There’s 10 seconds left on the clock in the 4th quarter. It’s 3rd down, the game is tied, and the season’s on the line. You have your Amazon digital playbook in front of you. What’s your call?
As 2020 is coming to an end, you could go for a Hail Mary. Unfortunately, the Hail Mary only works 2.5% of the time, but the QB Sneak is much more successful. So, it might be time to get a little stealthier than usual with your Retail eCommerce strategy.
This Year Calls for Something…Creative
It’s no secret that this year’s been tough on brick-and-mortar.
eMarketer projects a 4.7% decline for brick-and-mortar, while the pandemic caused over 100,000 SMBs to close their doors in Q2 alone and a major gap in many brands’ sales forecast for 2020.
Also looming over your brand’s 2020 revenue forecast is the dreaded “retail apocalypse”, which is looking to close even more stores in Q1 of 2021.
And now, it’s getting near the end of the year and your team is turning to you for a strategy to close the gap and make up a large part of the company’s lost sales. They also want you to do something new, but you’ve already tried everything.
Also…they’ve given you a directive to not disrupt (tick-off) the other brick-and-mortars, or any other sales channels. So, what options are you left with?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could tackle all that and deliver a few other unexpected, but awesome, outcomes…
Introducing (Quietly) Stealth Deals
Imagine you could not only use what’s left of your marketing budget wisely, but also not alert your competitors of the great deals you’re posting. How about that, plus targeting shoppers who looked at, but did not purchase your competitor’s detail pages? Well, you’ve just imagined Stealth Deals!
Stealth Deals are a different breed of remarketing in which you target potential customers who have looked at your competitors’ products and then drive them to a Custom Landing Page with a hidden deal.
When developing your competitor product target list, you want to keep your feature sets very similar to the competitors’ product pages, with a few superior callouts and of course, a lower price. And to sweeten the deal, throw in different levels of offers like Canon did here.
This Stealth Deals page isn’t searchable and thus, is hidden from anyone who doesn’t click on the display ad you’re serving up. This way, you don’t alert your competition so they can’t price match your killer deal.
On the other hand, Detail Pages are very public and everyone (including other retail channel partners) can see them.
Stealth-like discretion is why a Custom Landing Page is better than a Detail Page for this specific tactic. The same applies with Brand Stores vs. Custom Landing Pages because Amazon Sponsored Ads moderation teams don’t let you call out discounts in Brand Stores.
This tactic leveraged with a Custom Landing Page is basically the perfect sales assassin to grab as much market share from the competition as possible!
When Do I Strike?
Now! With eCommerce picking up the slack for brick-and-mortars’ drop in sales, it’ll reach a 35.8% increase, which is an incremental $50.19B in the holiday season alone.
Your budget most likely hasn’t increased and aCPC’s for Amazon Search have skyrocketed. With this DSP tactic (which we all know is impression-based advertising), it’s possible to get an effective, lower aCPC through really hyper-focused targeting combined with amazing ad creative.
And with how stealthy this tactic is, you won’t be disrupting any of your other sales channels, just increasing your eCommerce conversions.
There’s no better time than now, too. Even though the Turkey 5 didn’t reach projections, it fell only slightly short of its massive expected numbers.
You can shrink the sales gap left in the wake of the pandemic by driving these sneaky deals. And this promotional plan can be implemented now to get products in customers’ hands before Christmas Eve as well as right after for a year-end push.
Stealth Deals are an extremely effective way to use the remaining budget you’re left with this holiday season.
If you’d like to learn more about how to utilize Stealth Deals, reach out to sarahl@channelbakers.com today.
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