater your chance of earning conversions.

The bottom line is the more and better product data you have, the more ways you’ll be able to use it as fuel for your SEM.