Today, Jessica Thorpe of gen.video, Mark White of Content26 and our own Danny Silverman answer user generated questions from our recent webinar, “Driving Online Retail Store Traffic with Paid Advertising and Influencer Programs.” Previously, we’ve examined how traffic how traffic is the most fundamental metric in retail and the best way to generate it, as well as a few means brands can utilize to actually win at search and improve conversion rates. Finally, we’ll conclude by glancing at how cereal brands and computer monitors brands are winning on Amazon in the US and UK.
Earlier in this series we discussed the importance of driving traffic and increasing conversion rates on Amazon. Ecommerce is arguably the most rapidly growing space in retail in terms of sales, but overall, it's almost ubiquitous. What we mean is that ecommerce now drives a significant proportion of conversion in brick-and-mortar stores. In 2016, for instance, 55% of all shoppers went to Amazon to search for new products during their buying process, before any other platform. That means that over half of all shoppers used Amazon’s search engine, scrolled through the above-the-fold and first-page entries, and explored Product Detail Pages - even though many of those went on to make their purchases elsewhere. In other words, Amazon isn’t just a retail platform anymore - it’s a marketing platform that millions of people use for product research. This means that the bigger Amazon becomes, the more imperative it is that brands optimize their search ranking and drive traffic and conversion. Now, winning on Amazon doesn’t just drive sales on the digital shelf, it drives sales on the traditional one too.
In August hundreds of ecommerce professionals from around the world tuned in to a joint webinar by Clavis Insight, PlanetRetail RNG, and OneClick Retail on utilizing paid advertising to drive traffic and conversion on Amazon. Below is our Q&A wrap-up featuring the president of Content26 Mark White, president of gen.video Jessica Thorpe, and Clavis Insight CMO Danny Silverman.
For more detail on how paid advertising and other digital tactics can boost your brand’s Amazon traffic and conversion rates, download our on-demand webinar “Driving Amazon Traffic and Conversion with Paid Advertising Tactics” here, and don’t forget to check out our latest white paper, “Turning Amazon Traffic into Amazon Sales,” which can be downloaded here.
Questions:
Q. You'd mentioned that traffic on pages with A+ content was somewhat low but that conversion rates were high. What products do you think would benefit from A+ content?
A. Mark White: Content26, president/co-founder: The way we think about it is always the "80/20 rule": What 20% of your products are driving 80% of your revenue? These are your key products that are going to be leading a lot of your advertising/marketing campaigns. You absolutely want A+ content on those products.
Another A+ content category, we think, are startup products - products you’re trying to bring to the marketplace - whether you’re a startup company or whether you’re pivoting as a brand. [Content26 client] Bai Soda, is a perfect example. Now Bai is a simple product - it’s essentially flavored water. They had 50 SKUs. They had no distribution strategy to speak of. But they fundamentally used A+ content and AMS to play that shadow puppet game - to appear really big. And you know, 50 SKUs and a $1.7 billion buyout – who wouldn't take that? It was really premised on smart use of A+ content.
So that's a really good startup example of a brand coming in and really bringing a brand new disruptive product to the market using A+ content and AMS. And again, it’s two things: the startup or disruptive products that you're bringing to the market and that 80/20 rule – the most important products in your portfolio. And then you use budget wisely to spread across the rest.
Q. The holidays are coming up: Thanksgiving and Black Friday here in the U.S., and the holiday shopping season is right around the corner. So what should brands be thinking about now to prepare themselves for a successful season in terms of their digital presence - from paid advertising to influencer video?
A. Danny Silverman, Chief Marketing Officer, Clavis Insight: I would just say that right now is the time to really start digging in to analytics around product page and listing health. If you wait much longer, it's going to be too late to take any action. You should take a look at your in-stock history and see if there's been any instability relative to out-of-stocks - particularly around promotional periods - which you can use to inform your buyer to increase inventory levels ahead of the holidays. You want to take a look at your pricing trends to see how you're comparing versus what you would expect and versus competitors. Again, if you wait until the holidays, it becomes too late because trying to make adjustments in that regard can take some time to work collaboratively with the retailer.
And there are some other aspects to make sure of: you have your minimum number of ratings & reviews, your content keywords are in place, your search rank is where you need it to be. Ultimately what we recommend coming into holiday period is creating a cluster segment of ASINs or SKUs that are going to be your focus area and isolating those within whatever analytics solution you use.
Q. Are there any categories that are good fits for influencer video or are doing influencer video really well?
A. Jessica Thorpe, gen.video, president/co-founder: I think as long as your product is for sale online, on Amazon specifically, there's an ability to leverage influencer marketing to accelerate your business. That being said, I think the two categories that have really learned in the most right now are consumer packaged goods and consumer electronics.
The first I think is a little bit more [traditional] where the money is [in terms of] advertiser spend, with big manufacturers like P&G, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever, etc. And we're seeing more and more reallocation of digital spend to influencer marketing because they're seeing such great results. This category plays into trends that you're seeing in social media nicely: mom bloggers, lifestyle influencers, beauty and fashion influencers. And this also includes mature brands in categories that you wouldn’t expect influencer marketing/big digital advertising spend to be worthwhile, like grocery.
And the other one: consumer electronics. This category has a high proportion of higher-ticket items, but it’s still very much apart of the YouTube ecosystem, especially around technology. Smart home is one that's been popular for a while now as consumers are trying to understand what it means to smart-enable your home.
And I'd even go from straight consumer electronics to video games. Gaming has been such a movement. That content is super high quality, 4K - so much of it looks like something from CNET or Digital Trends. You start to forget that it's influencer content. The people behind the content have great personalities, so they've been able to amass credibility and a following that really makes it easy for brands who want to align themselves [with them].
I'd say those two categories are really pushing the envelope on how to tap into the power of influencer and really think about, when collaborating with them – how do I get more from an omnichannel standpoint versus just thinking about it from a PR perspective?
To go more in depth on how to succeed in this crucial space, download our whitepaper “Turning Amazon traffic into Amazon sales” here, or give our on-demand webinar “Driving Traffic and Conversion with Paid Advertising” a listen here, and check out the rest of this blog series, and all of our expert insights here.