The Power of Non-Branded Strategy

The Power of Non-Branded Strategy Speaker 1: Welcome to the Better Advertising with BTR Media podcast. My name is Justin Knuckles and I'm your host on the show here. Today I'm sitting alongside Zach Bican and we want to talk about one of the brands he really shifted targeting into the category more so than relying on branded spend to achieve their RoAS goals. So welcome in, Zach. Speaker 2: Yeah, super appreciate you having me on. Yeah, looking forward to get into this. Speaker 1: First time on the show, been a longtime BTR Media expert, so welcome on. I'll let you kind of set the stage for what you did with this brand, what you came into situation-wise, what you were dealing with before you really started deploying your own strategy in the account. Set us up, set up the audience for what you came into on this account. Speaker 2: Yeah, so we took over this account in March for a boating brand that we had just signed. What we saw when we went into the account was a heavy reliance on branded spend, branded product targeting, not much sponsor brand, sponsor brand video, rank strategies. So after taking a look at the account, we saw a really big opportunity, especially with that seasonality factor with boating brands. Leading into their peak time, you know, May, June, July, August, we saw a really big opportunity to shift spend away from branded into non-branded using that category as kind of our backboard instead of leaning so much on branded terms and branded product targeting. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of brands maybe don't ask enough questions around their other agencies when they're achieving their target RoAS goals. That's something we often see when brands come to us for an audit or to work with us is they're hitting their performance goals, but they're not seeing their top line grow. And maybe that's because a lot of these other providers are just relying on branded spend where you are achieving target goals and RoAS, but you're not driving that incremental growth, that category market share. And so sometimes you have to Navigate difficult conversations with, we need to bid on these more aggressive terms, higher cost per clicks, lower conversion rates, of course, but this is where you're going to really achieve long-term success. So, as you obviously had that idea to bring to this brand, how did you start off that conversation? How did you navigate, you know, more or less pitching that to your brand? Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think the first step was really just education, right? Explaining the long-term effects, not being so short-sighted when it comes to just focusing on your RoAS goals in the short term, but rather looking at it from a TACOS perspective of You know, if we can get to a place year over year where we're dropping tacos by three percentage points, but maybe your RoAS is two or three dollars less, ultimately that's going to be better for your business, right? You're going to be more profitable and owning those category terms and owning that top of search, ultimately what you're going to be doing... In addition to dropping tacos is building your branding on platform and building your recognition within whatever specific category you're going to be working within. Speaker 1: Of course. There are a lot of other factors that go into being successful in this strategy. We're maybe taking for granted a lot of other things that this brand had in place such as Ratings and reviews, competitive price points, really outstanding creatives. So how did they look on that side of the business? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. We were tremendously lucky, honestly. Great products, great reviews, competitive price points, commercial-grade video. That was specifically kind of a big I guess selling point for us is when we saw those videos that kind of triggered it in our mind. It's like, okay, this is something we can go full bore into immediately and not have to worry about the lag time with getting creatives, getting them created, getting them sent over. ...and set up. So they had really strong branding on their D2C sites. So great ad copy as well for us to be able to use it and, you know, be in lockstep with them from their branding perspective on their end to what we can put on Amazon and that way, you know, keep it cohesive across the whole e-commerce platform. Speaker 1: Amazing. So how did this go when you first started rolling it out, maybe in, say, the first four weeks or so? I'm sure you probably saw some changes in RoAS, right? I know you mentioned that you saw a decrease in tacos over time, which is, you know, best case scenario, you see your top line grow, which means your organic sales are growing due to this extra category visibility. But how did RoAS look in the immediate term, in the first, say, two to four weeks? Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw an immediate decrease in RoAS. You know, we were anywhere From, you know, 11 to 12, dropping down to eight and a half, eight. But that's all part of the education process, right? And letting them know, like, hey, this is expected. This is okay. You know, right now we're going to see these short-term hits on the immediate side, immediate sales and spend and all that. So with the immediate revenue, we definitely saw A hit on the ad sales side, right? But ultimately over time with investing in top of search and rank, what we were doing is we were owning that number one placement on top of search, number one placement sponsor product, continuing to increase organic ranking. So we were showing them visuals as we were going along, right? So we may see that RoAS drop, but we're seeing organic rank increasing, organic sales percentage increase. So it became a lot easier conversation on our end once, you know, you give them the full context, the full picture of