4 Under-Rated Amazon Growth Tactics - Episode 234
DESCRIPTION
In today’s podcast, Kiri gives an overview of growth opportunities, often some under-used tactics that can help brands get ahead on Amazon. This is especially important now, when on Amazon there is more competition, ad costs are rising, and many brands are still experiencing supply chain issues. Our main topics are usually centered around how to get the basics on Amazon right and then building on that, but this time Kiri will be discussing something a bit different.
Make sure you tune in to find out more!
Podcasting is hard to get feedback on! We would love to hear what you think. Which have been your favorite episodes so far? What do you want to hear more about from us? Email Kiri or reach out to her on LinkedIn. Also, it would mean a lot if you wrote a review for EBT on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us.
“Some new things are emerging [with] some real investment happening in them from Amazon, so I suggest jumping on them early.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Costs of advertising on Amazon have gone up. The most recent CPC data from Pacvue shows 14.3% YoY increase in costs-per-click in Amazon-sponsored product ads, and 7.5% increase in YoY for sponsored brands ad units, which is a sizable increase.
It costs more to get in front of customers than ever before, but there are still some economical areas left with advertising, like retargeting.
Retargeting has been out of reach for a while, when Amazon didn’t have a self-serve capability around it for a time, but now they do. Using cookies, customers are being retargeted with an ad for a product they have already looked up on Amazon, as well as with ads for competing products as well. In a lot of cases, the ROI is great. There are two ways to set this up:
Amazon’s DSP (demand side platform) - using it, you can really go deep with targeting. However, there is a minimum spend each month that is kind of high. Bobsled as an agency has direct access to the DSP, and we can set up campaigns and run them for less than what the minimum would be for brands.
Sponsored display ads on Amazon Advertising - any brand on Vendor or Seller Central can access this. You can re-engage shoppers and drive them back to your product detail pages, and there are some good, creative options.
Videos on Amazon - creating videos is more costly and complicated than creating images. However, the return is definitely outsized, and can give you an edge if you’re the only one doing it, as many brands aren’t. Profitero has noted brands lifting sales by 58% just by adding videos.
In addition to your product detail pages, they can be added to your online store as well, in which case they can add to the brand storytelling.
Live video and live streaming have had a slow start, butl Amazon is still investing in it, trying to get more people to watch live videos.
Results with brands have been underwhelming, but are starting to look up mostly when working with influencers.
Amazon Posts - seen on product detail pages, category pages, etc. Shoppers are targeted for posts of brands that they follow or might be interested in. It’s not simple to follow a brand on Amazon, so for brands it’s been slow, but could pay off in the longer-term;
Manage Your Customer Engagement - a new tool to send email campaigns to your customers. You can send out deals ahead of big events, announce new products, etc. The beta has been live for a couple of months, and the results have been pretty underwhelming so far with data issues, figures not making sense, etc., but there is still potential in this.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Connect with Kiri Masters on LinkedIn or via email
Learn more about Bobsled Marketing, an Acadia Company
Check out:
How to sell on Amazon in 2022 - details a lot of the tactics that Kiri mentioned, plus some extra ones like using TikTok to drive traffic to Amazon.
Amazon Posts - guidelines - How to set up Amazon Posts and our best practices with this tool.
Video content for Amazon - a great blog post overview of video best practices for both organic and paid opportunities. That link also takes you to a free PDF guide of video specifications.
Manage Your Customer Engagement (MYCE) - we will be posting a detailed guide to this program soon.
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