How to Win a Competitive Category

This electronics titan found a way to win as competitors upped the volume.

How to Win a Competitive Category

We love our clients. They come in all life stages and sizes, and their portfolios cover the spectrum of ecommerce categories. We've got our heads down in the daily work of helping them grow profitable multi-platform businesses, so we don't share their achievements enough. But today we make amends and bring you the story of a powerhouse client in the consumer electronics category. (We'll leave this awesome brand unnamed to protect their privacy).

The situation

A long-time leader in home audio technology, this brand recognized the potential of the “smart home” before the phrase was coined, setting themselves up to lead in the emerging category of wireless smart home sound systems. With new product launches on the horizon and competition in the category turning up the volume, the team rallied around a challenging dual objective: raise targeted awareness of new products and reduce acquisition costs for new customers.

From their marketing director: “Amazon is a critical channel for us, and we knew that to continue to see growth in our online business, we had to find more efficient ways to reach new and existing customers using the full suite of Amazon Advertising tools.”

The approach

After using Stackline software to run a thorough competitive analysis and keyword gap study, our advertising team helped the brand execute a hybrid advertising approach that leveraged Paid Search & Dynamic ads to drive down cost-per-acquisition while increasing reach.

The team increased its advertising spend by 30% to strategically target new customers, and devoted a quarter of its total advertising budget to DSP retargeting that introduced loyal shoppers to new products.

“Our strategy took advantage of opportunities to increase our advertising efficiency at every stage of the marketing funnel. Amazon is unique in giving advertisers ad formats and measurement tools to serve that full range of objectives, from raising awareness to closing the sale,” said the brand's marketing director.

The results

The brand's DSP retargeting campaigns generated 80M impressions since their launch in June 2018. And to expand reach, we helped them launch new campaigns targeting similar competitor products. The Similarities campaigns drove ROAS improvements and incremental ad sales over the next six months.

Using Amazon's efficient targeting across the board, the brand drove cross-campaign CPCs down, and the overall advertising cost-per-DPV decreased 3% through retargeting.

“We were thrilled to see that this combination of retargeting our loyal customers and targeting customers who shopped competitor brands could help us quickly expand our reach and increase our efficiency at the same time."

As a result of the new advertising strategy, total sales across the brand's portfolio increased almost 30% from the previous year.

We haven't mastered the physics of wavelengths, but we're pretty happy to be on the same one as this team. Onward!


Esteban Gamboa

Esteban Gamboa

VP, Sales

Since joining Stackline in 2016, Esteban has held several key positions and currently oversees our global Sales organization.

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