In 2020, I made the case for Amazon as a key marketplace for home and building products manufacturers. Of course, the e-commerce landscape is constantly evolving, and a lot can change in a year. So, should Amazon still play a critical role in your sales strategy? Without a doubt.

The largest shopping site in the world with $386 billion in net sales in 2020 (Statista), Amazon remains the lead outlet for home improvement purchases and is expected to account for more than 40% of e-commerce sales in the United States by the end of 2021 (CNBC). And it will only continue to grow: Research suggests that by 2025, Amazon’s gross merchandise value sales will climb to $1.204 trillion, up from $710.7 billion in 2020.

What does this mean for your brand?

If you’re not already advertising and selling your products on Amazon, these tips can help put you on the path to success. Ready to take serious action? Here are some concrete next steps for your brand to benefit from the world’s most popular online store.

1. Register Your Brand

Registering your brand is a protective strategy that will create some safety gates around third-party sellers that are selling your product(s) under their name. By doing so, you’ll also create a better experience for your customers. For example, when they type in your search terms on Amazon, they’ll be more likely to find your listings first before they find others. As a registered brand, you can also capitalize on sponsored brand ads, which appear at the top of Amazon’s search results and can help generate more traffic to your home improvement products.

As an example, consider Huber Engineered Woods, the building products manufacturer of AdvanTech, ZIP System and EXACOR. In 2020, we helped their AdvanTech and ZIP System brands manage the brand registration process to recognize AdvanTech and ZIP System as the exclusive corporate entities on Amazon. This enabled both to develop their own brand storefront pages and begin flagging any unauthorized retailers using their brand or marketing materials.

2. Build a Brand Store

It’s no secret: Competition is tight in the home and building industry. As Amazon sells more than 1.1 million types of home improvement products, it’s more important than ever to utilize resources that help set you apart from the competition.

Once you’ve registered your brand, elevate your digital presence by building a brand store. While customers may be familiar with a few of your home improvement products, they can easily discover other products through your store — and you can drive sales that way.

Additionally, building a brand store gives you the opportunity to upload content that holistically educates customers about your products and brand. In turn, you will not only leverage organic traffic, but you’ll also be given the opportunity to use the platform as a secondary destination for your customers outside of your main website.

How does this work? For example, consider the brand store we created for ZIP System. Within two months, a ZIP System campaign driving traffic to the store achieved a 300% return on ad spend. Because the brand storefront pages helped educate customers earlier in the buying and consideration process, HEW was able to increase overall sales by around 40%.

3. Stay on Top of Ad Features

There’s no question that Amazon continues to challenge and push retail giants such as Walmart, Wayfair, Lowe’s and Home Depot in the home improvement category. In 2019, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the biggest retailer on the planet. According to Statista, Amazon is forecasted to account for 50% of all e-commerce retail market sales in the United States by the end of 2021, an increase from 47% in 2020.

If you want your brand to maximize the benefits, it’s important to stay on top of ad features (such as video advertising) as Amazon releases them, which can help drive strong ROAS performance.

Creating further brand lift through high-quality ad units on Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform can augment your audience reach by allowing you to programmatically purchase display, video and audio ads, both internally on Amazon.com and externally. Amazon’s DSP can also help you:

• Access Amazon-exclusive audiences and insights

• Capture closed-loop reporting with Amazon Seller Central

• Drive traffic from Amazon’s network to your brand’s website

4. Measure Your Brand Report

At Wray Ward, we use a variety of reporting tools such as:

• Seller Central Campaign Manager (to analyze ad campaign performance)

• Amazon Attribution (to measure the ROAS of tactics outside of Amazon ads)

• Google Analytics (to understand the impact of Amazon DSP ads driving to the seller’s site)

These measurement tools allow you to keep track of customer shopping activity, upper-funnel site activity and overall sales performance.

Brands including Cooper Lighting Solutions understand that sometimes e-commerce advertising initiatives require a versatile approach. To help our client achieve their marketing goals, we worked to bring their e-commerce advertising initiatives and measurement into a unified dashboard, showing brand spend, traffic and ROAS across ad channels and sales results across multiple e-commerce partners.

In 2020, Wray Ward developed a campaign for CLS including goals, messaging, creative, testing parameters and optimization schedules to meet objectives and measurable key performance indicators. The result? CLS was able to drive a material increase in ad efficiencies for two consecutive quarters and a full campaign ROAS of 667% against in-market target audiences.

Bottom line: The numbers don’t lie. The potential is real. And if you’re still wondering whether you should be marketing and selling your products on Amazon, the resounding answer is yes.

Ready to harness the potential of the world’s largest shopping site? Email me.