Case study
Nissen grows ad sales by 120% during Black Friday and Cyber Monday using a seasonal strategy
Founded in 1970, Nissen is a well-known fashion wholesaler in Japan. The company offers a wide range of products from fashion, undergarments, housewares to beauty goods, and aims to fulfill the needs of customers of all sizes and interests.
Watch the video to learn how Nissen plans for seasonal momentum with Amazon Ads.
Nissen started advertising on Amazon in 2016. Previously, the company had sold products across multiple channels on Amazon and other third-party destinations. In order to scale their reach beyond existing channels, they launched sponsored ads as a lower-funnel marketing lever with a clear purpose.
Through trial and error, Nissen finessed their marketing strategy and found that defining and capturing seasonal demand during Amazon’s shopping events helped level up business. To optimize performance, Nissen also used six years’ worth of machine-learning insights from running evergreen Sponsored Products campaigns with automatic product and keyword targeting.
During Prime Day in 2022, our summer collection items that we advertised were more popular than anticipated, but due to stock shortages, we had missed opportunities from promotions that were going well. Based on this learning, we were well equipped for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, making it our best year [in sales] thus far.
— Naomitsu Fukuda, director of new businesses, Nissen
A month before the event, Nissen started preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday by launching products for the season and identifying trending items. This helped secure budget and plan inventory accordingly. The company then used Sponsored Products to pique interest in their key products in the lead-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, showcased them prominently with Sponsored Brands video ad campaigns during the event—creating videos in-house using Video Builder—and helped convert missed opportunities by remarketing with Sponsored Display in the lead-out of the event. “Bids could suddenly go up on the day of events, so for us doing a daily check-in on bids and fine-tuning helped ensure our ads didn’t pause unexpectedly,” said Naomitsu Fukuda, director of new businesses.
In November 2022, the company grew their ad-attributed sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday by 120% compared to the previous year.1 Nissen dialed down on ads around the end of the year as most businesses in Japan entered the nenmatsu (year-end) holiday season, affecting their stock fulfillment capability. The company managed ads efficiently this way by tuning up and down their awareness to remarketing ads.
Regarding what’s next for the brand, Takeshi Fujitani, sales and communications manager at Nissen, says, “Our biggest goal right now is to try dialing up upper-funnel marketing with Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display. We believe that’s the way to go even further with scaling our business and expand our reach.”
1 Advertiser-provided data, JP, 2021–2022