Brands represented by Advantage Unified Commerce, the digital agency of Advantage Solutions, grew collective sales by more than 40% on Amazon between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, outpacing the overall industry by more than fivefold, data show.<\/p>\n
The overall ecommerce industry, meanwhile, reported that sales grew 7.8% over the five-day period, according to preliminary results.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur clients were able to exceed category growth targets and win market share during the busiest time of year for e-commerce,\u201d says Fahim Naim, senior vice president\/head of Amazon for AUC. \u201cOur Amazon business had a record-breaking holiday, and that\u2019s due in no small part to the hard work and months of preparation by our teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are the four strategies that helped AUC push its clients\u2019 performance ahead of industry levels:<\/p>\n
Planning for the Black Friday holiday spending season takes months, Naim says. Long before the holiday begins, AUC\u2019s Amazon team was preparing for the expected, the unexpected, and helping to facilitate brand operations well before, during and long after the week ends.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of intricate details, and you have to plan in advance to be prepared,\u201d Naim says. \u201cSomething will go wrong. Amazon has hundreds of millions of products on the platform where you\u2019re leveraging technology, and even with preparation, there will be things that happen you can\u2019t prepare for. You just need to do your best job to react to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the run-up to the holiday, Naim and his team conducted hundreds of calls and implemented hundreds of trackers, and, of course, created backup plans upon backup plans to ensure a smooth sales weekend.<\/p>\n
AUC team members were on duty throughout the holiday weekend checking deals and making updates in real time. That could mean anything from increasing ad spend where needed, troubleshooting technical glitches and proactively communicating with clients throughout this critical sales period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re absolutely plugged in, often providing updates while our brands were eating their turkey, and they loved it,\u201d Naim says.<\/p>\n
By now it\u2019s an old adage, but it still holds true: Content is king. AUC does a considerable amount of A\/B testing throughout the year \u2014 especially the six months leading up to the holiday \u2014 to determine whether the images, the language and the messaging work harmoniously to do everything possible to convert shoppers into buyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrecision in messaging, testing, best-in-class assets \u2014 we know what works to put in front of the customer during that time period,\u201d Naim says.<\/p>\n
Brands that use the same content and copy all year long are making a mistake. And data bear that out. \u201cWe have the data to say when you tilt the main image to the left and show it at this angle, it has 3% higher conversion than if it\u2019s flat or to the right,\u201d Naim explains. \u201cAnd when you\u2019re doing $50 million on Amazon, a 1% or 2% increase in conversion has a big, big impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
The five-day selling holiday is a critical time to drive sales, but AUC also stays on top of inventory planning to ensure brands that sell out of promoted items have sufficient stock once Cyber Monday ends. It\u2019s about taking ownership for a brand and actively working to make necessary adjustments to an account that will boost performance at any time, not just this important week.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther agencies focus primarily on media and advertising, but we\u2019re truly full-service agency,\u201d Naim says. \u201cWe\u2019re doing operations, pricing, day-to-day troubleshooting, testing. We know everything that\u2019s happening on the account.\u201d<\/p>\n
AUC handles everything from managing shipments and chargebacks, making pricing recommendations, and building design \u2014 including videography and assets \u2014 to negotiating with Amazon on a brand\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n
Finally, once the Black Friday\/Cyber Monday campaign is over, AUC conducts a full autopsy for each brand\u2019s campaign, evaluating what worked, what didn\u2019t and how they performed against competitors. The findings inform 2024 account planning and future campaigns \u2014 a best-in-class approach to digital customer engagement that prioritizes both near-term success and long-term growth.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brands represented by Advantage Unified Commerce, the digital agency of Advantage Solutions, grew collective sales by more than 40% on Amazon between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, outpacing the overall industry by more than fivefold, data show. The overall ecommerce industry, meanwhile, reported that sales grew 7.8% over the five-day period, according to preliminary results. \u201cOur […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2917,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"mrktblog-category":[41],"class_list":["post-2916","mrktblog-posts","type-mrktblog-posts","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","mrktblog-category-advantage-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n