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Introduction

At the beginning of 2018, Rikky & Emmanuel started their journey as a seller on Amazon with their brand Berlin & Daughter. Under their home label, they launched the product “Posture Corrector” which looked very promising, although they didn’t realise the ruthless competition they were about to face while entering the Amazon platform. The whole product category was full of big competitors with thousands of reviews. Soon they realized that it was not easy to be profitable in this segment unless they started advertising their product.

 

At this point, what made things worse for them was the advertising cost. Because of the high competition, the cost per click of the primary keywords were as high as $5 - $6 a click. The advertising cost of sales rose to 115% with no to little sales and the profitability took a nosedive. Soon, they realized they can’t keep up with this for long.

The Findings

Our team conducted intense market research and competitor analysis using multiple paid tools available at our disposable. After diving deep and going through every minute detail, we were able to pinpoint the root cause of the poor performance and solution for the same.

In coordination with Rikky & Emmanuel and after going through internal brainstorming sessions we concluded the following:

• Although “Back Braces” was a niche with a healthy & rising consumer demand, it had an extremely high competition too.
• Amazon search pages were full of big competitors with thousands of reviews. However, few of the competitors were able to rank on the first pages with just a few hundreds of reviews.
• Almost all of the competitors were catering to both men & women audiences.
• Due to high competition, primary keywords had CPC bids as high as $6. So targeting the product using ads also didn’t seem to be a viable and profitable option.
• Due to this high competition even the price point of the product was being pushed lower. Some of the competitors were even selling the product below our acquisition cost.
• So, AMZPro had to tackle the dual problem of high advertising bids & lower price points due to very high competition levels.

The Solution

Right from our initial assessment we were sure of one thing, we cannot establish Berlin & Daughter as a successful brand on Amazon using offensive tactics without allocating significant financial resources. To overcome this challenge, we decided to go defensive and slowly make our way up to the ladder without draining the brand financially.

AMZPro worked with Berlin & Daughter to implement the following solutions:

• After conducting thorough keyword research using multiple paid tools such as Helium 10, MerchantWords, Sellics we collated an extensive list of keywords along with their competitiveness value. We decided to focus on long tail keywords with low competition scores such as “Posture corrector for women”. These long tail keywords offered lower CPC and little to no competition. Soon, we started ranking for 25-30 longtail keywords with moderate to low traffic. This helped us break into the top 5 pages for our category. Gradually we continued with this strategy while adding more long tail keywords & trying to rank for them. Once we reached page 2, we started flirting with high search volume primary keywords too. This time around we got lesser cost per click for the same keywords as Amazon’s algorithm saw us now as a product which was highly to convert a sale as we were doing successfully on so many other long tail keywords. This eventually pushed us to page 1. Now, we are usually found on page 1-3. And we’re happy not to be exclusively there as we sell at almost double the average price of our competition.
• Applied for brand registry so that we can gain access to exclusive features such as Sponsored Brand Ads and A+ Content. Moreover, we were regularly being targeted by hijakcers. AMZPro knew that with better ranks, come more hijackers. This can be easily avoided using Brand Registry.
• All this was done after working on the posture corrector listing so as to attract and drive more traffic to it.
• Another neat trick which worked in our favour was: To narrow down the target audience, we decided to create a niche for ourselves within the niche of posture corrector. So, we changed our product offering, packaging, listing copy as well as target keywords to push the product only for 50% of our target audience. We started pushing the product only for women & girls as it had a strappy design. This ensure that we started becoming Amazon’s choice for keywords like “back brace for girls”. We shifted our focus towards the women audience and added relevant keywords in the listing’s title, bullets and description because most of the other competitors were targeting either unisex or men as their target audiance. We also created special campaigns for this shift in strategy which paid us very well.

The Results

Without wasting much time we started implementing all our strategies one by one. To begin with, we performed search engine optimization on the listing and populated the existing text with high search volume and relevant keywords. We also created coupons and promotions for the listing to have an extra edge. Simultaneously, we applied for Amazon Brand Registry.

After getting done with SEO and coupons & promotions, we quickly moved forward with Amazon PPC Campaigns. What made our campaigns different from the previous ones was the keywords that we were targeting. This time we chose to let go of all the primary keywords which had high competition scores, and focused only on the long tail keywords with less competition.

As a result we were steadily gaining BSR rank for the long tail keywords with decent overall sales velocity. Things got even better when we got our Amazon Brand Registry approved. We created Sponsored Brand Campaigns and A+ Content for the product. This increased our overall sales velocity exponentially and we rapidly gained BSR rank for the long tail keywords.

Once we were comfortably established on Amazon, we changed our strategy from defensive to offensive and started targeting the primary keywords as well as all the target audience vis a vis men as well as women.

The results of the partnership helped Berlin & Daughter achieve 180X Jump in Units Orders and 70% drop in Ad ACoS within a year.

How AMZPro Can Help You Achieve Exponential Increase in Sales with a low level of ACoS

If you are looking to achieve the same results as Berlin & Daughter, contact us now.

AMZPro has a proven track record of helping clients achieve exponential increase in sales and we’d like to help you do the same. Contact us today to find out how we can bring winning results to your next marketing campaign.