Amazon Isn’t Just For Ecommerce Anymore
Background
As Amazon builds up its advertising capabilities, brands across industries finally have the opportunity to leverage some of the most powerful shopping data available.
I’m Not A Retail Brand, Why Should I Care About Amazon?
In a word: data. Amazon’s data is perhaps the most valuable, most highly-sought after dataset in the world. The ability to use it to fine-tune marketing efforts is something that retail and non-retail brands alike can benefit from.
Incorporating a third-party dataset into marketing efforts is certainly not a new concept – it is a core component of every display campaign a brand runs. Its power lies in the ability to reach a specific audience segment that has a higher propensity to favor something or a higher likelihood to be in the market for a given item than the rest of the population.
What makes Amazon’s data different is that it is real-time, one-to-one shopper data. Amazon in-market and lifestyle audiences are comprised of people who are actually shopping for a specific product in a specific time frame. Think of it this way: if you’re retailing cameras, with Amazon, you’d be targeting an audience that was actually shopping for a camera within the last week. With other forms of third-party data, you’d be targeting a more general “tech buffs” group, which could include people who searched for computers, went to the Tech Crunch website, or are likely to purchase a camera within the next 6 months. Both segments put your brand in front of relevant audiences, but Amazon allows you to directly reach a more specific group at a very specific point in their journey.
Three Ways All Brands Can Use Amazon Data
Historically, Amazon has not shared shopper data externally. But as it continues to vie for an increasingly large portion of brands’ marketing budgets, Amazon is doubling down on its advertising opportunities for companies across industries. Here are three ways all brands – retail or not – can use Amazon’s data for their benefit.
1. Enhance Campaign Targeting
Businesses across industries all have one thing in common – an increasingly large portion of their consumers shop on Amazon. This makes Amazon shopper data incredibly valuable to retail and non-retail brands alike.
Here’s a perfect example: Amazon shoppers looking for moving supplies are valuable to brands who sell boxes and packing tape. But this audience is equally relevant for home insurance providers and furniture retailers. Brands who fall into all three categories can use Amazon’s applicable in-market and lifestyle audiences to hone their display campaigns. And the best part? “Display” is a relatively general term that applies to banner ads, videos, mobile interstitials, and other forms of media that run on websites and mobile apps across the internet. This means marketers can use Amazon data to structure campaigns that align with their brand and business objectives.
2. Capture New Audience Insights
Learn even more about your website visitors by layering Amazon shopper data into your analysis. With Amazon’s Segment Overlap Report, brands are able to understand which in-market and lifestyle segments their audience falls into. This can help you unearth new attributes and behaviors about your audience that were previously unknown.
In practice, this could mean that your health insurance company runs the Segment Overlap Report and learns that your audience is also into home improvement. You can use this to inform new creative iterations, build personas, and improve targeting strategies.
3. Use First-Party Data For Display Targeting
Using first-party data (i.e. email addresses) in search and social campaigns is a traditional but incredibly effective tactic because it allows you to use your own data to target known customers. But given the nature of display advertising, this has historically been near-impossible to do – you’d need a third-party to anonymize your data and turn it into segmented audience groups.
Amazon is the first third-party vendor that allows marketers to upload email lists and use them to target consumers directly via display campaigns. This is enormously valuable, as it makes it possible to get in front of current or recent customers and re-engage them with key messages. It also means display campaigns can be used to support lead nurture and customer retention goals.
