Strategic Advertising & Seller Central Account Support to Address Fulfillment Issues and Competitor Challenges
What We’re Celebrating:
By monitoring our client’s inventory position, helping them reclaim units stranded at Amazon warehouses, and implementing a new DSP creative that differentiates their products from brands playing in their category, we helped them:
Manage their advertising budget wisely and effectively.
Increase sales for 3 formerly stranded ASINS.
ASIN #1: +52% MoM
ASIN #2: +25% MoM
ASIN #3: +37% MoM
Up new-to-brand (NTB) customers by 23%.
Overview:
Since March ’23, one of our consumables clients has been experiencing increased consumer demand for their 20-packs and variety packs. Although this sounds great on paper, they’ve been struggling to manufacture products at the same rate they are growing, and 20-packs and variety packs are difficult for the brand to build.
Additionally, we saw some of the brand's ASINs randomly switch over to Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) in Seller Central (SC) when they’ve always been set up as Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), causing their inventory at Amazon Fulfillment Centers (FC) to be stranded. Our team has gone into their account and attempted to manually switch their stranded SKUs back to FBA, but it kept automatically switching back to FBM.
To top this all off, our client’s top competitor has begun playing in the brand’s very niche space within the category in an effort to conquest our customers.
Due to these two fulfillment challenges and the increased competition our client has been experiencing, we found a way to reclaim stranded inventory and adjust our advertising approach to be:
Nimble based on inventory available.
Educational to sway consumers to purchase from our client over other brands.
The Challenge:
The brand is growing faster than they can produce products, resulting in a need for a more complex, flexible advertising approach to prioritize in-stock items.
Some of the brand’s FBA ASINs were randomly switched over to FBM in SC, causing those ASINs’ inventory to be stranded at Amazon warehouses and further complicating their consumer demand problems.
Our client’s top competitor is showing up in their specific niche within the category, making it more difficult to keep the attention of shoppers within that space.
The Strategy:
Because our brand’s manufacturing processes were unable to keep up with consumer demand, we consistently monitored their ASINs’ inventory positions to identify which products were available for advertising.
To understand the current standing of our client’s inventory, we reviewed Restock Reports and calculated what items were currently available for purchase, inbound, or in FC processing/transfer. We looked at each item’s one week of cover (WOC), daily sales, total WOC on hand, and total WOC on hand plus how much was on order. We shared this weekly with our client and provided order recommendations on a bi-weekly basis.
Within the order recommendations, we suggested the brand focus on products that were high in demand (e.g., the 20-packs and the variety packs), low on inventory, and/or items we needed for Search and DSP ads. If the items we typically prioritized for advertising had low WOC and were unfulfillable, we adjusted our advertising strategy. Because the brand only has two different sizes, we simply held weekly reviews to see which items within each size were available to promote.
On top of this flexible advertising approach, we also identified a way to regain our client’s stranded inventory. After communicating back and forth with Seller Support, we discovered the brand had 3rd party applications on their SC account that were flipping listings from FBA to FBM. This led us to instruct the brand to unlink the 3rd party applications from their SC account.
Finally, to deal with the brand’s increasing competition, we began focusing the majority of our advertising efforts on driving awareness and consideration to educate consumers that we are the best choice within the category. To aid in this, we launched a new DSP prospecting campaign in August ‘23. Our internal creative department, GO Studio, developed a new creative for this campaign that highlights the main selling point of our client’s products and explains how they provide shoppers with their sought-after benefit far more than competitors do.
The Results:
Because we constantly monitored our client’s inventory position, we were able to delegate their ad dollars effectively and avoid wasting budget on ASINs that weren't in stock.
By solving the SC problem that was switching our client's products from FBA to FBM, we were able to regain 3 listings from stranded inventory. When comparing 30-days pre-unlinking 3rd party apps to 30-days post-unlinking 3rd party apps, the 3 formerly stranded ASINs saw impressive sales growth:
ASIN #1: +52%
ASIN #2: +25%
ASIN #3: +37%
When comparing June to August (not comparing to July because of Prime Day), our new DSP prospecting creative helped us achieve a +23% increase in NTB customers.
Struggling to meet consumer demand or go after competitors in your category?
Keeping up with consumer demand can be challenging, and it becomes even more challenging when competitors recognize that and try to take advantage. This is where our team can come in and help. We have experience finding the perfect balance of staying nimble with advertising while also being aggressive within the category. Want to see how we can accomplish this for you? Set up a call with us.