Many brands speak to us about wanting to expand to new markets, before having thought through their strategy to trade online internationally. We thought it was worth highlighting what consumer brands need to think about when considering whether marketplaces are right for your international ecommerce strategy and how to assess your marketplace opportunity.
Online marketplaces have picked up demand that offline channels could not service in every region that we operate in 2020, due to the onset of the pandemic and this trend shows no signs of slowing down. The rapid acceleration of marketplaces has also had a direct impact on consumer behaviour, offering convenience, ample product choice and fast delivery.
Whilst marketplaces have been slower to take online market share in Europe than the USA or China, the likes of Amazon and Tmall have attracted significant traffic and high visitor engagement, which has translated into sales. That said, marketplaces have become a prevalent channel allowing brands to acquire new customers and drive revenue.
A thorough landscape analysis can help to determine the most appropriate markets for your brand to target. A deep dive into your category, brand and competitors will allow you to make an objective assessment of the marketplace opportunity.
A brand that resonates in physical stores may not do so on marketplaces or in an overseas market. It’s important to test demand and be sure that customers exist when assessing your marketplace opportunity.
We recommend that brands consider whether the chosen marketplace is the right environment for your brand by sense-checking your online channel strategy to understand the role of your marketplace channel. Likewise, establishing which products you need to sell to achieve fair share on the marketplace is crucial.
Using market research data and tools to gain insight into category size, best-sellers and average product prices will help you to determine whether selling on marketplaces is worthwhile for your brand.
Proprietary software can help you to assess any sales trends for your category, analyse the products that are selling well and why customers prefer them. This can help you to make informed data-driven decisions when assessing your marketplace opportunity.
Marketplaces offer consumers the choice to purchase from wide range of brands and act as a product discovery hub for many online shoppers. Though marketplaces are an important route to market to acquire new customer groups, analysing which of your competitors are already present plus how they are represented on the marketplace can be a great way to identify gaps in the market where they may be falling short and capitalise on those areas.
We recommend that brands undertake a benchmarking exercise to assess their product ranges and pricing against the competition, as well as the online proposition and customer experience provided, to help support the optimisation of their marketplace channel.
Now more than ever, marketplaces will be seeking to continue their growth by adding new customers, as well as selling more to those they have already converted to online customers. we anticipate that the online shopping trends seen will further convince consumer brands that being present on marketplaces is more important than ever to maintain awareness and protect your market share.
Pattern can help you to break into international markets and marketplaces like Tmall, Amazon, Shopee, Zalando, and more. Our strategy consultants can help your brand to identify ecommerce opportunities and build a market entry strategy, or audit your current presence and create a roadmap for growth.
For more information on how we could support you in developing your international ecommerce strategy, or if you are interested in us becoming the authorised marketplace seller for your brand anywhere in the world, please contact us today.
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How do you rank on Amazon? Find out now.
For far too long, brands have lacked a data-driven methodology to gauge the health of their ecommerce presence relative to their competitors. As the top ecommerce accelerator, Pattern knew its proprietary technology and data could solve this for brands, so we leveraged our AI, rich Amazon seller information, and millions of cross-category data-driven insights to provide all brands with the information they need to succeed on Amazon and beyond.
The result—the Amazon Revenue Scorecard. The scorecard provides a powerful way for leaders to simply and transparently assess how their ecommerce strategies are performing relative to their competition and where they can optimize to maximize their brand’s ecommerce revenue potential.
The Amazon Revenue Scorecard was developed by Pattern’s data scientists to holistically measure the ecommerce performance of a brand’s top products across three key drivers—traffic, conversion, and price—and 18 dimensions that impact a brand’s ecommerce revenue growth. The result is a score from 1-10 that helps brands in an ever-increasing array of industries measure their performance relative to their competitors. Strategically, an Amazon Revenue Scorecard is a rating index that provides real-time data to highlight missed revenue growth opportunities.
An Amazon Revenue Scorecard analyzes your top 25 ASINs to identify strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in revenue growth potential on ecommerce marketplaces. With a rank score of 1-10 in each revenue performance metric, it helps you understand the full picture—identify problem areas quickly and lean in on strengths. The higher the score, the more revenue you’ll generate on an ecommerce marketplace.
The key levers in the score are traffic, conversion, and price, which are the key variables in the ecommerce equation for all brands. As the top ecommerce accelerator, Pattern knows that the ecommerce equation (traffic x conversion x availability x price = revenue) is essential for brands to succeed on ecommerce. Therefore, it is imperative that brands continue to monitor the health of each input in order to have long term success.
