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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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
