Why Your Merchandising Team’s Effort is Lost on Your SEM Team, Part 1: Leveraging Your Product Catalog

The merchandising team's product catalog is critical because it specifies the marketer's intent — i.e., what the marketer has to sell. If SEMs regularly market products that the merchandising team doesn't have, it will ultimately lead to lower return on ad spend and frustrated consumers.

For example, let's say I sell "Nike shoes." When entering "Nike shoes" into free online keyword discovery tools (e.g., Google's AdWords Keyword Tool) to help expand existing keyword sets, they might recommend "Nike vintage shoes" because "Nike vintage shoes" is materially similar to "Nike shoes." However, if I only sell new Nike shoes then this suggested keyword is of little to no value to me.