SEO Strategies for Top of Funnel Awareness

Sponsored Brands Video for Education | Adam Mellott "HARD TAKE ALERT— Sponsored Brand Video at top of search, as an awareness tactic / educational strategy, is WILDLY underutilized in my personal opinion." "There is a massive opportunity for brands and advertisers to do more to educate category browsers on HOW their product is different from competitors and WHY a shopper should ultimately convert. Here's a scenario: 👉 You are scrolling through the plant category... 👉 You're not sure what to look for, so you simply search "wall planters" on Amazon 👉 Immediate information overload - Tons of products to click on, no information on the SERP in terms of plants, hanging glass, shelves BUT WAIT. 🌟 Imagine a video appearing at top of search under "wall planters" query which immediately covers the details - This product is great for fixing climbing plants on a wall 🌟 Wow—all of this information in 30 seconds or less!? Guess what my next step is as a consumer? I'm clicking on the video and checking out this product since it fits my needs and is great for my skill level. I'm also going to check out this brand's Store to see what other offerings they have for beginners, as well as accessories. Why is SBV TOS beneficial as an awareness / NTB customer acquisition tactic? 🏆 This ad serves at Top of Search placement with brand logo, custom headline, informative video, and 3 product offerings - All without having to scroll down. 🏆 Human eye is naturally attracted to motion. The first thing a customer's eyes gravitate to on the SERP is movement. 🏆 Brand marketing. Amazon defines it as "promoting a brand’s products or services in a way that elevates the brand as a whole." Is there a better way to educate Amazon shoppers on-platform about how your brand or product stands out from competitors? It's been said that most people move off of a video if they aren't immediately engaged within the first 3-5 seconds, so the opening frame(s) is imperative in terms of viewability & completion rate. 🏆 This is a great way to invest in awareness across low CPC + awareness / seasonal / event-based or solution-keywords. Pair an educational brand/product TOS SBV campaign with targets that encompass the customers in your "aisle" Have you seen success running a similar strategy? Historically, we have seen a significant lift across brands that pair these types of strategies with seasonality or an event, a deal, a growing trend, etc. How do you think about product/brand education on Amazon? -------------------- One thing to note - If you are focussed on educating a customer, they may not be ready to purchase just YET. You are making them aware of your product, and the value it adds to their life, but they may not have been ready to purchase the moment they saw your ad. This is why it is important to layer in a good Display strategy to make sure you can remarket this customer and stay top of mind.

Last week I had a conversation with two e-commerce founders stuck at $100k/month and no idea how to get over that hurdle. But their problem was simple: The top of their funnel was empty. And it's because they're only running bottom-of-funnel campaigns. Never nurturing the funnel, Instead, they're just asking strangers to buy when they don't even know who they are. So this is the advice I shared: Start actually marketing to your future customers BEFORE you ask for the sale. And then we walked through the structure how I structure clients' funnels the smart, scalable way: 1. TOFU Objective: Video views, traffic, or reach → Use UGC, founder videos, or scroll-stopping hooks to introduce the problem you solve → Prioritize storytelling and education, not sales Think: “This is interesting…” not “I need to buy this now.” 2. MOFU Objective: Engagement, LP views, or lead gen → Retarget video viewers, website traffic, or social engagers → Use reviews, FAQs, “how it works” content, comparison ads Think: “This might actually be for me.” 3. BOFU Objective: Conversions / Value → Retarget high-intent traffic: carts, PDPs, email/SMS → Lean on urgency or exclusivity, not just discounts Think: “I trust this brand. Let’s go.” So I challenge anyone in a similar position, struggling with low new customer numbers: Go into your Meta Ads Manager today. If you’re only running conversion campaigns… Add 1 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘛𝘖𝘍 𝘰𝘳 𝘔𝘖𝘍 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘨𝘯 this week. Start building trust before you ask for the sale.

Attending the session with Jeffrey Cohen Destaney Wishon and Gabi Viljoen, MBA 1. Awareness campaigns are critically important to brand building. The best place I've found to test these is sending traffic to the Storefront. This traffic converts poorly compared to SP, so it's important not to negatively impact the conversion rates on your detail pages. 2. Gabi mentioned everyone getting out their phones and looking at how each of them were seeing the listings and ads. Every device performs differently! 3. As Destaney said, most brands are solid on the fundamentals now. They have sponsored products, bid management, manual targeting down. But they often don't have mid or upper funnel and often aren't thinking about ways to attract ideal customers even if they're not ready to buy yet. 4. Having a clear timeline is so critical! It took me the better part of a year of consistent work to get Luminara's Storefront and Sponsored Brand awareness campaigns dialed in, achieving 5-7% higher conversion rates on average than the detail pages. It takes a lot longer to get a Storefront dialed in, because it's more like a website. We're now using streaming TV ads with a QR code that goes straight to the store, and having a 3 month ramp plan before making any changes. You can't be successful playing "squirrel" and losing track of the goal. 5. Communication with your agency is key. Destaney and Gabi were aligned on the business goals, so they could work over time to get it right, rather than having unrealistic expectations of super speedy results. 6. Building the Customer Journey pathway on Amazon is still more art than science. A lot of the metrics are secondary metrics - like checking if there are more brand searches organically, or higher purchase value per customer on the Store. 7. Sponsored Brands video is fantastic. For testing, I prefer to use the Storefront target. It shows up at the top of search, and if you're wrong about your message or targeting, you're flooding your Storefront with traffic, not your detail page. The implementation will be different for every brand, but at a high level, driving mid-funnel growth is a combination of Storefront, Premium A+, SB ads, and remarketing using display campaigns. No one of these drives the results alone, unlike Sponsored Products. It can be harder to set up, but when it is, it can be worth an attributed 40 to 60% of your sales on Amazon. It could be worth even more, but awareness campaigns are certainly harder to track than a simple ROAS metric. #amazonaccelerate