How to Convert New-To-Brand Shoppers on Amazon

This blog was updated on February 27, 2024.

Eight out of ten customers are loyal to specific brands, according to the latest statistics on brand loyalty. Loyal customers buy more products from their favorite brands and are more likely to recommend them to their family and friends. For this reason, promoting your brand (and not just your products) is one of the most powerful ways to grow your sales.

As the largest online retailer in the world, Amazon provides a wide range of marketing and advertising tools to help brands target customers. Knowing which tools to use and how to use them can be challenging – especially as Amazon continues to add new marketing programs and make changes to existing ones. To help cut through the clutter, we’ve compiled some of the most effective tactics and strategies that have yielded the greatest success for our clients seeking to acquire new-to-brand customers on Amazon.

Amazon Brand Registry

We can’t get into specific marketing tactics for attracting and converting new-to-brand customers without first covering the importance of registering your brand with Amazon. Once your brand is registered, other sellers are prohibited from selling your products. This effectively guarantees that you’ll win the buy box, which is essential to selling on Amazon. Registering your brand also gives you access to a host of benefits and tools not available to other sellers, including:

• Greater control over your product listings
• Amazon support for case management and resolutions
• Exclusive search and reporting tools
• Proactive brand protections
• Access to A+ content and Enhanced Brand Content
• Exclusive visibility options like Sponsored Brands, the Early Reviewer Program, and Vine

A+ Content

One of the most important benefits of registering your brand is the ability to optimize your Amazon storefront with A+ content. This enables you to change the product descriptions of branded ASINs. Using this tool, you can describe your product features in a different way by including a unique brand story, enhanced images, and text placements. Adding A+ content to your product detail pages can result in higher conversion rates, increased traffic, and increased sales when used effectively. This feature is only available to sellers who have been approved as brand owners through the Amazon Brand Registry process, as well as emerging brand owners who are part of certain managed selling programs, such as Launchpad and Amazon Exclusives. After you’ve been approved, you’ll be able to add A+ to products that are part of your approved brand catalog.

Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products Campaigns

Once your Amazon storefront and product listings are fully optimized, it’s time to generate traffic. Amazon is a pay-to-play platform and targeting customers through a combination of Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products campaigns are essential to winning new-to-brand customers.

Sponsored Brands are cost-per-click (CPC) ads that utilize keyword, product, and category targeting to help drive the discovery of your brand among customers shopping for products like yours. Sponsored Brands are only available to professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, vendors, book vendors, and agencies. Sponsored Brands help increase visibility and give you control over how you want to present your brand to customers. By linking Sponsored Brands with your Amazon storefront, you can engage shoppers in an immersive environment that’s all about your brand. Sponsored Brands also provides you the opportunity to introduce customers to your brand via the power of video.

Channel Key also helps brands attract new customers through Sponsored Products ads. By bidding on non-branded search terms, you can target customers who are searching for similar products but might not be aware of your brand. Sponsored Display ads are another effective advertising program that can help you reach new customers who recently purchased products from your competitors.

New-to-Brand Metrics

One of the most valuable analytics tools that Amazon provides to brand owners are new-to-brand metrics. These analytics allow you to measure orders, sales, and detail page views of your products generated from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon.

New-to-brand metrics are available for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display. With new-to-brand metrics, you can better measure and optimize campaigns that are in flight. You can also plan future marketing strategies to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. The following new-to-brand metrics are currently available:

• New-to-Brand Orders: The number of first-time orders for products within the brand over a 1-year lookback window.
• % of Orders New-to-Brand: The percentage of total orders that are new-to-brand orders.
• New-to-Brand Sales: The total sales (in local currency) of new-to-brand orders.
• % of Sales New-to-Brand: The percentage of sales (in local currency) of new-to-brand sales.
• New-to-Brand Units: The number of units purchased from new-to-brand orders.
• % of Units New-to-Brand: The percentage of total units that are new-to-brand units.
• New-to-Brand Order Rate (for Sponsored Brands Only): The number of new-to-brand orders divided by the number of clicks.
• New-to-Brand DPV: The number of first-time detail page views for products within the brand over a 1-year lookback window.
• New-to-Brand DPV Views: The number of first-time detail page views for products within the brand over a 1-year lookback window, attributed to an ad view.
• New-to-Brand DPV Clicks: The number of first-time detail page views for products within the brand over a 1-year lookback window, attributed to an ad click.
• New-to-Brand DPV Rate: The new-to-brand detail page view rate for the brands’ products, relative to the number of ad impressions. It’s calculated as the number of new-to-brand DPVs divided by the number of impressions.
• Effective Cost Per New-to-Brand DPV: Effective (average) cost to acquire a new-to-brand detail page view for all products in your brand. It’s calculated as the cost divided by the total new-to-brand detail page views.

New-to-brand metrics can help you to optimize your Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns to drive new customer consideration and acquisition for your brands. New customer consideration can be measured with new-to-brand DPVs, while new customer orders are a key step in establishing a long-term brand relationship with a customer.

Below are some recommendations to start learning how to optimize for customer acquisition by identifying or creating a Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Display campaign focused on this goal:

•  When the campaign has at least 14 days of data, review the campaign’s new-to-brand keyword metrics and filter your keywords by acceptable ROAS or ACOS values.
•  For the resulting set of keywords, identify those with the highest % of orders or DPVs new-to-brand. These keywords are targeting candidates for driving new-to-brand orders and DPVs.
•  Also review the new-to-brand units and sales metrics as these may identify keywords that generate new-to-brand orders with higher price points and basket sizes.

Make sure to monitor the campaign’s new-to-brand performance over time using the performance dashboard and make changes where appropriate.

Channel Key Takeaway

Consistently acquiring new customers who are loyal to your brand will elevate your sales exponentially. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to do and doesn’t happen overnight. The good news is: Channel Key has developed a proven formula for targeting and converting new-to-brand customers. As outlined above, implementing a calculated and customized marketing and advertising strategy that includes Brand Registry, A+ Content, Sponsored Brands campaigns, Sponsored Products campaigns, Display Ads campaigns, and new-to-brand metrics will help brands in virtually every category attract new customers.