Waar het fysiek in de winkels liggen voor merkhouders voorheen vooral belangrijk was bij het verwerven van bekendheid in het buitenland, heeft de opkomst van marketplaces en influencers het speelveld veranderd. Hoe kunnen marketeers hiervan profiteren? Merken en marketplaces winnen het steeds vaker van retailers en met influencers bereik je rechtstreeks de Duitse consument. Vooral de marktplaats Amazon is in Duitsland dominant. Volgens het onderzoek ‘Online Monitor 2018‘ van Handelsverbandes Deutschland (HDE) wordt 46 procent van de Duitse e-commerce inmiddels door Amazon gerealiseerd. Dat zien merkfabrikanten ook en ze beseffen dat ze hier iets mee moeten. Ze willen echter niet concurreren met de Duitse wederverkopers en de eigen webshop. Een kanaalconflict moet worden voorkomen. Wat is de beste manier om alle kanalen te combineren ten gunste van je merk?
Amazon offers brands exclusive tools
Fast-growing Amazon has every interest in having as many suppliers as possible offer their products on the platform. The familiar flywheel: more supply attracts more consumers. To entice brand owners themselves to sell their products directly to consumers via Amazon, the company is making available additional marketing tools especially for brands, such as the Storefront (your own shop-in-shop) and Sponsored Brands (advertisements for your Storefront). Only companies with Amazon Brand Registry can take advantage of these. The cost of advertising is in addition to the commission you have to remit anyway for direct sales through Amazon. This squeezes the margin. As a result, marketers need data and more control over the actual profitability of campaigns. Specialized tools like ProfitWiser respond to this need. Using such a tool helps marketers get a grip on Amazon marketing.
The German web shop as a driver of profits
Despite Amazon's growth, November 2017 research by HighText Verlag shows that for 73 percent of multichannel sellers, the Web shop is still the most profitable channel compared to sales through marketplaces and offline stores. This is not surprising, as you quickly shed 15 to 50 percent of your margins through retailers and marketplaces, while in practice the marketing budget of web shops is limited to 10 percent of direct sales.
If a Dutch brand wants to profit from a German webshop, there is plenty of work to be done. Not only must everything be legally, payment and logistically geared to Germany, but the entire search marketing (SEO and SEA) and content must also be optimized for the German market. You can't do this without German-speaking marketing specialists.
Brand awareness
Amazon has become a product search engine in Germany just like Google Shopping. Whether you sell through Amazon or through the online store, it's all about search volume and being found. For brand owners, branded keywords are often a much cheaper alternative than broad keywords. If you want to be findable without any branding, marketing becomes a very expensive exercise. The company FatBoy, winner of the 2018 CrossBorder Award for best international marketing case, has a lot of experience with this with its famous beanbag. Through good marketing, in which influencers have played an important role, the company has succeeded in making FatBoy a synonym for the beanbag. The company now benefits from the high search volume on the keyword FatBoy and that with lower costs per click. FatBoy is hardly dependent on the broader keyword 'Sitzsack' in Germany. This is true on both Google and Amazon.
Influencers offer a solution
Brand awareness has many other benefits. Ads convert better and familiarity has pricing power; for a well-known brand you can charge a premium price. Campaigns with nationwide reach with our eastern neighbors cost a multiple of campaigns here in the Netherlands. Influencer marketing offers a solution. PwC's 2018 study "Zwischen Entertainer und Werber: Wie Influencer unser Kaufverhalten beeinflussen" shows that every third product purchase is determined by influencers.
In Germany, people are particularly interested in influencers who themselves have knowledge of certain products and come across as authentic in the process. So with the right influencers, you can address specific target groups in a very targeted way and you are flexible in the destination of online traffic. You decide where the sale should take place: in the webshop or on Amazon.
Vingino: a successful example
Vingino is a great example of a Dutch brand responding well to the changing multichannel landscape in its crossborder strategy. The brand has made choices, and with success. Through the retail channel, the collections of this cool children's and teen fashion brand are now on many German shelves. These are mostly self-selected stores that fit the brand's image well. Vingino decided not to sell through Amazon itself, which is left to resellers. It does sell through Zalando, the online leader in fashion. Zalando recently opened its doors to brands as a marketplace.
Since last year, Vingino has been successfully building further brand awareness in Germany in cooperation with Dexport, specialist for marketing in Germany. Because of this growth in brand awareness, German consumers are coming directly to the webshop and no advertising budget needs to be spent for regular customers. This multichannel strategy has now given the brand a major boost; the company is growing like crazy in Germany.
Shift your focus
Whether or not to sell through Amazon ultimately remains a strategic choice. Marketplaces and influencers will become more important anyway to conquer the German market. A German webshop is still the channel where you have to get your profits from. Whatever strategy you choose, it's all about brand awareness. This is essential for all channels.
Famous Dutch brands that are already successfully putting their name on the map internationally will be put in the spotlight during the CrossBorder Event. The very best international marketing campaign will be awarded the CrossBorder Award. Do you have a good international marketing case? Then submit it before July 1 for the CrossBorder Awardand be there at the event on October 3.
