Case study
Ruko adopts multiple Amazon Ads solutions to reach new customers and create an effective shopping experience.
Founded in Shenzhen, Ruko is a brand that sells drones, robots, and remote-controlled devices. Lian Jing, the co-founder and a mother of three, started the business in 2017. She originally registered the business on the Amazon US site, but since 2020, she has been using Amazon Ads to grow their business with Stores, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Streaming TV. Combining these solutions into one strategy has helped contribute to the more than 50% increase in Ruko sales since 2020, while also helping build brand awareness in their product category.1
Facing the three initial challenges
Ruko’s top business goal on Amazon was to build brand awareness. With high price-per-customer transactions (around 100 USD to 600 USD per purchase), Ruko wanted to increase their presence and elevate their return on ad spend (ROAS). In Ruko’s first year of business, Jing faced two main challenges:
- International expansion and translation issues: Jing explained that when first creating a slogan for the Ruko F11 Pro, the team struggled to translate one language into another, which resulted in their first slogan not being well understood in other cultures and locales.
- Lack of traffic : To promote their new product, the C11 remote control, Ruko realized they needed to engage with audiences anywhere they spend their time to help widen their reach and increase new-to-brand customers.
Finding solutions with Amazon Ads solutions
Between 2020 and 2022, Ruko engaged in phased marketing plans using Amazon Ads solutions. They combined the capabilities of Sponsored Brands video, Stores, and Posts, with off-site strategies like display ads and Streaming TV.
- Posts helped bring more exposure to their brand: Ruko highlighted their products using engaging lifestyle imagery on Posts, benefiting also from free traffic. Jing said, “We posted every day, and by the second month, we could see increased traffic arriving to our Store.” The team then recycled this imagery by also using it on their social media accounts.
- Sponsored Brands video campaigns linked to Stores: Ruko connected their Sponsored Brands video campaigns to their Store, helping engaged shoppers browse their entire product portfolio.
- A/B tests for creative assets helped improve campaigns: A/B testing helped provide useful insight for Ruko into how they could improve their advertising campaigns. For example, they tested two captions on Posts and tracked performance over 14 days. The insights provided then helped the team identify what strategy worked best for them and what content is most relevant for them to invest in their campaigns. The team also tried testing videos to increase views and clicks.
- Streaming TV helped lift upper-funnel reach: Ruko invested 70,000 USD to produce their first branded video, “Ruko’s Family Day,” and chose Amazon DSP Streaming TV to help them broaden their reach. This approach can help brands measure the additional audiences reached via Amazon’s Streaming TV services, in addition to other TV ad campaigns. “Our products have longer consideration cycles, and Streaming TV can help us reach larger groups and bring more potential users to our brand,” said Jing.
The results
Growing Ruko from three to 50 employees, the team has continued to see growth in their business and brand. In 2021, Ruko’s Amazon Store ad-attributed sales alone amounted to 1.95 million USD, with 281K Stores visitors and more than 8% of their shoppers making a repeat purchase.2
During the holiday season in 2021, Ruko had their most successful sales performance to date, aided by the strength of their multisolution strategy with Amazon Ads. Their Sponsored Brands campaigns achieved 3.68 million impressions on product detail pages and 90K clicks. Ruko’s brand campaign on Streaming TV has also achieved over 1.5 million impressions3 within just one month, with a 98.5% video watch completion rate 4. And lastly, the branded search index of “Ruko” has increased 2.49x when compared to results from 2020.5
1 Advertiser-provided insights, CN, 2022
2-5 Advertiser-provided insights, CN, 2021