Why do you need product feed in your online strategy?

Where can we use product feed?

Product feed can be used in various marketing practices. Typical applications of product feed include:

• Affiliate marketing
• Comparison search/shopping engines (CSE)
• Google PLA
• Social Media
• Behavioral retargeting
• Mobile websites

The Internet is steadily gaining new users. That's why numerous diverse opportunities emerge for the product feed, strengthening its position as a medium for information in online marketing.If you need a product feed in a custom format, you can contact us directly at feedink.com to have us adjust the feed to your preferences.

Who needs a product feed?

Product feed should be considered a great channel in e-commerce business and an important element in planning the marketing strategy. This applies in particular to situations where many different products are offered, or when any of their parameters changes frequently, e.g. price or availability. There are four main categories of e-commerce businesses in need of product feed:

• Sales: product feed describes attributes of each product (e.g., name, price, availability, etc.)
• Mobile phones: product feed describes the phone product combination (e.g., model, additional functions) and the attributes of the contract we acquire with the phone (monthly subscription fee, number of extra minutes, etc.)
• Travel: product feed describes subsequent stages of travel and details associated with them (e.g. flight, hotels and travel destinations along with their details)
• Entertainment: product feed contains information on the parts that make up the final price of the product. In this case, the feed can be used to continuously refresh the information in the cart while providing updated information on the availability and price of the product..

As I've mentioned before, there are many ways to use product feed. But let’s not forget that it must have an appropriate format enabling the communication between an e-commerce company and the end user of product feed.

How are product feeds used

in affiliate networks?There are numerous ways to use product feeds in affiliate marketing. Below you can find the most common methods applied in affiliate marketing:

• Comparing products: product feeds are necessary for affiliates who compare products (their prices, availability, and other attributes) for users;
• Paid search engine marketing (PPC): affiliates use the attributes in product feeds to determine the keywords for the campaign and price offers for different products;
• Affiliate content: in this case, product feed helps to make sure that links used by pages containing a large number of text and information (i.e. blogs or news pages) are correct;
• Loyalty marketing: pages with voucher codes are beginning to include information about the products on their own pages. To do this, they must use product feed;
• Dynamic content: the number of companies that create applications and add-ons using product feed is growing. As a result, the potential of online advertising and conversions is increased.

Should product feed structure be different for different vendors?

The information describing a book, DVD or TV set will be significantly different from the information describing a pair of shoes or chairs. That’s why it’s important to evaluate which attributes should be included in product feeds and how these attributes will change depending on different types of products.

Which file format is used to create product feed?

The most common formats for product feed are XML and CSV. Each comes with a set of advantages and drawbacks. It seems that the XML format is superior thanks to the improved presentation of products that contain different versions of attributes. On the other hand, CSV files can be opened in software such as Excel which makes them easily accessible.

How to apply URL tracking for products in the product feed?

Custom tracking for products should be included in the URL before sending the feed to the affiliate network. You can add tracking on your own in the admin panel after logging in.