Should Instacart Advertising Be Outsourced to an Agency?- Episode 176
INTERVIEW WITH STEFAN JORDEV
DESCRIPTION
Welcome to the last installment in our 3-part Instacart series! Today we’re talking about whether Instacart should be outsourced to an agency. Bobsled Director of Marketplace Strategy & Insights, and co-author of “Instacart for CMOs“, Stefan Jordev joined us on the show again to share his knowledge.
Brands of all sizes and levels of sophistication seek out the support of an outside agency partner. This includes Fortune 500 companies right down to emerging brands. It can be a question of limited internal capacity or resourcing, or that the company needs to be assured that they are operating with best practices.
Let’s discover together which brands have found working with agencies beneficial and in what cases could you manage advertising internally.
“You should be selecting agency based on capacity, skills and previous experience, not just looking to have a single agency to manage all your advertising efforts on marketplaces.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Jim Morgan, Head of Ecommerce at Vita Coco, believes that brands need an agency in the case of a new platform that changes daily since the agency has the experience of working with many brands on the platform and can more easily aggregate trends and best practices. Additional benefits Jim lists:
If you have an agency that already manages your other eCommerce marketplaces advertising (for example Amazon), the trust is already there.
Agencies might have a direct relationship with Instacart.
Agencies are aware of new product developments and can have a cohesive strategy across multiple eCommerce platforms.
Ingrid Milman Cordy, Head of Digital and eCommerce at Nuun Hydration, says that companies that are equipped with intern PPC teams could handle Instacart internally since (right now) it is a fairly straightforward platform.
Each marketplace channel comes with its own set of nuances that agencies specializing in marketplace channel advertising must be familiar with.
Instacart uses a 2nd price auction model, which is identical to Amazon’s but different from Walmarts. This changes how an advertiser would approach his bidding strategy entirely because if an advertiser is aware of the average bidding rates of main competitors it can choose to set very high bids on main keywords without inflating CPC rates too much.
Instacart’s search terms are very strong intent searches, so advertisers should find out the exact variants of the search terms potential customers shop by.
Agencies that specialize in Instacart advertising will have to maintain a close relationship with the brands to make sure they are up to date on the latest inventory/content challenges a brand may be facing.
A company could be self-reliant if the following things are true:
Your company has been assigned an account manager at Instacart.
An internal resource has extensive PPC experience on other eCommerce marketplaces (Amazon, Walmart, etc).
This person has the bandwidth to learn and master a new sales channel, including the initial set-up of new ad campaigns.
This person (and /or their manager) has the ability to influence budget and supply chain decisions within other teams - primarily sales and brand marketing.
Shopper marketing agencies lack the expertise that detailed PPC management requires, knowledge of available third-party and AI solutions, and info of upcoming advertising product releases per platform, so your brand may be doomed to lag behind competitors.
If the incumbent agency has Instacart experience, that’s all well and good, but avoid awarding the Instacart work to your incumbent agency if the primary criteria is to avoid managing another vendor.Jim Morgan, Head of Ecommerce at Vita Coco, believes that brands need an agency in the case of a new platform that changes daily since the agency has the experience of working with many brands on the platform and can more easily aggregate trends and best practices. Additional benefits Jim lists:
If you have an agency that already manages your other eCommerce marketplaces advertising (for example Amazon), the trust is already there.
Agencies might have a direct relationship with Instacart.
Agencies are aware of new product developments and can have a cohesive strategy across multiple eCommerce platforms.
Ingrid Milman Cordy, Head of Digital and eCommerce at Nuun Hydration, says that companies that are equipped with intern PPC teams could handle Instacart internally since (right now) it is a fairly straightforward platform.
Each marketplace channel comes with its own set of nuances that agencies specializing in marketplace channel advertising must be familiar with.
Instacart uses a 2nd price auction model, which is identical to Amazon’s but different from Walmarts. This changes how an advertiser would approach his bidding strategy entirely because if an advertiser is aware of the average bidding rates of main competitors it can choose to set very high bids on main keywords without inflating CPC rates too much.
Instacart’s search terms are very strong intent searches, so advertisers should find out the exact variants of the search terms potential customers shop by.
Agencies that specialize in Instacart advertising will have to maintain a close relationship with the brands to make sure they are up to date on the latest inventory/content challenges a brand may be facing.
A company could be self-reliant if the following things are true:
Your company has been assigned an account manager at Instacart.
An internal resource has extensive PPC experience on other eCommerce marketplaces (Amazon, Walmart, etc).
This person has the bandwidth to learn and master a new sales channel, including the initial set-up of new ad campaigns.
This person (and /or their manager) has the ability to influence budget and supply chain decisions within other teams - primarily sales and brand marketing.
Shopper marketing agencies lack the expertise that detailed PPC management requires, knowledge of available third-party and AI solutions, and info of upcoming advertising product releases per platform, so your brand may be doomed to lag behind competitors.
If the incumbent agency has Instacart experience, that’s all well and good, but avoid awarding the Instacart work to your incumbent agency if the primary criteria is to avoid managing another vendor.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
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