In conversation with Raghu Kashyap, Intentwise
Raghu Kashyap is the Co-Founder & CTO of Intentwise, an AI-based intuitive platform for optimizing Amazon Advertising. With his experience in technology and analytics, Raghu helps build out an innovative suite of solutions to help clients in the areas of Marketing and Analytics.
Agency Reporter- How is competitive analytics different from what it was a few years ago?
The purpose of a competitor analysis is to determine the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses relative to your product. Historically this has always been a second-class citizen when it comes to analytics. With more and more businesses moving towards online, Advertising is becoming a hyper-competitive space, only intensifying. The companies that will be most successful are those that invest early on in the processes, tools, and expertise necessary to build a sustainable advantage.
Companies need to be asking themselves, what are the right investments to stay competitive?
To stay competitive, brands must shift where they spend the bulk of their time from tactical execution to strategic analysis, while maintaining high-quality implementation. Strategic activities require investing in automation on multiple fronts, including performance monitoring, bid management, and keyword optimization.
AR- How, in your view, has automation changed the marketing and sales operations?
The pandemic has accelerated the shift to online sales / eCommerce. The shift creates new demands on everyone in the eco-system:
1. The industry has to adapt to the needs of the online sales and distribution channels
2. Customers could be distributed geographically.
Automation to facilitate eCommerce and serving customers that are geographically more widespread than ever is critical to success. Business functions such as Marketing and sales will drive these changes in the months to come.
AR- What is the current state of e-commerce? How does Intentwise deliver on its ROI with Amazon Advertising in focus?
As indicated by a recent Bain and Company study, the e-retail market will reach about 300 to 350 million customers throughout the following five years, pushing the online gross merchandise value to $100 billion to 120 billion by 2025.
Amazon advertising is an essential component of driving growth. It is evolving rapidly and growing in terms of competitiveness and complexity. Brands require long term strategic focus to succeed with Amazon ads.
Intentwise’s’ goal is to simplify the lives of advertisers and help them compete effectively on Amazon. We have invested heavily in building a technology platform that facilitates the optimization of Amazon advertising. Advertisers working with us have seen both improved advertising returns and savings on time and effort. If you ask our customers, they would say that Intentwise is the simplest platform to use and is extremely powerful. It is that balance we have struck that makes us different.
AR- Tell us about Using Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform) Ads. What extra advantage does it deliver for advertisers on Amazon?
Amazon DSP a tool that leverages customer data to buy digital ad space programmatically. The ads will appear on Amazon properties and publishing partners as well as third party exchanges. In other words, Amazon DSP automates the process of buying display, audio, and video ads on and off Amazon, using Amazon’s customer data.
Amazon DSP has the edge over its competitors for the following reasons:
1. Leverage Amazon’s exclusive customer data for accurate targeting and remarketing.
2. Access Amazon-owned properties and partner exchanges.
3. Scale-up advertising efforts quickly.
AR- If one does not run an e-commerce business, can they still advertise on Amazon?
Yes, they can. This ability makes Amazon a unique platform, as it allows a business to feature its products on the website and be an e-commerce player. It enables a company to get more visibility for its products and possibly more buyers.
AR- What’s the importance of using negative keywords without limiting your advertising success? Are they a handy tool at your disposal when creating Amazon Sponsored Ad campaigns?
Adding under-performing keywords as negatives to Amazon Ads campaigns is essential to optimizing campaigns.
Add the right keywords, and you can cut out a lot of wasted spending. Search terms that produce no revenue and take up sizable spend are ideal candidates.
Add the wrong keywords, and you could be cutting out a lot of relevant searches and hurt performance. For instance, let us assume you were selling cordless phones. Adding “cord” as a negative phrase keyword would block all keywords that have “cord” in them (example: cordless phone, phones without cord). This is also called keyword conflict. Amid the sheer volume of things, you are doing to optimize campaigns, keyword conflicts can creep in occasionally.
Review your negative keywords list periodically and eliminate keyword conflicts.
AR- Was it imperative for advertisers to re-Evaluate their Amazon Advertising Plans because of COVID-19?
We spoke to many of our clients throughout the pandemic time. We see a broad array of scenarios in which they’re finding themselves due to Coronavirus (COVID-19). Some have seen a massive spike in sales as if we were in a holiday season. And while that’s generally good, some are running into inventory issues, mainly because factory capacity is not back to full tilt. On the other end of the spectrum, clients have had their Amazon orders come to a halt, and they are concerned about the future. From a longer-term view, events like this result in a step-function change in buying behaviors. We have seen this happen in 2001 and 2008-09.
AR- What three tips would you give to businesses looking to grow their brand on Amazon Advertising?
Given the continually changing Amazon Advertising landscape today, it is imperative that advertisers have a fluid, agile advertising strategy in place.
In the months to come, the brands that succeed on Amazon will be the ones that can experiment with and deploy winning tactics quickly. To do this, they need to be able to pull up customized reports, diagnostics, and in-depth recommendations on demand.
We recommend three steps for ensuring Amazon Advertising success:
1. Set goals: Brands and advertisers should first define what success means to them. Your goals will guide every aspect of your strategy, from selecting target markets to keywords selection to setting rules and automated bids.
2. Amazon Advertising expertise: Brands that are just starting on Amazon with small budgets can take the time to experiment with the self-service advertising and reporting options Amazon’s platform offers. However, as they scale up their efforts and funds, brands need to have a disciplined approach to optimization. Therefore, at this stage, they need to bring in a team of Amazon Advertising experts, either in-house or external, to audit and execute campaigns and manage the increasing complexity.
3. Experiment and learn rapidly: As a brand’s advertising becomes more sophisticated, it should aim to engage all the levers available on Amazon. To do so, the team must deploy advanced analytical capabilities that allow them to mine deep insights from data and quickly figure out exactly what works and what doesn’t.