Amazon Pet Supplies Audit
What’s great about owning a dog?
- Unconditional loyalty
- Your buddy is up for anything, anytime
- Someone is ecstatic every time you walk in the door
What’s bad about owning a dog?
- Dragging a 50-pound bag of dog food to and from your car every couple of weeks
Getting that ridiculously large bag of food from the store to your dog’s bowl is quickly becoming a problem of the past. As more consumers turn to sites like Amazon.com, pet brands are being forced to keep up.
We recently did a content audit of randomly selected product pages in the Amazon pet supplies category. The audit included 65 companies and 128 brands. Before going into the details, let’s talk about why pet supply brand managers would be smart to give more attention to ecommerce.
Online Pet Supply Sales on the Rise
Despite market fluctuations, the online pet supplies industry has enjoyed continuous growth, with an online rate of 7.8%.
Our numbers indicate that within a growing category, online sales specifically will continue to increase. Pet food will see a fast growth, given the convenience factor of having heavy bags delivered to your door.
To investigate the idea, we audited Amazon’s pet supplies category to find out how industry participants are managing their ecommerce content. Our investigation covered a wide variety of industry participants beyond pet food. Toys, grooming supplies, and aquarium equipment, among other product types, were also included in the audit.
Competitive Content
We were pleasantly surprised to see the amount of enhanced content on Amazon already. Many of the brands we looked into belong to large companies, so they may have heard about the value of good content from higher up the food chain.
After looking at more than 7,000 Amazon SKUs across 65 companies and 128 brands, here’s how the cookie crumbled.
About half (47%) of the companies have enhanced content on their pages, although most of it is presented in pre-module formats.
While these numbers may not seem impressive, they actually indicate a relatively high level of content investment in this industry. Quality of the content was certainly a mixed bag, but we can say for a fact that there are tangible benefits to enhanced content in any capacity.
The Players
Our audit was quite revealing about the different content strategies from companies of all sizes. The competitive landscape looked a little something like this.
We divided the companies into 4 different ranks based on their revenue.
As you can see, there is a sizable difference between Rank 3 and 4 companies when it comes to having A+ content on Amazon. This could indicate that utilizing enhanced content is a major milestone for growing a small company.
The distribution evens out significantly for ranks 1 and 2. After looking at a few of these players in-depth, we began to piece together what their content strategies may be. Some companies, for instance, have more than 1,000 SKUs but no enhanced content for any of their products. Others only have a handful of products for each brand, but their content is quite impressive.
An example of good A+ content is Nestle’s Purina Pro Plan dog food. Purina utilizes modules to ensure that their products will be well-represented on and off mobile devices.
Where to Start
There are so many different brands of pet food; many more than you would ever be able to fit on a store shelf. The online marketplace offers consumers a chance to browse a seemingly endless list of options when selecting the best choice for their pets. If you’re considering using enhanced content to stand out on Amazon, here’s what we recommend:
- Evaluate your Amazon content. This will help you prioritize your content creation and figure out how much it will cost. Content26 can advise on this.
- Formulate a content creation plan. You’ll need buy-in from both your ecommerce and your brand teams. Once you have it, you’ll need to work as a group to come up with a plan that includes an efficient approval process (legal or otherwise).
- Plan for translation. If you sell internationally or plan to do so in the future, it is important to set yourself up for success. Content that is properly translated and localized ensures consistent branding. And preparing content for translation at the beginning is much less expensive.
- Outsource the content creation. If you plan to create A+ content for more than 10 products on multiple retail sites, you should consider using an outside company. If you plan to do it internally, make sure to set aside plenty of time to put together and manage a dedicated content creation team.
Takeaway
If you’re selling pet supplies, now is the time to set your product apart from its competitors and capture a growing market. Before everyone jumps on the online wagon, smaller brands have a chance to gain a better seat at the table by using superior content marketing.
Content26 is an expert in helping brands make great content.
To find out more about trends in the online pet care category, don’t miss Profitero’s webinar on December 9 with Profitero’s Keith Anderson and Hubba’s Phil Chang: Trends in eCommerce: The Pet Care Category