Here we breakdown the three key drivers of a brand’s scorecard:
Traffic is the first strategic lever to drive revenue on marketplaces. Without generating more ecommerce traffic to your listings, you don’t have a hope of increasing marketplace revenue. A traffic score breaks down and rates your ecommerce traffic in the following key areas:
Paid Traffic — the effectiveness of a brand’s advertising efforts, including keyword strategy, ad programs, and ad tactics
Organic Traffic — how well a brand is capturing organic traffic within its category
Marketplace Coverage — how many global marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc.) a brand’s products are being sold in
Conversion is the second strategic lever to drive revenue on marketplaces. Once potential buyers interact with your product, they have to be compelled to convert on the listing. The conversion score breaks down and rates your marketplace conversion into five key areas:
Listing Titles, Bullets, and Description — the degree to which a brand is utilizing best practices for titles, bullet points, and descriptions
Listing Images and Videos — how well a brand is using high-quality and optimized multimedia to convey product features and benefits
Content — how well a brand is conveying its voice and branding across the marketplace
Ratings & Reviews — how well a brand’s products are being accepted by marketplace shoppers according to ratings and reviews
Competitiveness — the degree to which a brand effectively utilizes promotional elements on its product pages
Pricing is the third strategic lever to drive revenue on marketplaces. Without consistent pricing across marketplaces and sellers, your profits will steadily erode and you’ll have a hard time winning the Buy Box on Amazon and other marketplaces. The price score breaks down and rates your ecommerce price into four key areas:
Channel Conflict — the likelihood that an online marketplace will undercut a brand’s brick and mortar retail partners on other platforms and channels
Number of Sellers— the number of unique entities selling a brand’s products on a given marketplace
Product Compliance — a measure of the stability of the price of a brand’s products on a given marketplace
Cross-Channel Consistency — an assessment of the price consistency of a brand’s products across ecommerce marketplaces and D2C websites
Don’t leave your share of the global ecommerce market to chance—analyze ASIN and competitor performance now.
The Amazon Revenue Scorecard has been an integral and exclusive part of Pattern’s offering to its partners and is now available for all brands to assess their success on ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon. The standard is a measurement of the key drivers that impact revenue growth and it matters to brands since you need to see where your missed opportunities are and where your competition is outranking you.
Pattern can break down your brand’s revenue score on Amazon so you can command the maximum share of the exploding $6 trillion ecommerce market.
Executives interested in receiving your brand’s Scorecard can do so here.
Surprised by your score? Contact Pattern today and we will dive into the data.
If you’re looking to improve your performance on Amazon, honing in on your ad strategy is one of the best ways to start getting your products in front of more eyes and increasing sales. Because they’re disguised as traditional products within search, Sponsored Product ads should be the cornerstone of your Amazon ad strategy. They’re able to capture consumers’ eyes in more organic ways to drive traffic, and, ultimately, revenue growth, for your brand on Amazon.
Traffic is a key component of Pattern’s ecommerce equation: revenue: traffic x conversion x price x availability. When you can optimize your strategy to get more of the right traffic to your listings, you’ll be able to spend on initiatives like ad strategies in a smarter way to drive better product performance on Amazon.
Here’s why Sponsored Ads, in particular, are a great move for any brand selling on Amazon:
Many brands hesitate to invest in Amazon ads like Sponsored Products, preferring to increase product rank organically instead of worrying about paying a long-term cost. We know, from our vast experience accelerating brands on the platform, that Amazon wants to promote and boost high performers. So, to get more traffic, drive revenue, and spend your ad dollars in a smart way, you’ll need to “show” Amazon’s algorithm that your product is worth promoting in the first place.
Pattern’s ad strategy takes a particularly deliberate approach to tracking and feeding this virtuous cycle. Your listings’ success in conquesting each keyword leads to more growth, lower costs, and better listing rank over time—as your Sponsored Products get higher traffic and perform better over time, you’ll start rising in rank over your competitors and be able to reduce your overall spend on ad placements. As your brand continues to win conquests over your competitors, you’ll get even more traffic, and the cycle continues.
When executed correctly, Sponsored Ads on Amazon are one of the smartest and most cost-effective ways to drive traffic to your product listings. For a snapshot of the value, here’s how Amazon ads compare to Google:
Amazon ads return an average of 10% conversion, as opposed to Google ads, which convert at 3.75%
54% of product searches happen on Amazon now, rather than Google.
The cost-per-click (CPC) is significantly lower for Amazon ads—$0.96, as opposed to $2.69 for Google’s display ads.
What this tells us is that spending money advertising on Amazon, rather than on Google or other channels, has a twofold benefit: products are more likely to get in front of consumers who are in the mindset to buy, and you’re able to save on your overall ad costs by getting more bang for your buck with every click.
Sponsored products are taking up more and more real estate on Amazon’s search results. You can see as many as four sponsored listings before the top organic results for any given search, giving brands without an ad strategy a significant disadvantage in winning consumer attention.
Our teams have learned that 80% of sales go to listings with the highest placement on search, and it’s a key aspect of our Sponsored Products strategy for brands. Advertising the right amount on top of search placements is a balancing act to make sure you're leaning in the right amount to maximize results. If your organic listings aren’t already primed and fully optimized for top keywords your consumers are searching with, Sponsored Product ads should be at the top of your list for strategies to win their eyes and traffic to your listings.
Because they show up at both the top of search and rest of search, they can get the attention of your best audience—consumers searching for products like yours with the intent to purchase now.
Sponsored Product ads can also appear on the listings of products related to yours—in other words, your competition. As a consumer scrolls through a listing and isn’t finding what they’re looking for, you can be poised in a perfect position to capture their interest and bring them to your listing instead.
This traffic is particularly valuable—besides being ready to buy and actively looking for a product like yours, these consumers have the potential to switch brand loyalty from your competitor to you.
Building an effective Amazon ad strategy can be a daunting task for many brands, but it doesn’t have to be. By partnering with an ecommerce accelerator like Pattern, you can get the full benefit of true Amazon expertise without having to learn and do it alone. We have all the global resources brands need to succeed, including expert teams and proprietary technology. We help you drive the right traffic to your listings, at the right time, to improve your revenue and performance on Amazon.
Find out how Pattern can help you grow your traffic and revenue on Amazon. Schedule a call here.