Survey Says, Retailers to Shift Some Marketing Dollars to RSS

October 5, 2006

BizRates' just released 2006 eHoliday Mood Survey includes an interesting marketing statistic: 41.6 percent of retailers will incorporate blogs or RSS feeds into their holiday marketing strategy. While not quite as surprising, the study also notes that 97.4 percent of retailers said they would invest in search engine marketing this holiday season.

Search is content you are looking for while RSS is content you have already found and subscribe to - content you want. The intentions of the two audiences are different, but both mediums attract a valuable audience. It could be argued that the RSS audience is more valuable because the RSS user has identified exactly what they want while the search user is still looking and their intent is not clear. By subscribing to an RSS feed, we know the RSS user has an interest in a particular content category. And, we can assume the user is making a longer-term commitment by having subscribed to the feed as he or she will likely read the content on a regular basis.

RSS has not reached the mass volume of users that search has, but it can provide that edge you need to improve your Holiday '06 sales. As search keyword prices skyrocket during the holidays, RSS feeds offer a cost effective alternative marketing medium to explore and can help you get revenues back in the black.

Posted by Bill Flitter on October 5, 2006 10:10 PM
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