Now that SearchAdvisor has launched, we thought we’d talk to one of our early users to get his feedback.
Josh Mohrer is the VP of Marketing and Development for Uncle Sams Army Navy Outfitters and a ChannelAdvisor champion. I don’t mean that he recommends our products but more that he is an aggressive, creative and savvy multi-channel merchant always on the lookout for strategies for growing his business profitably. He is one of our customers who inspires us and challenges us to create great products. He has a very strong eBay business (ebay.unclesamsdeals.com), eCommerce site (www.unclesamsdeals.com), comparison shopping engine feeds, and is now focusing more on paid search to drive traffic.
More importantly, Josh has been an early beta tester of our new SearchAdvisor product. We sat down with Josh to learn more about his paid search business, how he’s been using SearchAdvisor, and what he expects to do next.
ChannelAdvisor: First off, what branch of the Armed Forces sells more gear? Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines?
Josh Mohrer: Most of our gear isn’t branch specific, but all the branches do pretty well. The peacoat, which is a Navy creation, is our overall best selling item, but we sell a lot of Army and Marines stuff too. This Marines jacket is one of my personal favorites and has also done well for us.
CA: Why do Paid Search?
JM: Paid Search is where people go first for shopping, and to maximize our sales we need to be where the buyers are. The draw towards AdWords was also the Google Checkout badge and leveraging Google’s holiday promotions. However, the clicks are not as qualified as with the Comparison Shopping Engines so it was not my initial focus.
I started paid search in October of 2006 for the holiday season with a budget of about $200/day and an emphasis on the big keywords in my space. I had to generate all of my own keywords and estimate budgets manually. Since I had already built a ChannelAdvisor Store, I was able to take advantage of the matrix inventory option and support for Google Checkout and the holiday promotion Google ran.
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