Watersports Brand Grows Sales by 109% Year-over-year with Optimized Content and Strategic Advertising Investment 

The Problem 

A premium watersports brand was a dominant market leader in towable tubes and several other Summer and Winter recreational product categories on Amazon. But the company’s > 60% market share began to decline as additional competitors entered the space.  

As lower priced products flooded the Amazon market, the brand began to actively lose Amazon market share in towable tubes and watersports ropes – categories they had historically dominated with little effort. In addition, the brand was stagnant with a 3% market share in life jackets and winter sleds – large categories where Run AMZ saw significant opportunity.  

The brand was facing several handicaps, the most obvious being the company’s outdated digital merchandising on Amazon. The initial focus needed to be on creating SEO optimized content for their detail pages. The watersports brand also needed new optimized media to better display how their products looked and operated. 

Run AMZ also noticed the watersports company was over-indexing in promotional funding, while grossly under-indexing in advertising spend. While competitors increased funding for advertising to drive sales, the brand was falling behind, relinquishing their stronghold in key categories. Before working with Run AMZ, the watersports brand was spending most of its discretionary budget on promotions and Amazon’s AVS program. In doing so, they were incurring significant expenses with an ROI far below expectations. 

There was also an urgency to find solutions to these issues. Before working with Run AMZ, the brand’s Amazon sales were trending down 18% YoY by mid-Q2 and their busiest season of the year, Summer, was rapidly approaching. 

The Solution 

To combat sinking market share in core categories, lack of growth in emerging categories, outdated content, and inefficient budget allocation, Run AMZ recommended the following: 

1. Overhaul of digital merchandising to increase conversion rates 
2. Re-allocating budget to AMS from promotions & AVS 
3. Competitive product analysis 

Content Overhaul 

Starting with the content overhaul, Run AMZ conducted an audit to make recommendations for an improved content strategy which included new listing images, titles, A+ and some changes in variation structure. From there, Run AMZ invested in creating SEO optimized content, especially for that of the brand’s 350 best-selling products. It was crucial that brand’s product detail pages remained competitive by using updated lifestyle images and other optimized media, targeted keywords, new A+ copy and billboard style graphics.  

Using data from the brand and past results from Amazon Marketing, Run AMZ crafted a message for each product category that focused on the decision-making process for the consumer, while assuring the brand was represented as premium every step of the way.  

Budget Re-allocation 

After the content overhaul, Run AMZ shifted the focus to the brand’s budget allocation system. First, Run AMZ reviewed the budget for promotions, Vendor Central support (AVS). After determining the ROI on promotions and AVS support was limited, Run AMZ reallocated funds to Amazon PPC Marketing. Because of their significant market share, Run AMZ was able to implement a defensive strategy on Towable Tubes and Ropes, while being more targeted on generic keywords and competitors for emerging categories like life vests and winter sleds.  The ROI on Amazon PPC marketing outpaced previous investments by over 4x, almost instantly pulling back significant amounts of market share previously lost to competition.  

Competitor Analysis 

Next, Run AMZ conducted a competitive product analysis, working hand in hand with the brand’s team to plan new product opportunities. Through a strategic approach, Run AMZ identified popular product segments, new keyword targeting opportunities, and competitive price points that, once invested in, would significantly grow the company’s market share in the water sports category. 

The Results 

After 12 months working with Run AMZ, the brand’s overall sales had grown 109% and increased market share by almost 15% in several of its top categories on Amazon. They further saw a 23% year-over-year increase in November sales and an astounding 704% year-over-year increase in snowshoe sales. 

Life Jackets was previously a challenging category but Run AMZ suggested it was an opportunity for significant growth. As a result, the brand went from no products in the top 50 on Amazon to 6 products in the top 50. By the end of the Summer, the watersports brand had the #7 best-selling life jacket. The brand had also gone into the season with a 2% market share but after 2 seasons with Run AMZ, had captured an estimated 12% of all life jacket sales on the platform. From this, the brand grew to become a top 3 player in the Life Jacket category on Amazon. Furthermore, the brand held the 3 of the top 5 spots in the Snow Sled category by the second Winter season after working with Run AMZ. 

Thanks to Run AMZ’s new budget allocation proposal and digital advertising campaigns, the watersports company generated over 100 million impressions. This led to a significant year-over-year increase in their Amazon sales proving that the digital advertising campaigns and marketing budget allocation model Run AMZ were extremely effective. Overall, by working with this watersports company, Run AMZ demonstrated that optimized content, marketing budget allocation best practices, and competitive pricing can effectively boost sales and Amazon market share over time.