Case Study
Kinesso and G-Star RAW tailor marketing strategies to achieve growth in five countries
Goals
- Drive growth in five countries
- Maximize return on ad spend
Approach
- Tailored marketing strategy and budget in each country
- Highlighted best-performing products using Sponsored Products ads
- Drove performance and sales using Sponsored Display ads
- Used audience insights from Amazon Marketing Cloud to reach new customers
Results
- 2x increase in share of voice
- 119% boost in new-to-brand sales
- 20% year-over-year lift in ad-attributed sales
The Amazon Ads Partner Awards is a program that recognizes outstanding results that advertising partners deliver to their clients. Kinesso is a finalist for the 2023 Global Expansion Award for their role in helping apparel company G-Star RAW achieve growth in five European countries.
Since 1989, apparel company G-Star RAW has been pushing the boundaries of denim design, creating pioneering styles that challenge industry standards, prioritize sustainability, and encourage creativity. After years of rapid growth on Amazon in five European countries, G-Star RAW wanted to accomplish even more.
Backed by a strong belief that there is no limit to what denim can do, they knew it was time to bring their pioneering spirit to their advertising. To continue meeting their return on ad spend (ROAS) objectives, G-Star RAW reached out to Amazon Ads partner Kinesso to tailor growth strategies according to local market nuances in several key regions.
Using insights to optimize G-Star RAW’s presence in five countries
Kinesso helped G-Star RAW develop a unique marketing strategy and budget in each of the five countries in which G-Star RAW is active: Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. Each country had its own market dynamics that required different advertising approaches that took into account market maturity, share of revenue, and the position of the brand in each region. To drive growth, Kinesso and G-Star RAW focused on building the brand’s presence in less mature markets with a rotation of flexible seasonal campaigns.
In addition to location-based strategies, Kinesso also created a new campaign structure designed to account for both G-Star RAW’s large catalog and their customers’ different search intents. They divided products into several collections of best-performing products, then prioritized keywords to maximize ROAS and share of voice (SOV) in each category. After successfully implementing this strategy using Sponsored Products, they branched out to Sponsored Brands ad types to make an even bigger impact. Finally, they added a multigoal campaign strategy for Sponsored Display ads, further driving performance and sales.
To make informed decisions after launching the campaign, Kinesso harnessed Amazon Ads API combined with a third-party analytics software. With these tools, they obtained more complete SOV metrics, which they used to optimize bid management. After gaining these insights, they changed the campaign’s budget strategy. Instead of dividing the budget according to share of revenue, they allotted marketing funds based on market potential, current efficiency, and SOV within product categories. Kinesso also used Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to gain valuable insights about G-Star RAW’s audience, which helped the brand reach new customers more effectively in the most impactful regions.
Outperforming G-Star RAW’s campaign goals in all regions
G-Star RAW and Kinesso exceeded their ambitious marketing goals during the campaign, improving the advertiser’s SOV and sales growth. Notably, G-Star RAW saw a 2x increase in SOV for high-priority keywords in the top three growth-driving countries, while other regions remained stable.1 The effective use of keywords also contributed to new-to-brand (NTB) sales growth of 119% compared to the previous year.2
In addition, through smart, location-focused strategies and insight-driven actions and bids, the brand achieved 20% year-over-year (YoY) growth in overall ad-attributed sales, outperforming the total campaign target.3
Working with G-Star RAW, Kinesso discovered the importance of using region-specific insights to make marketing decisions, as local retail dynamics played a significant role in the results of the campaign. In the future, Kinesso plans to use these campaign principles to scale and repeat this success for other clients, using their understanding of audiences, managing bids, and efficient dayparting for optimal results.
1-3Kinesso, Netherlands, 2023.