Boost Your Brand Equity by Reimagining Brand Protection
The future of your business depends on your ability to gain attention and build momentum with shoppers at critical moments, like when a shopper searches your branded terms. In this moment, advertisers have the complicated task of balancing these 2 tensions:
Make sure you’re not spending unnecessarily.
Don’t open the door for your competitor to get in front of your customer at a critical point in their path to purchase.
A lot of brands have a reflexive response during this moment and focus purely on brand protection, neglecting the first tension by spending unnecessarily to cover the second tension of blocking out competitors. This singular focus on brand protection can create a lot of issues, including inefficiencies that can stunt your long-term growth.
Rather than singularly focusing on brand protection, shift to a holistic perspective that builds brand equity.
The first place to start is to recognize the strategic shift you need to make at the moment a shopper searches for your branded terms.
Branded Searches Need a Different Strategy
We see a lot of brands utilize the same strategy for both their branded terms and their category terms. Here’s what we mean:
In this example, a consumer has searched for “Brand Product A”, and the Seller chose to advertise 3 products that are already the top organic listings. Because of this...
There’s no opportunity for incrementality.
The brand is more likely to spend unnecessarily and reduce their profitability. This might burn through their budget faster, opening the door for a competitor to show up in those ad spots.
TIP: You might be able to calculate approximately how much spend is wasted by reviewing the top search terms in Brand Analytics and the percentage of clicks that the top 3 products receive. For example, let’s say the data shows that ~50-60% of clicks land on the top 3 ASINs but you spent $10,000 on those ads. This could mean that at least 50% of the spend was unnecessary. While that may not be entirely true for your brand, it’s worth a look if you’re trying to cut back on wasted spend and increase profitability.
The brand has also increased the likelihood of consumer confusion by seeing products A.1, A.2, and A.3 listed in both the sponsored ads and organic spots as well as with different rankings. That unnecessary confusion could slow down the path to purchase, and none of us want that.
There is a better way.
We can shift the Sponsored Ads strategy to focus on 3 things:
Driving incrementality across the catalogue. Shift spend away from hero ASINs that consumers are searching for and invest those ad dollars in communicating more about the brand story and the full line of products across the portfolio.
Increase profitability. Use the momentum and the intent from the consumer’s brand search to reduce ROAS and increase profitability.
Maintaining a smooth path to purchase. Work to eliminate any confusion or anything else that might slow down the shopping experience.
Integrating these 3 goals within a Sponsored Ads strategy at the point of a branded search will go a long way to help protect your brand from spending unnecessarily while blocking out those eager competitors.
Here’s what that looked like for 3 of our brands.
Growing Diaper Brand Leverages Sponsored Brands to Impact the “Bottom” Line
OPPORTUNITY:
A flourishing diaper brand wanted to prioritize profitability while also blocking competitors who wanted to draft off the brand’s awareness.
SOLUTION:
Since the brand’s awareness was largely driven by the personalities of the owners, we encouraged a test to use Sponsored Brands with 2 variations of the ad creative—one with the owners and products, and one with just the owners—to see which version resonated better with customers.
Additionally, with so many competitors targeting their branded terms, we utilized a Sponsored Brands Store Spotlight ad to block those competitors from highly visible ad placements like top of search and category pages. It would also allow us to drive traffic to the brand store and create awareness around other product categories that are offered by the brand.
RESULTS:
Not only did we block competitors from the ad spots on branded terms, but we also increased ad efficiency with the A/B test and grew incrementality through the brand store.
The A/B creative test produced:
+41% CVR
-45% ACOS
-48% CPP
The Sponsored Brands Store Spotlight ad produced:
+64% increase in ad-attributed traffic to the brand store
+66% increase in ad-attributed brand store sales
Wellness Brand “Flips the Script” with Sponsored Products on Product Pages
OPPORTUNITY:
We work with a wellness brand who was being aggressively targeted by their competitors. Their competition was trying to take over every ad placement on the brand’s PDPs.
SOLUTION:
We utilized Sponsored Products on their own product pages to block those competitors.
TIP: Utilize Market Basket Data to understand cross purchasing that might already be happening within your portfolio. This will give you a good idea of which ASINs might be the best fit for these placements. That data can also give you an idea about the way consumers are basket-building with your competitors.
Additionally, we knew this strategy would unlock an opportunity for the brand to explore cross-selling performance with secondary and tertiary ASINs across the brand’s catalogue. We wanted to use this information to see which ASINs had the best cross-selling performance so that we can leverage them in future ad campaign planning.
RESULTS:
We successfully helped the brand appear more on their own product pages, ultimately reducing opportunities for other peer products to appear and potentially steer shoppers away from our client’s product pages.
Additionally, we saw a strong cross-selling performance that allowed us to identify a new top performer for future ad campaigns. This top performer had a remarkably high click-through rate that was +179% above the rest of the ASINs, and an impressive ROAS that was +385% above the rest of the ASINs as well. These insights were valuable for designing future ad strategies featuring multiple products.
Accessories Brand “Bags” Profitability and Brand Equity with Sponsored Brand Video
OPPORTUNITY:
An accessories brand wanted to utilize their growing brand awareness to drive sales growth across their catalogue and greater ad efficiency.
At the same time, there were concerns about competitor products appearing when their brand name was searched for in the shopping discovery bar.
SOLUTION:
We knew we wanted to leverage the Sponsored Brands Video ad format to stand out among competitors in branded shopping results and keep audiences engaged with our client’s brand.
To drive ad efficiency, we A/B tested Sponsored Brands Video ads to determine if traffic to specific product pages or the brand store drove more sales at a lower cost.
TIP: Our GO Team includes A/B testing as a critical part of any strategy we develop. That’s because we believe success on Amazon occurs when we’re always learning and looking for ways to optimize. But if A/B testing is not a regular practice for you, it’s important to always approach an A/B test with a specific question in mind. For instance, you could ask:
“Which destination increases Average Order Value—PDPs or the Brand Store?” You could utilize the same ad but drive traffic to both locations and learn if the brand store destination encourages consumers to add multiple products to their order.
“Which ad variation has lower engagement?” This could help you understand how to brand protect at a lower cost (less clicks = less spend), and instead, shift those dollars to support other tactics that drive things like NTB.
RESULTS:
Through our A/B test, we identified that the SBV ads to PDPs had higher engagement, but the SBV ads to the brand store generated 164% more sales at a -65% lower cost per purchase.
The learnings from this A/B test allowed us to keep more competitors off branded terms while also driving more sales through the brand store in a more efficient way.
Find Balance to the Tensions at the Point of a Branded Search
Every advertiser needs to find the best and most efficient response to the tensions we face at the point of a branded search. If you’re struggling with these tensions, fight for a better balance by shifting your Sponsored Ads strategy toward incrementality, profitability, and a smooth path to purchase. Focusing on those priorities can help protect your team from overspending and it can block eager competitors who want to draft off your momentum.
Need help crafting a better strategy at the point of a branded search? Reach out to our team to start a conversation.