How a Full Service Amazon Agency Leverages the Advantages of an Internal Creative Department
Sometimes it’s obvious when creative assets miss the mark, like this poorly designed—and incredibly dangerous-looking—product image.
This image needs a lot of visual improvements, and any creative team that cares about the user experience can certainly address those issues. But with Amazon’s marketplace continuing to expand at a mind-blowing pace (Business Insider said 3,700 new sellers per day in 2021, and it’s only grown since), the key to success for creative assets is beyond the obvious. To be successful, your brand must balance three creative priorities:
Showcasing how your brand stands out from your competitors,
Resonating with the Amazon consumer who is in a shopping mindset, and
Functioning within Amazon’s framework of success.
We’ve found that balancing those priorities is easiest when the creative team is integrated alongside all other functional areas of the business. Global Overview’s interdisciplinary approach that connects our creative team with our operations, retail, advertising, and data teams allows the lessons we learn and the momentum we gain from one area to inform and strengthen our approach across other areas. As a result, our creative support gets the added benefit of insights shared across departments that external creative teams can’t access on their own.
3 Case Studies that Show the Benefit of a Creative Department Within a Full Service Amazon Agency
We’ve seen the benefits of a creative department within our full-service agency come to life in some powerful ways. Here’s a highlight reel of some of our favorites:
Creative that combines UX with product and brand differentiators can drive sales in a saturated market.
One of our consumables clients was in the process of rebranding. Knowing that we understood how to tailor their content to Amazon’s framework of success, they partnered with our creative team to implement this rebrand on their PDPs and brand store.
To support our client, our creative department developed a strategy that was informed by consumer reporting and insights from our advertising, retail, and data specialists. The strategy included 3 key priorities:
Consumer shop-ability
Product differentiation
Driving conversion
The updates to their PDP content included informative and clear messaging with an elegant and captivating visual identity to attract consumers. This combination helped us gain their attention and earn their trust. We utilized images that were product-forward, showcasing the bold colors and consistency of the product while also including use-case and nutritional callouts that helped them stand out from competitors.
The stand-alone results from these PDP updates included a +2.4% increase in conversion rate and a +16% increase in sales. (Check out more of the PDP results here ⇢)
The updates to their brand store content included reorienting the home page and main product page to remove friction within the consumer shopping experience. The complexity of the brand, with multiple product categories serving distinct purposes, made it essential to prioritize consumer education instead of overwhelming shoppers with all the product options. Additionally, we highlighted industry-trusted certifications and showcased the quality of all the brand’s products as key differentiators in their saturated market.
The brand store updates helped shoppers quickly educate themselves on the brand, find the right product for their needs, and even build a cart with multiple products. As a result, we saw a +4% increase in conversion rate and a +5% increase in units/order. (Check out more of the brand store results here ⇢
2. Creative strategy for new assets can help maximize Amazon’s structure of success across the full path to purchase.
A client of ours had historically struggled to acquire new customers. Their products were sticky, with a strong repeat customer base, but they were a young company competing against some long-time category leaders.When reviewing the brand’s pre-existing STV asset, we immediately identified that it was missing a key element for success on Amazon: an Amazon end card with a strong call to action. To prove the impact of this subtle but significant change, we developed an alternative STV spot with the suggested end card and ran it side-by-side with the original. The STV spot with the added end card was a massive success, helping drive a +125% increase in new-to-brand.
With the STV spot adjusted for success on Amazon, the customer insights from our advertising and data teams also showed that stacking ad tools would help maximize the impact of the brand’s STV investment. Our creative team took that information and developed DSP and Sponsored Brand visuals that complimented the STV campaign’s aesthetic, telling a cohesive story throughout the consumer’s path to purchase.
This multi-touch strategy improved branded search by +592% and total sales by +91% YoY. (Check out more of the results here ⇢)
3. Creative strategy designed to balance A/B testing new ad tools without losing momentum toward KPIs.
One of our beauty brands began expanding into upper-funnel ad tactics and had wonderful success with STV ads. After seeing the highest levels of NTB shoppers and branded searches ever, our advertising team pulled insights that showed trialing Online Video (OLV) ads had the potential to generate similar levels of success.
Our creative team worked closely with the brand, our advertising team, and our retail team to ensure that the OLV ad would positively impact the key metrics of NTB, organic branded searches, total brand shoppers, unique customers reached, and video completion. Since OLV would be a new tool for the brand, our creative team designed a 30-second OLV ad for our advertising team to trial in a 1-month campaign. Once we had enough data behind the initial OLV ad, our creative team designed a 15-second version of the OLV ad for our advertising team to A/B test against the original. Our data team provided the support that helped us analyze the A/B test, highlighting that the initial 30-second OLV spot generated an 83% higher branded search rate. With these learnings, our advertising team was able to shift their focus to the version that would improve the brand’s performance even more.
As a result of this interdisciplinary approach, we saw total brand shoppers increase +20% QoQ and % of NTB purchasers increase from 39% to 45%. (Check out the full results ⇢)
Is Your Creative Maximizing Your Growth on Amazon?
Amazon’s trajectory of growth teaches a valuable lesson:
The marketplace is only going to get more crowded, making it even more difficult to create an advantage for your brand.
Having a creative team that works cross-functionally with our operations, retail, advertising, and data teams, gives you a better shot at creating that advantage in Amazon’s growing and ever-crowding market. With this integrated approach, our GO team gives you access to shared learnings and insights that can help recognize opportunity, minimize risk, and build momentum. If your creatives seem to be missing the mark, or lacking that kind of integration, reach out through the contact button below.