Are Your Competitors Ranking Higher on Amazon?

Banter

Friday, June 16, 2023

Either way, there’s value in it! 😉 📸

In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇

📦 Competitors are taking over

📦 The first-of-its-kind media invoice financing

📦 How to shop like cool kids in the East

📦 Real-life examples and data-backed insights from the 2023 Direct-to-Consumer report

Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎

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Amazon

Are Your Competitors Ranking Above You on Amazon?

🕺 A trek through the Amazon

We’re back with DTC’s Brand Breakdown and the Pilothouse team to conclude the ongoing Amazon series with Manscaped.

We’ll pick up where we left off last week by diving into their branded search terms and a surprise that we didn’t see coming! 👀

Let’s get into it 👇

😊 Admirable ads

Manscaped is in an enviable position here. Their branded search terms have more search volume than most generic search terms in the grooming space.

For example, “electric razor” gets roughly 55k searches every month, while “Manscaped lawn mower” achieves roughly 85k searches monthly.

It's critical that they own their branded searches so as not to lose market share to competitors advertising on those same terms.

With their market share, Manscaped has it easy. They could set up some simple, broad targeting campaigns of each type and achieve solid coverage.

🤷 Getting sponsored?

This is not what we wanted to see. When we searched “Manscaped”, the ad at the very top was a Sponsored Brand video for Gillette! To make things worse, three of the four top sponsored product spots were for other competitors! 😮‍💨

As we saw further down the page, things only got more dire.

The Sponsored Brand video spot went to, you guessed it… Gillette again. 🪒

Take note of the highlighted word in Gillette’s product title above. 👀

They’ve included “Manscape” (likely because that specific version is not trademarked) to leverage the SEO advantage it provides and to drive up their relevance in Amazon’s search for “manscaped”. Well played, Gillette.

Surely, Manscaped defended their page with ads for other products, right? Nope.

We see competitors everywhere, and it hurts us a little inside.

The last nail in the coffin for Manscaped’s branded defense is that “Amazon’s Choice” for many branded terms aren’t even their products. They’re basically copies! 😱

Keep on reading to find out what Manscaped can do about it…

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Amazon

Why did Amazon Choose the Dupe?

Check out this dupe that seemingly meets all the needs of a Manscaped customer. 👇

Dupes attain this “Amazon’s Choice” badge by selling more, having a higher conversion rate, and higher in-stock rate than Manscaped for those terms. This can be prevented with a thorough brand defense.

Why does this happen? What could Manscaped possibly be doing wrong here?

Without seeing what’s under the hood, it’s impossible to know for sure, but there are a couple of common culprits:

1️⃣ Not segmenting branded terms

This is the most common scenario. Branded terms are being advertised not with purpose but through some Auto, Category, or Targeting campaign.

An ad manager is likely trying to squeeze out a massive ROAS, so they continue to decrease the bids on those terms until they’re only showing on branded terms. This overly-optimized approach leads to the lack of a proper branded defense.

2️⃣ Not utilizing more creative ad types

All of the ads seen from Manscaped were only sponsored product ads. This is a fairly typical scenario for brands that just use some type of ad automation software to manage their entire Amazon ad strategy.

With all the great videos and creative Manscaped has, they could be crushing these ad types, but unfortunately, they’re not leveraging that content.

For Sponsored Products, here are a few generic search terms and where we found the first Manscaped ad:

👉 “Beard trimmer” (~102k search volume):

• Sponsored product rank: 5th

👉 “Electric razor” (~38k search volume)

• Sponsored product: 4th page of results

👉 “Electric razor for men” (~21k search volume)

• Sponsored product rank: 10th

For the relevant, high-volume terms, their ad is at least visible.

With a little more consideration thrown into their ads, Manscaped would be setting up an impenetrable defense to protect their market share.

Let’s wrap up this Amazon deep dive on a high note. 💪

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DTC is becoming more competitive.

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Market saturation is an obstacle for most brands. It’s harder to stand out, harder to reach your ideal target, and harder to grow.

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(Or download it for later, when that coffee is fresh. 😉)

Amazon

It’s Not Too Late

🎁 Everything Amazon

Manscaped could use some fine tuning and tune ups on Amazon. We constantly preach the immense value a brand’s Amazon presence brings to the table. It’s the world’s largest online retailer, after all!

It’s clear that Manscaped takes a “set it and forget it” approach to Amazon, and, in their defense, they’re capturing most brand-aware shoppers.

A good amount of effort has been put into the details of their listings, but as we mentioned, some aspects of their strategy could be improved.

They’re not actively trying to acquire new customers on the platform, and they’re not really trying to defend the market share they have.

Manscaped has spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars in advertising and sponsorships to build their brand presence into what it is today. 🤑

But with more customers using Amazon as their go-to search engine to find products, Manscaped could lose brand-aware customers to copies and competitors that take the advertising side of the platform more seriously.

However, it's not too late! They can fix this. If Amazon isn’t their platform of choice for customer acquisition, that’s fine, but they should own their branded terms with every ad type.

These clicks would also come at a relatively cheap cost-per-click (CPC) because of their superior relevance in the market.

👋 Until next time…

As we can see, the world of DTC marketing isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, but you can take these learnings and apply them to your own Amazon strategy.

That constructive process ensures that we, the DTC community, constantly evolve and build each other up with advice from industry experts like our pals at Pilothouse.

Stay locked to the DTC Newsletter for the next Brand Breakdown featuring Manscaped and more successes in personal landscaping.

How are you defending your market share on Amazon? Have we inspired you to revisit your defense strategy? Let us know in a reply! 📧

Quick hits

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🎵 TikTok tests a new product discovery feature that uses your phone’s camera to identify products. The new initiative is part of TikTo’s plan to bring in-stream shopping to Western markets.

🛍️ Google Shopping users can now see clothes on a variety of body types before committing to a purchase. The new AR technology displays models of different ethnicities, hair types, and body shapes.

👽 Many Subreddits are planning to ‘go dark’ indefinitely in support of recent protests against Reddit’s API changes.

🐦 Twitter’s CEO outlines her approach to managing the platform and revitalizing its ad strategy to acquire interest from popular brands.

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🔊 Have you heard our latest podcasts?

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💤 Restful Living with Wilet: A Rebranding Journey with Vivian McCormick.

📫 The Future of Direct Mail and Marketing with PostPilot’s Drew Sanocki.

💭 Manifesting Your Dreams with Samantha from Maniscripting.

💚 "Enlightened Hospitality" and the Secret to Killer CX with Eli Weiss from Jones Road Beauty.

💄 ​​8-Figure Beauty Empire Trinny London's Epic Organic Content.

Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Michael Venditti. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.

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