Julian Galindo, Retail Account Manager at Acadia
For brands selling on Amazon, there is a huge opportunity to create unique and engaging brand experiences that will help them stand out from the competition. Unfortunately, many of these capabilities go unnoticed or are underutilized due to lack of knowledge about what's possible.
From leveraging Amazon's A+ content modules and video ads to creating compelling brand stores, there are a number of ways brands can utilize creative branding strategies to make their presence felt in the digital marketplace. In this blog, we'll explore why content is important and how brands can get started with creating more effective brand experiences on Amazon.
And if you’re looking for ideas, you should check out our Amazon brand content swipe file. It's a resource we created to show brands what’s possible with A+ content, Amazon stores, video ads, and more.
1. Better Amazon content increases conversion and sales
Various studies have shown that adding content to product pages improves conversion rate, traffic, and overall sales. My favorite source on this is the tech provider Profitero who sought to answer this question using their daily Amazon sales and content data. In their 2023 research, Profitero found that Amazon sales indeed do lift when adding videos (+36%), then adding more images (+26%) and finally adding enhanced content (+25%) where there was previously none.
Why could this be? Two reasons:
- More content helps consumers to make a purchase decision faster. They need to do less comparing and researching - meaning they don’t need to leave the product page before making a purchase. When all the information to make a buying decision is in one place, it improves conversion rate.
- Amazon loves high-converting products, and it is understood to be a key part of the ranking algorithm. Think about it - Amazon only has a certain number of organic placements at the top of the page. They want to maximize the chances of a product being actually bought, as much as possible. So they will put the “sure winners” at the top of search results - those products that have been proven to convert well.
2. A way to stand out from competitors on Amazon…. Or keep up
Most brands regularly do some kind of competitor research to benchmark their brands’ performance. This can include tracking metrics like ‘share of voice’.
While doing competitor research you should also consider the quality of your competitors’ product and brand content. Are they doing much more than you, or much less?
If much more - its time to level-up and ensure customers are getting an equivalent, and ideally better, experience from your product content versus competitors.
If much less - this is an opportunity to set yourself apart from your competition with more informative, compelling content and break ahead.
Either way - optimizing your products with features like Brand Story, A+ content, A+ premium content, videos, infographics, and more, can help you be more competitive. Again, check out our Amazon brand content swipe file for best-in-class examples of these.
An example of top-tier “premium A+” product page content from the brand Columbia, featured in our swipe file.
3. Customers will come to expect it
Circa 2016, only 1P Vendors had access to A+ content. And even then, Amazon charged thousands of dollars to vendors to create and display this enhanced content. 3P Sellers on the other hand could only add a handful of photos to the carousel, and plain text product descriptions. Over time, Amazon has released more capabilities to both vendors and sellers. As customers start seeing more enhanced content from brands, they come to expect this experience. When a customer lands on a product page without this content, it may be surprising at best, and jarring at worst.
The important part is to get started
In this post, I’ve shared why adding enhanced content to your Amazon store and product pages is worthwhile. But what does this content actually look like on Amazon? And going one step further - what does “good” look like? I’ve mentioned our swipe file already because its a great (and free!) resource to show you what’s possible with properly optimized content. I have included best-in-class content that would require a big investment but definitely produces a ‘wow’ factor…. But also some more accessible options that brands on a smaller budget can easily deploy. Access the swipe file here.
And if your brand is in need of a done-for-you service in this area, that’s what we do here at Acadia. Our Amazon channel management offers full-service Amazon support including developing and deploying content like this. We can also develop creative content from existing assets, and even have an in-house photography and video studio capability. Get in touch to learn more.