Amazon is the rising advertising platform. Brands can no longer ignore this “new” player to develop their sales and reputation. What are the best practices?
While it is not easy to obtain information from Amazon, all the stakeholders interviewed, both agencies and advertisers, agree that the famous e-commerce site is now much more than an online sales site. From now on, it also acts as a media and powerful targeting tool for brand advertising campaigns. Thus, between 2015 and 2018, the percentage of product search reversed between Google and Amazon, going from 54% vs 46% to 46% vs 54% vs 54% in favor of Jeff Bezos’ website. Its share of the advertising revenue market is also increasing, although it is still anecdotal (8.8% in 2019 in the United States), compared to Google (37.2%) and Facebook (22.1%).
How does Amazon appeal to advertisers? Thomas Faure, Artefact’s e-retail lead, distinguishes between two types of advertising products: “On the one hand, there are sponsored products and sponsored brands that highlight one or more products of a brand within the search results pages on Amazon. On the other hand, there is a display offer that can be displayed on Amazon or offline on the web with programmatic purchasing.” “This last feature allows Amazon to open up to brands other than those that sell on an e-commerce site,” says Maxime Faure, partner director of Ad’s up Consulting. It then becomes clear that Amazon is a tool for developing notoriety, whether to maintain a presence in mind or to make oneself known.
1/ What are your business objectives?
“Before starting, it is essential to define the business objectives you want to achieve beforehand,” says Thomas Faure. Is it to promote a particular product or a whole category? What is the brand’s place in its market, leader or challenger? “It is these reflections that will then make it possible to choose the type of campaign, the target, but also the keywords on which to position yourself in search,” he explains. Pascal Malotti, Director of Business Development & Strategy at Valtech France, underlines the impact that these new campaigns have internally on advertisers: “Since they will serve both sales and image issues, this means that the marketing and sales teams must work together to define a common and coherent strategy.
2/ Focus your budget
“We recommend concentrating financial investments on a limited number of products, so as not to disperse and so that the actions taken have a real impact on increasing your traffic,” Maxime Faure advocates. Thus, a virtuous loop is being put in place between engaged advertising, sales conversion and increased customer reviews. Benefiting from a better referencing, the products generate a higher natural traffic.
3/ Search for the optimization of your campaigns
“The posture to adopt is that of test and learn, in particular to choose keywords on which to position yourself, whether it is broad requests, use – razors, cat food… – or very specific expressions, such as the product of a particular brand, ours or that of a competitor or an associated product,” Pascal Malotti recommends. Some budgetary guidelines also benefit from being known. On the choice of sponsored products, Maxime Faure “advises to focus on products with a minimum margin of 8 to 10 €, otherwise the investment in advertising may not be profitable”. Thomas Faure recommends a minimum media investment of €10,000 for a campaign to purchase a display in web programming via Amazon’s DSP.
4/ Synchronize your media plan
“The objective is not to work in silo and add a new communication channel isolated from other marketing actions. We will therefore favour an investment in advertising on Amazon during periods when the brand also invests in other mass media such as TV, billboards or print,” observes Nicolas Vivies, e-retail advertising director & Amazon marketing lead at iProspect. “On the other hand, it is essential to comply with Amazon’s promotion plan,” Thomas Faure insists. Thus, Black Friday will be one of the highlights of the year to promote your brand or make promotions. “However, a Black Friday is prepared months in advance, starting in the summer, to start working on SEO and increase traffic generation,” he says.
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