Media Analysis - Generation Media outlines the importance of a sound ecommerce strategy

Are you ready for

Black Friday & Cyber Monday?

Move over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, because the knock-on effect of the global pandemic is changing our new normal - yet again.

Last year we saw Black Friday promotions dropping incredibly early, with retailers offering deals as soon as late September. While for obvious reasons we are seeing less of the same so far, this Q4 you can’t ignore the calls for shoppers to buy now to avoid missing out.

While the uncertainty surrounding stock will remain through Q4, what is certain is that the pandemic has underlined the importance of a sound ecommerce plan. With 64% of UK parents surveyed going online to shop (Giraffe Insights, Little Voices Study 2021), it’s more important than ever to ensure you have a robust ecommerce strategy.

With virtual shopping baskets filling up quickly, here are our five top tips to consider with your Amazon investments this November:

1Push price, ratings and reviews

Do you have strong A+ content? Have you invested in the Amazon Vine Programme? Are you winning the buy box? 41% of Amazon’s customers say price is the most important factor in their purchase decisions, with 16% saying it’s the number of ratings or reviews, and 8% highlighting convincing product descriptions/photos as the number one factor. To differentiate yourself from online competition, these all need to be addressed.

2Keep ahead of the trends

Amazon released a new format, Sponsored Brand

Video (SBV), in the UK in September last year following beta testing in the US. The importance of video cannot be understated, with one in five Amazon visitors having made a purchase as a result of watching a brand or product video. For our customer base, results have been very positive, generating some of the highest CTRs (click-through rates) we’ve seen this year, with ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale)/ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) metrics underlining the importance of this format. More recently, custom images for Sponsored Brand formats and Views Remarketing for Sponsored Display have proved to be successful within our portfolio of clients. Incorporating new formats with a ‘test, measure and refine’ approach is crucial to both short- and long-term success.

3Don’t forget about your competition On Amazon, 69% of customers’ shopping queries start without a brand. When a customer has no significant brand loyalty, the first row on the results page is particularly lucrative, with over a third of Amazon customers clicking on these products. From an advertiser perspective, keep an eye on your competitors and consider their strategy alongside your own. Are you price competitive? How do your review scores compare? How do your products compare to your competitors’? Where do you rank on the search page? These questions will help inform whether you are competitive or not, ensuring you are using budgets efficiently, rather than on keywords where you are unable to compete.

4Use smart tech to power your investments There is only so much manual optimisation you can do with the Amazon platform from a reporting and optimisation standpoint. Look at leveraging smart-tech software to capture back data over the three-month limit on Amazon to identify trends and use them to inform strategy. Smart tech also enables you to apply a set of ‘rules’ such as pausing keywords if the ACOS goes above a certain threshold, which in turn allows 24/7 automated optimisations.

The pandemic has underlined the importance of a sound ecommerce plan, says Generation Media director of business development Alex TaylorSmith

5Finally – track your investments Data = power. When driving consumers direct to Amazon from other media activity such as YouTube and Facebook, make sure to track your traffic and conversions from external sources using relevant tags. Although the Amazon Advertising attribution tool is still in its infancy, use it to identify any noticeable trends in the data. This will be invaluable to your wider media strategy moving forward.

Our ecommerce solution at Generation Media - Generation Checkout - is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) making real-time decisions, with data from more than 1,000 toy campaigns. Industry experts ensure your ecommerce investments work in conjunction with the other areas of the media mix, delivering an omnichannel approach to generate maximum efficiency. Our solution operates across biddable media platforms to make smarter predictive decisions that will enhance campaign performance - all downloadable via one report for ease of sharing.

For more information, or to organise a health-check on your brand's ecommerce performance, please feel free to contact the Generation Media team.