Using sponsored ads to connect with international customers

Creative Pet Alliance works across Germany and Hong Kong to design and manufacture original and high-quality pet toys and accessories. They started selling their Cesar Millan and I-energy products on Amazon in 2017.

Creative Pet Alliance wanted to find a way to engage new customers, gain more product visibility, and increase sales for their brands. In March 2018, the team started their first Sponsored Products campaign in the UK to test and learn more about this cost-per-click ad solution, with the intent to grow their brand awareness and eventually expand their reach in other countries. After launching in the UK, Creative Pet Alliance also launched Sponsored Products campaigns in Germany, Italy, Spain, and France.

Creative Pet Alliance initially ensured that all product listings were retail ready, with clear details and high-quality images. To learn more about strategic advertising tactics, they attended Amazon Ads webinars.

The process to create my first campaign was straightforward, and attending Amazon Ads webinars helped me a lot.

– Patrick Albus, CEO, Creative Pet Alliance

Early on, Creative Pet Alliance investigated the potential of an ad strategy to help increase product and brand visibility, and to help accelerate their growth, in the different European countries where they are advertising. To implement this strategy, they first leveraged automatic targeting to create Sponsored Products campaigns where they were not fluent in the local language. To structure the campaign based on category, brands, and top sellers, they grouped similar products into ad groups. This allowed the advertiser to segment and run more specific campaigns and to understand which products they should continue to advertise.

Learnings and daily adjustments will help you be successful in the long term.

– Patrick Albus, CEO, Creative Pet Alliance

Creative Pet Alliance then downloaded search terms reports to identify the keywords that generated orders, clicks, and impressions, and moved them into a manual broad match campaign.

To drive further results, Creative Pet Alliance optimized the product detail pages by including these high-performing keywords in the titles or descriptions to help increase the conversation rate on the product detail pages.

After a few months, Creative Pet Alliance created more manual campaigns for the products with a wide range of alternatives in each Amazon store. They added more precise and descriptive keywords and set higher bids to help increase the chances of gaining more visibility and reaching the right audience.

In addition to this, Creative Pet Alliance followed optimization tips learnt during the webinars. They set a daily budget of €30 per campaign to increase the chance to reach more customers. Creative Pet Alliance created automatic campaigns with "Dynamic bids - down only", to control costs and to help prevent the increase of the ACOS (advertising cost of sales), while for the manual campaigns they followed suggested bids to help maximize impressions.

Creative Pet Alliance saw a consistent strong performance from their advertising since starting their campaigns.

Advertising with sponsored ads in multiple countries in Europe helped me reach and engage new customers.

– Patrick Albus, CEO, Creative Pet Alliance

Creative Pet Alliance achieved an ACOS between 25-50% for Sponsored Products in all five European countries. Their Sponsored Products strategy successfully helped grow Cesar Millan’s product visibility, generating over 8MM impressions.
As the turnover generated by their brands continues to trend upward, Amazon Ads will remain a key element in the continued growth of their brands.

1. Review the product detail pages to make sure your product listings are ready to be advertised in all eligible marketplaces. This will help provide customers the necessary information to consider purchasing your products.
2. Start Sponsored Products campaigns with automatic targeting to gather keywords. This campaign type helps you get started in other countries without knowing the local language because sponsored ads suggests relevant keyword searches for your ads based on your product information.
3. Use your advertising reports like you do in your domestic marketplace. Analyze the search term report to make strategic decisions about bid adjustments for products and keywords.
4. Learn with Amazon Advertising webinars to get recommendations to help build your international advertising strategy.