Finding the right tool: STIER and ADFERENCE tune up sponsored ads

Introducing the tool providers

STIER provides a wide range of professional tools, from hydraulic equipment to various other mechanical tools. As a complement to Contorion’s online store, (STIER’s parent company), STIER began to sell products on Amazon in 2016 and started using Amazon Ads solutions a year later, in 2017.

ADFERENCE is a Germany-based technology solution provider supporting advertising optimization for vendors, sellers and agencies. Specializing in PPC campaign performance and budget refinement, the ADFERENCE team works with each client through a collaborative onboarding process to create a “smart portfolio structure” for their campaigns to meet advertising goals. ADFERENCE uses an integration with the Amazon Ads API to support their unique technological offering.

As STIER’s business on Amazon had over 1,500 eligible ASINs for advertising, STIER decided outsourcing campaign management would be beneficial, allowing them to especially streamline manual efforts, manage headcount considerations, and focus on more strategic work. After researching potential partners , STIER chose ADFERENCE, and in April 2020, the two companies began to work together.

Identifying goals

STIER had a strong focus on the goals they set out to achieve through Amazon Ads—including growing revenue, increasing the number of advertised products, reducing advertising cost of sale (ACOS), and optimizing bids. The company was experiencing rapid growth and unable to spend their full advertising budget due to operational constraints. Though STIER’s team utilized Amazon Ads' bulk operations functionality, they sought an additional technology solution to provide more customized and automated campaign management.

Servicing the advertising strategy

At the start of their partnership, ADFERENCE and STIER outlined the following goals: create new campaigns faster, set optimal daily bids, automate keywords, support both Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns, and effectively manage their advertising budget. STIER’s team also received support from an ADFERENCE customer success manager to monitor strategic responses.

To help clients with Sponsored Products budgets, the ADFERENCE tool offers a Smart Portfolio feature, which automatically allocates a portfolio-level budget to individual product campaigns on a daily basis. This feature offered STIER the ability to automatically reallocate budgets from underperforming campaigns to over-performing campaigns to optimize the budget invested on advertising activities, as well as set minimum and maximum bidding values. ADFERENCE’s Smart Portfolio also offers unique reporting on campaign performance, bid change rationale, and budget attribution to gain additional insights—all built off ADFERENCE’s unique algorithm and logic.

ADFERENCE’s technology solution offers functionality for automatic updates to search terms, keywords, and bids to drive the campaigns cost-per-click (CPC) performance, with minimal manual effort. STIER also used the keyword and ASIN creator feature offered by ADFERENCE’s tool to set rule-based actions which automatically managed campaigns based on the set parameters. Campaign bids were updated daily using ADFERENCE’s algorithmic-based tool using STIER’s select goal (e.g. reduced ACOS). The tool also allows STIER to choose from other strategic goal targets (e.g. target ACOS, maximum clicks, or conversion metrics).

Improving performance

ADFERENCE’s technology solution helped STIER achieve a year-over-year reduction of 40% in ACOS—even against a 150% increase in the number of advertised products (from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021). Store sales for STIER increased by 100%.1

With successes across Sponsored Products campaigns, STIER is looking to diversify the types of advertising products it engages with, including building a larger brand story with Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display.

When asked what advice STIER would give to those seeking an Amazon Ads partner:

"Do your research to find the right partner for your business. Every tech provider has different specifications and features, which will be more or less useful to your business. Make sure to define your goals and find the partner that best fits your needs."

— Juliette Heisserer, Marketing Manager, STIER

"We at ADFERENCE are very proud to be able to use insights-driven decisions to contribute to the growth and success of our customers."

— Franziska Schulz, Customer Success Manager, ADFERENCE

1 Advertiser provided data, Germany, 2021

Highlights1

  • - 40% Year-over-year in ACOS
  • +100% Store sales