What Data Feeds to Promote?

[Johnser]

We've 5 years experience of seo & ppc & have a vague idea what we're at.

Completely new to aff progs however so am looking for some general pointers for when driving traffic via PPC.

Q - Should we promote the highest cost items which will hopefully give the best conversions or is there too great a risk of users phoning the merchant - especially if the product is like "bathroom taps" which typically gets technical Qs.

Q - What do you experts do with large data feeds to "add value" or do you bother?

Eg - I was on a merchant's site last week & saw a decent "enquire about this product" option which seemed to be a nice thing for an affiliate to offer & so have a dialogue with the customer - assuming sale price is sufficiently high...

Q - Many of the data feeds we're seeing have a tiny snippet of info about the product yet when clicking to merchant site, there's loads more info on there. I'd rather have all the product info on my site and then when user clicks "buy", they go to merchant site.

Q - Re PPC, do many of you bid high amounts for electrical stuff on generic phrases like "60gb ipod" or is it better to go niche and hopefully pay less for phrases like "buy 60gb ipod online UK"

ie, Can you make data feeds work for you with expensive PPC phrases if you're not adding lots of value to those data feed products?

All pointers would be very welcome
Thanks
J

[morleymouse]

PPC, generally you only need little bits of info from the data feed anyway as the copy you get with google adwords is limited so thats only realy an issue if your making a site.

Term wise its up to you, obviously something like "Prauge" for example is going to get a lot of searches, but its also going to cost a lot. "Prauge hotels" still going to get a lot, probably cost a little bit less. Its about getting the balance right, yes "prauge hotels in june with no smoking rooms and a balcony" may be cheap as anything, but will your ad ever get shown?

You have to try a few things, weed keywords out that aren't converting, find out if its because the keyword cost against commission is why it isnt converting or if its because your ad copy, or the page your linking to on the merchants site isnt appropriate. Work with the merchant to find out if your ad copy is appropriate, and if the product your trying to sell is worth it at that time of year.

For example with Alpha i've seen ad copy with things in like "The cheapest flats" flats?! we dont do flats! Also if your doing PPC with us we can send keyword reports that basically show which search phrases have converted into your bookings. Sometimes useful.

If your using PPC to drive traffic to a landing page, thats all it needs to be so you dont need loads of detail. Its usually quite easy to pad pages out to fit in with Google guidelines.

The only time you really have to think about content is if you are wanting to build up a content site. In which case you will want the content to be unique, its fine to base the site around a feed but the more unique content you can add the better, and the more valuable the site to the customer. But this way is going to be a lot harder work as effectively you are trying to build up a brand from scratch and need to aquire visitors.

Also if your only just going to get started with affiliate programmes but already have the knowledge to do some PPC etc dont jump in with too many merchants to start with or it will be a nightmare to monitor. And keep an eye on everything!

Good luck!