Astell&Kern use sponsored ads to drive a 9X return
Astell&Kern is on a mission for music lovers to experience its favourite tracks in high-resolution master quality. As a portable audio player manufacturer, Astell&Kern have leveraged Amazon’s sponsored ads to help drive visibility and sales of its high-resolution music players.
Astell&Kern worked with Exertis, a European distribution and specialist media service provider, to manage its campaigns. Management of Amazon Ads campaigns is part of a complete end-to-end solutions portfolio that Exertis provides for Astell&Kern and its other partners via its in-house e-commerce agency.
Astell&Kern’s goal was to increase sales for all of their products while also focusing on enhancing brand recognition. Exertis created a strategy focused on targeting branded keywords with Sponsored Brands campaigns, using all three sponsored ads products to maximise visibility and sales for Astell&Kern, and optimising bids more frequently to help Astell&Kern achieve their goals.
Keyword structure
Exertis created a keyword strategy centred around the Astell&Kern brand name and core product names. Astell&Kern wanted to promote that their products are high quality and can satisfy the Amazon shopper.
With Sponsored Brands, the custom headline can feature a message and help you create a story for your brand. Exertis saw an opportunity where they could target the Astell&Kern brand name to reinforce the message that Astell&Kern has products with premium-quality audio.
Astell&Kern’s campaigns clearly demonstrate the power of targeting your own brand name on Amazon using sponsored ads. Their brand-targeting strategy increased ad-attributed sales by 7.8% on a year-over-year basis.
Optimisation strategy
Exertis knows that optimisation is a key pillar of success. When Exertis creates a campaign, they use a higher starting bid, usually around £1, on each keyword in order to try to gain immediate results and maximise reach. After one to two weeks, Exertis will start to optimise specific keywords for performance by adjusting bids for under-performing keywords and increasing bids for keywords that are driving sales. Finally, Exertis always has automatic targeting campaigns running for Astell&Kern’s products so they can generate more keywords from the search term reports.
– Dave Jang, Senior Marketing Manager, Astell&KernThe simplicity of sponsored ads is perhaps its biggest
strength. We can rapidly create new campaigns using a
streamlined keyword template – which prove to be effective time and time again.
Sustained success
Astell&Kern’s campaigns have been successful at driving both sales and visibility. In 2017, their campaigns drove almost 9MM impressions, the majority of which went to branded keywords. They have seen great results driving sales for new and existing products to maximise exposure for Astell&Kern’s products.
With a return on ad spend exceeding 9 times in 2017, Astell&Kern have the confidence to invest heavily in sponsored ads campaigns whilst maintaining a cost-effective programme. Astell&Kern plan to continue to continue to invest with Amazon Ads in 2018 and use Exertis to manage their campaigns after the results seen in their 2017 campaigns.
“The simplicity of sponsored ads is perhaps its biggest strength. We can rapidly create new campaigns using a streamlined keyword template – which prove to be effective time and time again,” said Dave Jang, Senior Marketing Manager for Astell&Kern.
Highlights
- 7.8% year-over-year ad-attributed sales increase
- 9 million impressions in 2017
- 9X return on ad spend (ROAS) in 2017