what we were doing. Speaker 1: And really just patience, right? Because a lot of brands in the first Three, four days, first two weeks are gonna see that RoAS decrease and probably raise some red flags and say, hey, this isn't working. But the patience to stick it out and say, you know, more people are seeing your ads, your branded volume is likely increasing. Is that something you guys saw is the branded volume overall increase? Speaker 2: Yeah, so we saw a strong, still branded search volume, search presence on platform. But ultimately, we allowed organic to cover that for us. You know, we still had ad coverage for sponsored brand video and sponsored product under branded terms. We just really dialed back the spend on that. So, you know, in our minds, when people are searching for that brand, more than likely they're there to purchase that brand. So we allowed that to organically do the work for us and come back on the back end. And take those ad dollars and reinvest it into the category and have that category then, you know, you're searching for trolling motors. It's going to be everywhere on that SERP. So that was ultimately... The initial plan and what we presented to them up front when we first signed them. Speaker 1: Amazing. Yeah. And the only reason I asked about the branded volume is because again, maybe brands want to switch back to that after seeing their RoAS decrease in their first couple of weeks. But once you hit that inflection point of seeing total sales starting to grow, those organic ranks starting to increase, what did your conversation sound like with your client? Speaker 2: Yeah, we just tried to make sure we're giving them updates really, like showing them month over month, week over week compared to last year when they were running the more branded heavy strategies. So really those conversations ended up being really easy from our side because we were able to show them, hey, We're seeing increases in total sales, total revenue, while dialing back an ad spend away from branded. We're continuing to be more profitable because of that, because we're investing more into our main category terms, our highest search volume terms, and overall being able to I totally lost what I was talking about. I don't even remember your question anymore. Speaker 1: Talking about what were your conversations sounding like once you got to that inflection point of seeing your total sales growing, maybe tacos started to decrease. Did the client finally understand and green light more of this type of strategy? Speaker 2: Yeah, they absolutely did. So once they saw the results, right, of being more profitable overall while being able to decrease spend, They were immediately into wanting to expand into DSP, expand into more sponsor TV slots or anything that was more top-of-funnel focused. Because ultimately, if we can bring in customers directly from top-of-funnel into our brand, that's only going to be able to help that bottom-line total revenue in the long run and be able to further decrease tacos over time. Speaker 1: Awesome. I have one more question just going back to some of those other ad types that you were mentioning before. Sponsor brand video and specifically around category targeting. You mentioned commercial grade videos. What was probably the one What was the strategy that you saw the most success with in terms of maybe conversion rate, really improving organic rank? Was it those sponsor brand videos or was it simply just your bread-and-butter sponsor products? Speaker 2: It was really just our bread-and-butter sponsor product, single keyword ranking for those top three to five volume and conversion rate keywords. We saw those I pay heavy dividends over time when it came to raising our organic rank and ultimately, you know, continue to lower tacos and become more profitable. The sponsored brand video as well does a great job with expanding your reach and branding on platform. So, you become more noticeable and become more of a reputable brand as you're running those sponsored brand videos, especially with commercial-grade creatives. It becomes a lot easier From an advertising perspective, to sell your vision and sell your products when you already have that as the first thing that a customer would see searching within the aisle for that product. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of times advertisers and brands are guilty of looking at campaigns by simply just the RoAS and this is where Amazon's great and now giving us a path to purchase. The sponsor brand videos probably played a huge part in helping those sponsor product ads convert at a higher rate because people have seen this product in action in a lifestyle setting and so this sponsor product ad is speaking to them a lot more directly than if it was on the page with 30 other products and it looks the same, right? Speaker 2: Right, 100%. That creative really sets it apart. Being able to differentiate it right with those other products that are within that category under that specific search term, you're able to basically tell the story of why you're different and why, you know, even if it is a more premium-priced product, as long as it's semi-competitive within that category, you have a much better chance of converting in the long term when your branding on platform is strong and you have strong creatives to back that up. Speaker 1: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Zach, for joining us today. If anybody listening to this podcast has questions about how we've implemented a strategy like this or is questioning your own allocation of your advertising being too heavily branded or not invested enough in your category, then reach out to BTR Media. We'd love to talk, maybe take a look at the account. But again, thank you, Zach, so much for being here today. Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1: Cheers. Thanks again for listening.