Turning a Spark into a Fire: 3 Types of Growth to Create Long-Term Success on Amazon
Any kind of growth shows promise, but like a spark failing to turn into a flame, some growth will never turn into long-term success because it’s missing a key ingredient. No metaphor is perfect, but there is some correlation between the ingredients needed to start and maintain a fire and those needed to achieve sustained, profitable growth.
Fire-making takes 3 ingredients: fuel, heat, and oxygen.
(image source: https://www.cityfire.co.uk/)
To translate this metaphor into brand-building on Amazon, let’s imagine...
your fuel is your ad-attributed sales,
the heat you need comes from your topline sales,
and the oxygen that helps translate it all to long-term success is market share.
Ad-Attributed Sales = Fuel
Ad-attributed sales growth is certainly a good thing, but it’ll never create long-term success on its own. Growing your ad-attributed sales is not too different from gathering the fuel you need to start a fire. Both take energy and resources but no matter how much firewood you buy, it’s not going to catch fire just sitting in a pile.
Topline Sales = Heat
Topline sales growth is a strong indicator of potential long-term success. Like adding heat to your fuel, your topline sales illustrate growth beyond your ad-attributed sales. It’s even where you can start to see some aspects of profitability, or the spark that can turn into a flame. That spark by itself is a good sign, but it may not last – it still needs oxygen from your market share to build into the flame of your long-term success.
Market Share = Oxygen
Market share is a great barometer for momentum, just as a spark indicates that the heat and fuel are beginning to react with each other in a positive way. But growing your market share may not be enough for long-term success if it’s not at least pacing with the growth of the category.
Falling behind the category is like a spark lacking enough oxygen to catch a flame beyond kindling.
If you’re pacing with the category, your spark has just enough oxygen to turn into a small flame but it’s not a successful fire yet. The flame is still in danger of being smothered.
Growth beyond the category is where you reach long-term success; where your flame has enough oxygen to grow into a fire hot enough for any amount of s’mores.
CASE STUDY: Full-Funnel Growth Creates Long-Term Success
GO works with a CPG that acquired a new brand and wanted to utilize full-funnel ad tactics that would create long-term success.
GOALS:
Total customer acquisition growth
New to brand (NTB) growth
Subscribe & Save (SnS) growth for increasing lifetime value (LTV)
Share of Voice (SOV) growth for a top keyword
Total market share growth for the newly acquired brand
STRATEGY:
Sponsored Ads was 30% of the budget and would drive NTB (our fuel) and SOV for our priority keywords (our oxygen).
DSP was 30% of the budget and would drive NTB (our fuel) and SnS (our heat) for increasing LTV.
STV was 40% of the budget and would drive market share (our oxygen) as well as NTB growth (our fuel).
RESULTS:
We had FUEL:
+70% promoted ASIN's sales
+116% promoted ASIN's traffic
+71% NTB
We had HEAT:
+37% total brand sales
+44% total brand traffic
SnS grew by 23x
We had OXYGEN:
+200% SOV for a priority keyword
+50% market share
All the ingredients for long-term success were proving their impact, and this CPG client now had a brand that was on fire.
Need help creating the right types of growth for your long-term success?
Building long-term success on Amazon is hard, but all the right opportunities for growth are there. If you’re struggling to find them, you might need a partner who can see the bigger picture and understand the nuances and complexities of Amazon in a way that you don’t have capacity to learn. Click the contact us button below and we’ll chat about your goals and how we can help create the types of growth that build into the long-term success you’re looking for.