Special conversation: How top brands build Share of Voice on Amazon

This webinar, hosted by Rolando Galliana, Marketing Manager at Intentwise, features a special recorded conversation between Keith Hamann, Senior Director of Marketplaces at Made In Cookware, and Sreenath Reddy, CEO of Intentwise. The session delves into how Made In Cookware, a premium direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand, approaches full-funnel marketing and strategizes its "share of voice" on Amazon. It also highlights the collaborative efforts between Made In Cookware and Intentwise to foster marketplace growth, offering valuable insights for brands aiming to build momentum in a competitive, full-funnel Amazon environment.

Made In Cookware: A Brand Story of Credibility and Growth

From D2C Roots to Marketplace Expansion

Made In Cookware was founded in 2017 by Chip and Jake, establishing itself as a D2C brand. Jake’s background stemmed from a fourth-generation kitchen supply business, providing a hundred years of experience working with top manufacturers and understanding what constitutes a great product. Keith Hamann, Senior Director of Marketplaces at Made In, oversaw the launch of their Amazon channel, a unique opportunity to build an omnichannel presence from the ground up without pre-existing historical data or direction.

Standing Out in a Crowded Market

In a competitive cookware landscape dominated by legacy brands, Made In Cookware differentiates itself by emphasizing credibility and product performance. The brand collaborates with actual chefs who use their pans in professional kitchens, validating the products' quality and performance. This approach communicates their value proposition: delivering professional-grade kitchen tools to home cooks.

Amazon Launch and Evolving Ad Strategy

Made In's initial Amazon strategy was to use the platform for demand capture, focusing on getting their catalog listed to understand existing branded demand before investing heavily in new-to-brand advertising. This cautious approach aimed to prevent wasted ad spend due to potential forecasting or inventory issues.

To maintain its premium brand identity on Amazon, Made In prioritized:

• Retail Readiness: Ensuring brand identity, story, and premium justification were clearly communicated within Amazon's templated product detail pages (PDPs), A+ Content, and Brand Store.
• Diversified Advertising: Evolving beyond basic sponsored search ads to incorporate a full range of ad types. This included leveraging their in-house content studio to create compelling video ads, sponsored brand ads, and sponsored brand video ads, which are particularly effective for showcasing cookware in use.
• Full-Funnel Approach: Shifting their advertising focus from solely capturing new-to-brand customers to "owning more of the category" by expanding into upper-funnel tactics like streaming TV and utilizing Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) for conversion path analysis and incrementality.

Intentwise and the Power of Data-Driven Decisions

The "Intentwise" Philosophy

Sreenath Reddy, CEO of Intentwise, explained that the company was founded on the principle of bridging the gap between customer search intent and the delivered advertising experience. The name "Intentwise" reflects this core mission: detecting consumer or shopper intent and delivering the best possible experience.

Characteristics of High-Growth Brands

Sreenath identified several key traits that distinguish efficiently scaling brands:

1. Authenticity and Unique Value Proposition: A fundamental requirement for sustained growth.
2. Execution Informed by Rich Signals: Effectively consuming and acting upon data from platforms like Amazon and Amazon Marketing Cloud.
3. Experimental Tactics and Agility: The willingness to test new content and campaign formats rapidly.
4. Aggressive Pursuit of Signals: A strong drive to deeply understand customer behavior.

Leveraging Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)

AMC is described as a secure, privacy-safe clean room that provides advertisers with granular, event-level data, offering a holistic view of the customer journey beyond standard Amazon Ads reporting. The platform has evolved significantly, now offering more comprehensive signals, including organic data and up to five years of lookback data with user IDs to track purchases. Amazon is positioning AMC as a central hub for all measurement.

Made In Cookware leveraged AMC for a specific use case: understanding how many non-branded searches eventually led to branded searches. This was crucial for a brand selling high-value items with a longer purchase cycle, helping to reveal the true attribution of non-branded terms and the full customer story. AMC enables multi-touch attribution, measures cross-channel impact, and facilitates custom audience segmentation by allowing advertisers to integrate their first-party data with Amazon's anonymous and aggregated data.

Intentwise Analytics Cloud

Intentwise Analytics Cloud is designed to automate data pipelines and stitch together fragmented signals from various Amazon sources, including Sponsored Ads, DSP, Seller Central, Vendor Central, retail signals, inventory, and pricing data. This platform provides a unified view, allowing brands to understand why a particular product might not be performing well and facilitating sophisticated measurement and testing. It acts as a foundational data infrastructure, enabling brands to collect, own, and analyze their critical advertising and retail data.

Key Takeaways for Building Share of Voice

KPI Evolution

Made In's KPIs evolved from a strong focus on Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) to a more nuanced approach, questioning the definition of "new to brand" as their market presence grew. They now measure the percentage of new-to-brand customers at both the campaign and individual product term levels to better understand their audience acquisition.

Strategic Growth Advice from Made In Cookware

Keith Hamann offered two primary pieces of advice for brands seeking growth and scale:

1. Stay True to Brand Identity: Consistently uphold the brand's core values, such as credibility and performance.
2. Be Judicious with Promotions: Avoid becoming a promotion-driven brand, instead using promotions strategically for specific events like Prime Day to align with brand values.