Vita Coco teams with Flywheel for product relaunch

Vita Coco knows coconuts. The brand established itself with coconut water, and launched a 14-ounce organic, unrefined coconut oil in 2016. Despite Vita Coco’s strong coconut water business and success selling coconut water on Amazon, the new product did not take off as expected. In-depth customer research revealed unmet demand for coconut oil in larger sizes—Prime eligible, specifically. The company then developed a 54-ounce coconut oil in a BPA-free plastic tub, and teamed up with media agency Flywheel Digital to develop a strategy to help the brand stand out to customers.

The Flywheel strategy

Flywheel offered a new perspective for Vita Coco. First, Flywheel focused on making sure that the brand was retail ready. Vita Coco created high-quality product images, optimized product titles to include popular keywords, and created A+ content for the product detail page, sharing the versatile applications of coconut oil, from skin care to cooking. With these steps completed, Flywheel recommended leveraging Amazon’s sponsored ads to help discoverability and drive sales on Amazon.

Flywheel created and actively managed Sponsored Products campaigns for the coconut oil. The agency was also able to optimize campaigns hourly by using the Amazon Ads API. Flywheel closely monitored keywords, pausing those that underperformed and increasing budget on those that outperformed the sales target.

Relaunch success

Within the first three weeks of advertising, Vita Coco’s annual sales projections for coconut oil increased by over 20x their total 2017 sales. The correlation between the sponsored ads campaign spend and Vita Coco’s Amazon sales was strong. Sponsored ads campaigns delivered 84% of sales in the first month that they were launched, and continued to perform, driving 70% of sales in the following month, which ultimately allowed Vita Coco to invest in other emerging product lines.

quoteUpUtilizing sponsored ads, as well as Flywheel’s proficiency with sponsored ads and Amazon Ads, has proven instrumental in helping us grow a new item into one of the top items in the category, in just a matter of weeks.quoteDown
– Jim Morgan, Head of eCommerce, Vita Coco

Vita Coco continues to use sponsored ads to promote its products on Amazon. Flywheel reports that even top-ranked products within a category have achieved a 15% increase in sales on Amazon thanks to sponsored ads.

According to Flywheel cofounder Patrick Miller, “There is no better validator of media performance than units leaving our client’s warehouses. Sponsored ads allow us to rapidly accelerate Amazon sales for our clients.”

Highlights

  • Annual sales projections for coconut oil increased by over 20x within the first 3 weeks of advertising
  • Sponsored ads campaigns delivered 84% of sales in the first month that they were launched and 70% in the following month