Nextag Introduces Brand Level Bidding and Marketing Messages

Posted by on August 17, 2011 in Strategy

NextagWhile CPC Strategy was at IRCE 2011 back in June, we were fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at Nextag's beta version of their new Merchant Dashboard.  It was good.  And ever since then we've been holding our breath, eagerly waiting for Nextag to showcase some of those new tools.  Today, CPC Strategy got their wish.

Nextag is sporting new brand level bidding functionality within the Merchant Dashboard bidding tool.  Not only can merchants manage bids by category, they can now dive deeper into their data and target specific brands through the Nextag Merchant Dashboard.

 

 

The 2 Brand Levers

Nextag offers 2 ways that merchants can enhance and customize their product listings.

  1. Brand Level Marketing Messages
  2. Brand Level Bids

 

From the Merchant Dashboard, click Manage Bids By Category like you normally would.  The page layout is the same but you'll notice that there are new options listed under each category listing.

 

Nextag - Edit Brand Bids

 

 

Brand Level Bids

If you click on Edit Brand Bids for a category, a window will pop up with a list of brands that are currently being advertised in that category.  Select the Brand that you want to adjust from the list on the left and click the Include button.  Then hit Submit.

 

Nextag brand bids

 

Now you'll see a new Incremental Bid option under your selected category for the Brand that you highlighted.  This is where you analyze all your data and determine where to place the incremental bid for this Brand.

 

Nextag - Incremental Bid

 

Brand Level Marketing Messages

The process of creating Brand Level Marketing Messages is very similar to what I just outlined above for the Brand Level Bids.  The only difference is that instead of having the Incremental Bid option, the bid is a flat rate of $0.05.   Once you've selected the brands that you want to display marketing messages for, click Set Marketing Messages.

Nextag - Set Marketing Messages

 

From here, merchants have to select the type of Marketing Message that they want to appear for that particular Brand.  Nextag gives merchants plenty of options and offers easy-to-follow templates to fill these out.  The types of Marketing Messages offered by Nextag are:

  1. Free From Message
  2. Price Discount (Sale)
  3. Shipping Discount
  4. Tax Discount
  5. Rebate

 

Select which type of Marketing Message you want to display on your product listings and follow the template the Nextag provides you and you're all done.

Now all that sounds simple enough, but make sure that you're analyzing your clickstream data properly in order to determine the optimal strategy for you campaigns.  Setting bids is easy enough on the surface, but make sure to take a closer look at your analytics performance metrics to make sure that you're pulling the right levers.

 

About the Author+David Weichel is a Web Analytics Consultant and CSE Manager at CPC Strategy. He specializes in conversion rate optimization, search behavior research and attribution analysis. David graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a B.S. in Management Science. See all posts by this author here.

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