Paid Marketing Helps Zebco Fishing Grow Market Share and Amazon Revenue 32% in 1 Year

Zebco, a subsidiary of Rather Outdoors, is a fishing reel and rod manufacturer with decades of experience making family friendly products. While the brand had a rich and successful history, it had struggled to see success on Amazon.  

Battling sophisticated, factory direct competitors, Zebco was faced with poor sales performance and minimal growth, even as Amazon sales in the fishing category were skyrocketing. Their market share was declining on Amazon while consumers were shifting purchases from brick and mortar to online.   

To combat declining share, Zebco began investing in paid advertising, but had a modest budget and focused almost exclusively on branded keywords. With most of the budget paying for branded keywords, Zebco was targeting shoppers who already knew of their products instead of targeting new consumers or brand-agnostic consumers, which made up most Amazon shoppers. As Zebco struggled to find its footing in the dynamic Amazon market, they turned to Brandwoven for help. 

The first step to revamp advertising was to work with the Zebco team to increase marketing budget. The additional spend would be a significant investment for Zebco, and one without proven success, so Brandwoven presented a marketing plan supported by category specific data to the Zebco team. The plan covered products to advertise, expected spend and expected return along with impact to category share of voice. This was supported by a detailed list of metrics from Amazon marketing; from average spend from competitors, cost per click, current Share of Voice and data from past performance. In addition to the plan, Brandwoven presented a monthly run-rate with expected returns so the Zebco team could see if the plan was working, or course correct as needed. This reduced the overall risk and offered tangible benchmarks of success.   

Once the budget was approved, Brandwoven went to work implementing the updated strategy with a primary goal to focus marketing on acquiring new customers; marketing efforts were shifted from branded campaigns to generic keywords.    

As marketing spend increased, Brandwoven knew that improving conversion rate was going to be key to overall marketing success. To support this, Brandwoven engaged in 3 areas to improve Zebco’s digital merchandising, making their products easier for consumers to shop.

Improved variation strategy:

Brandwoven reorganized Zebco’s variations around product families and changed the variation structures to make the products easier to shop. This also had the benefit of combining reviews for top selling products, which impacted both conversion rate and organic position.

Improved Copy:

To help Zebco win the buy box and convert more ad traffic, Brandwoven updated titles for nearly all products. The agency also put together a 13-page guide on digital consumer copywriting best practices to educate Zebco on Amazon’s copy standards and ensure the product information on each detail page was both accurate and explanatory, converting more shoppers as a result.

Improved Creative Assets:

Brandwoven also worked closely with Zebco and ultimately created updating listing images and A+ Content to better explain product features and uses. This change put information used for making purchasing decisions right in front of the consumer and helped improve conversion.