Share-of-Shelf of your sponsored listings on eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Bigbasket, Flipkart, etc., measures the percentage of your brand’s discoverability vis-a-vis the competition on paid keywords.
Paid search is a massive opportunity for brands, as it allows them to rank ‘at the top’ for the specific keyword searches on eCommerce platforms. However, brands could get outbid on keywords by their competition, which impacts their rankings.
Therefore, monitoring and measuring the SOS of the sponsored keywords has become vital for brands. Another aspect of measuring the SOS of the sponsored listing is knowing the brands with the highest discoverability. Through this, a brand can detect the focused or targeted keywords of its competitors. Moreover, the brand can also detect whether or it is discoverable on the most popular keywords? If it isn’t, then, the brand needs to check the Product Display Pages (PDPs) and optimize them with the most popular keywords to become discoverable on the eCommerce search engine.
According to a report, the worldwide retail eCommerce sales from Amazon accounted for $468.78 billion between 2017 and 2021. In India, 47% of the digital advertising expense on the eCommerce industry was through paid searches. It means a significant proportion of paid search campaigns were running on multiple eCommerce platforms. Brands that ran campaigns on Amazon acquired a piece of the sale and increased their revenue. Therefore, becoming discoverable on eCommerce platforms certainly aids sales/conversions.
Besides revenue, brands run paid search campaigns on eCommerce platforms to acquire higher traffic, increase the ranking, enhance visibility and brand awareness, etc. So, whenever their competitors have a higher proportion of the digital shelf, especially on brand-specific keywords, it is a problem that needs an immediate solution.
How to Effectively Measure the SOS of Sponsored Listings on eCommerce Platforms?
Top Product Results by Keywords Searches
The positioning of a sponsored product listing on an e-commerce platform, based on keywords tells many stories to a brand. It could inform the brand that is bidding the highest on a specific keyword and the type of keywords (generic, competitor, and brand) that have the highest share of digital shelf for your brand vis-a-vis the competitors. Brands can use the information to detect the top performing paid searches of their competitors on each eCommerce platform in their respective categories.
By evaluating the results of the sponsored digital shelf results brands can build strategies to get an edge over the competition. How? It can build campaigns around the most relevant keywords and attract a higher audience base. Moreover, it can use the keywords in the title of its multiple variants to increase consumer interest in the product and intent to purchase the product.
Brands with the higher number of sponsored listings acquire a higher share of shelf for keywords. Moreover, the share of shelf for the sponsored listings is often calculated for the top ten search results and the top three pages. Therefore, building strategies around sponsored listings based on the SOS can boost the positioning of the listing and the visibility of the brand.
My suggestion to the brand’s is to “use a keyword-mix which includes competition brand keywords, along with their own brand keywords, which is hardly practiced by most brands and would help you to acquire a larger Share-of-Shelf.”
Share of Sponsored Listings on a Sub-Category Level
Imagine you are a pickle manufacturer and are running campaigns on ‘mango pickle’ keyword of an e-commerce marketplace. Consumers use the same keyword from their respective geo-locations to buy the product, however, your sponsored product listing is at the bottom of page. Do you think they would make an effort to scroll down and add your product to cart, especially if you are a new brand? Most probably ‘No.’
Enhancing the page position of your brand’s products and thereby enhancing visibility of your sponsored listings is necessary to influence the buyer behavior towards your brand. It is possible by:
- Evaluating the overall SOS of sponsored listings at a sub-category level,
- Detecting & retargeting the top and most relevant keywords of your competitors under specific sub-categories, and
- Finding the top sub-categories that would increase the SOS of sponsored listings.
By taking these measures, your brand can substantially increase its SOS of sponsored listings on multiple sub-categories. Besides higher revenue, your brand could enhance its consumer base and find new target audience in its niche.
Recently, we shared a case study in which a brand used the strategy of monitoring competitor keywords. By doing so, it found that the SOS of its sponsored listings for competitor keywords was 5%; however, after gaining information on the competitor’s top performing keywords, it started bidding on some of them. Within a short span of time, SOS of its paid searches jumped to 14%. (Read more)
SOS Overview of Sponsored Listings
Monitoring the SOS overview of sponsored listings would give a clear analysis of the best performing brands based on paid searches. Moreover, you can evaluate the presence of your brand vis-a-vis the competition on an eCommerce marketplace through keyword bidding. As a result, you can find the best performing platforms for your brand.
Additionally, your brand measured the share of shelf for sponsored listing using specific keywords. Therefore, you can find the best performing keywords of your competitors across multiple eCommerce platforms. By doing so, you can revamp the keyword bidding strategy to enhance your overall share of shelf for sponsored listings. You can even share the information across the organization using exportable reports through eCommerce Competitive Analytics, a.k.a., mScanIt’s dashboard. The actionable insights would enable your e-commerce managers to evaluate the platform-wise strategies and take measures for boosting the SOS of paid search results.
Conclusion
Share-of-Shelf of sponsored listings can bring insights related to products, brands, and competitors. Measuring the success of paid searches on eCommerce platforms through eCommerce Competitive Analytics is possible by deep-diving at a sub-category, search rank, overall, and other levels of SOS.
The insights and intelligence derived through eCommerce Competitive Analytics, a.k.a. mScanIt, enables your brands to change your ongoing/upcoming advertising and marketing campaigns across multiple eCommerce platforms.
For the last decade, using mScanIt, powered by mFilterIt, has enabled brands across continents to find the discoverability results of their sponsored products. Schedule a demo with us today to learn more about the advantages of the solution for your brand.
