Case Study

Macarta helps 3M reach new audiences and increase sales in Mexico and Brazil

post it. command, futuro, 3m logos

An established brand in new regions

With a storied 120-year history and over 60,000 products available in and outside the Amazon store today, 3M offers everything from stethoscopes to office supplies to sponges, with a mission to “apply science in collaborative ways to improve lives daily.” 3M began marketing products in Mexico in 2015, followed two years later with an expansion to Brazil in 2017. Currently, 3M operates in 70 countries and sells in 200.

In September 2019, 3M launched their first Amazon Ads campaigns; they partnered with Macarta, a full-service marketing agency specializing in Amazon, starting in January 2020. Macarta has international offices in Mexico City and São Paulo, as well as expertise in content marketing, sponsored ads and programmatic advertising, and brand performance within the Amazon store, making them an ideal fit for 3M’s new regional opportunities. Following successful trial campaigns with 3M stethoscope brand Littmann in Mexico in early 2020, Macarta expanded to 3M’s consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands in Mexico, before further partnering with 3M for Brazil-based marketing in February 2021.

Regional retail readiness

There are unique challenges presented for a large brand with globally available products in regional stores like Amazon.com.mx and Amazon.com.br. In preparation, Macarta’s retail readiness audit included updates to product detail pages for titles, descriptions, bullet points, and images. Since some products were sold in the Amazon store as global ASINs, it was important to ensure that regional language and availability were properly represented for Mexican and Brazilian audiences.

Macarta’s content team created refreshed Stores for 3M’s vendor brands (such as Littmann and Scotch-Brite) in both Amazon.com.mx and Amazon.com.br, taking care to optimize product titles, descriptions, and images, and to include A+ content on product detail pages.

Sponsored ads strategies

In both Mexico and Brazil, Macarta began their advertising strategies with 3M with a foundation of sponsored ads campaigns. Sponsored Products allowed Macarta to share complementary products from 3M’s wide offerings with shoppers looking for a variety of categories such as “tools” and “industrial hardware.” Additionally, Sponsored Brands provided a visibility boost for 3M’s Stores, with Sponsored Brands video further helping share brand offerings.

Macarta used Sponsored Display campaigns to help further refine their segmentation of 3M products and test out Amazon Audiences; these insights were later used to enhance the strategy of their Amazon DSP campaigns for 3M. Sponsored Display campaigns provided great testing opportunities with controls for custom headlines, images, and logos, in addition to reporting on key metrics like new-to-brand customers.

Display opportunities for new and existing audiences

Having established sponsored ads campaigns in Mexico and Brazil with 3M, Macarta took a test-and-learn approach to investing in Amazon DSP. Following a successful two-month test with a modest budget to establish benchmarks in Mexico, Macarta executed an approach to reach audiences across the shopping journey in 2021.

Utilizing display ads as well as online video (OLV) to help drive awareness and consideration, Macarta focused on in-market Amazon Audiences, a unique audience source based on Amazon’s first-party shopping and streaming signals, to best meet potential customers on their shopping journey. Simultaneously, with a focus toward conversion, Macarta used Amazon DSP remarketing to reach audiences who viewed—but did not purchase—3M products.

Similar to their work on 3M’s Mexico presence, Macarta began their Amazon DSP campaigns for 3M in Amazon.com.br with a test period to establish benchmarks, followed by campaigns for in-market audiences and remarketing audience strategy.

“It is very important that when you are planning a strategy for any account, you consider a complete format mix so you may impact possible prospects at any level of the funnel in their purchase journey.”

— Carlos Corona, Director General, LATAM, Macarta

Exceeding growth benchmarks

Macarta saw positive results in 2021, their first year using Amazon DSP for 3M’s display ad campaigns in Amazon.com.mx and Amazon.com.br. Some key performance indicators (KPIs) in Mexico for 2021:1

  • Detail page-view rate (DPVR): 1.15% (+285% to goal)
  • Purchase rate: 0.18% (+80% to goal)
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS): 4.42x (+76.8% to goal)

For all the campaigns, Roicos used broad match for categories where they wanted to increase the visibility, phrase match for most campaigns, and exact match for the search terms that were converting well. They then used automatic campaigns to find which keywords were driving results, and then built those into manual campaigns that focused on performance. To ensure the brand’s budget didn’t run out, Roicos used an always-on campaign strategy.

  • DPVR: 0.61% (+35.6% to goal)
  • Purchase rate: 0.06% (+200% to goal)
  • ROAS: 4.42x (+243% to goal)

Further, as of April 30, 2022, year-to-date (YTD) performance shows that Macarta’s Amazon DSP campaigns are already exceeding the year’s raised goals, with ROAS +117% to goal and DPVR +106.7% to goal in Brazil so far.

Macarta’s strategies also positively affected 3M’s year-over-year sales growth, with +47% in Mexico for 2021 compared to 2020, and +262% sales growth in Brazil during the same period.

“It is important to always have experts and especially agencies with the right knowledge, certifications, proposals, and information. Today, Macarta is part of the 3M LATAM agencies that manage the Mexican and Brazilian regions, thanks to their extensive strategic knowledge, insight analysis, and personalized customer service. Macarta is an executor and a partner that helps 3M grow as a company and trains their people to have a high degree of understanding of the strategies and results from which our business derives.”

— Ethel C. González, eCommerce Channel Marketing Manager LATAM Consumer Business Group, 3M

1 3M, United States, 2022.