This year’s theme was “Defining the Future of Shopper Marketing.” Zach Johnson, Director of Advertising Sales at Amazon, and Gregory Grudzinski, Director Insights & Analytics at Catapult, certainly delivered during their session Amazon.com: Getting Intimate and Learning How to Win.
Shopper Engagement and the Endless Shelf
Zach and Greg covered a variety of topics including best practices in marketing content and winning the buy box, but I found their comments on shopper engagement with Amazon Video Shorts the most forward-thinking. Greg described each product page on Amazon as a microcosm of the sales funnel. Shopper attention and engagement happens in just a few seconds with conversion (hopefully) following not too far behind.
Click to play: Amazon Video Short for Crest 3D Whitestrips
Because the digital shelf is endless, your goal is to get the shopper to stop browsing and focus on your product. One of the most effective ways to engage shoppers is with rich, engaging content on product pages. Video is among the most engaging content types with 73% of US adults are more likely to make a purchase after watching an instructional video on a product page according to Amazon.
Amazon Video Shorts can range in tone and purpose. For example, Crest 3D Whitestrips has a variety of related videos for their assortment. In one video, a dentist addresses consumer safety concerns. The dentist—in her white lab coat and clinical setting—adds credibility, while the related products in the menu signal that this video is meant to be informative and product-centric.
Amazon Video Shorts: Head-to-Head with YouTube?
Contrast that video to one in which customers review Crest Whitestrips 3D Luxe. The casual tone, the unscripted feel, and the demonstration of the product by the reviewers all speak to the customer experience in an authentic way. These videos address the differing needs of shoppers or perhaps even target different shopper personas.
Click to play: Beauty bloggers demonstrate Crest 3D Whitestrips
However, you might have noticed that these reviewers were not selected at random but established beauty bloggers. Amazon’s creation of a how-to video library and it’s recruitment of beauty bloggers has been seen as a direct play for a piece of YouTube’s bread and butter—amateur vloggers and self-made stars.
This head-to-head competition with YouTube (a subsidiary of Google) has continued to heat up since Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said in 2014, “Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo. But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon.”
Amazon expects more participation from brands in their Video Shorts program in 2016
