This has marked the advent of digital marketing, leading to exponential growth in the number of businesses that can afford to invest in advertising. According to sources, small and medium-sized businesses are putting their trust in both traditional and digital channels for growth, says Kapil Sharma, director, growth customer sales, Amazon Ads India.
Sharma was speaking about the release of a recent study by Amazon Ads on SMB advertising—which surveyed around 4,138 decision-makers across geographies like the US, UK, and India. The research aimed at understanding SMB attitudes towards online and traditional advertising.
According to a study, key findings indicate that more and more SMBs advertise for growth at home and abroad. In the context of this growth, 85% of SMB advertisers deploy advertising for business growth and expansion in reaching new customers, while 69% of them grow beyond home markets.
Secondly, a major finding in the study reveals that 56% of SMBs increased their advertising budgets on the back of successful acquisition of customers from campaigns and new product launches. Really, that appears to be the green light with a move toward more aggressive advertising approaches.
Challenges and opportunities
Nevertheless, concerns over cost and ad measurement have kept some SMBs from advertising on the site, says Sharma. “About 28 percent of SMBs have an issue with budgeting, and 31 percent have problems tracking and optimizing campaign effectiveness. Another 36 percent do not know how to create a compelling ad campaign that reaches the target audience.”.
He further goes on to mention that Amazon Ads is solving these very challenges by developing solutions that help SMBs reach the right audience and better achieve their advertising goals.
“We’re customer-obsessed as a platform, and we are trying to work toward mitigating these challenges by building their needs into our solutions. For the customer, Amazon has introduced self-service ad solutions that make the ad solution more accessible and reduce the cost of entry. We’re also developing solutions for campaign optimization and reaching the right audiences.”
“At the same time, we understand that some SMBs need to be educated on how to use these advertising solutions. We are coming up with free learning courses and certifications that they can avail. Similarly, on-demand webinars and events are conducted with a view to educating the SMBs about the power of advertising, he adds.”.
Pallavi Utagi, founder and CEO of Superbottoms – a baby diaper alternative brand that’s using Amazon ads to create a new category, and it’s giving them immense support with product discovery and helping reach out to the relevant consumers.
She says they advertise not only on Amazon platforms but on other places as well. “Amazon ads tool I find is very sophisticated in helping us really figure out what keywords is the customer looking for. The platform keeps getting better day by day. I just feel that, compared to the other platforms, Amazon ads is a much more targeted platform and therefore the return on ad investment is much higher”, she adds.
Other findings of the report
A recent study by Amazon Ads found 72% of SMBs in India are currently investing in advertising, while 85% of them mentioned ad investment has helped them successfully acquire new customers.
Salient features of Amazon Ads’ study on SMB advertising
Salient features of Amazon Ads’ study on SMB advertising
Additionally, over two-thirds of Indian SMBs—69 percent—also reported success in using advertising to grow their business internationally. On the other hand, 28 percent of the Indian SMBs are not investing in ads at all. The reason is due to high cost and lack of return for their past investments.
More than half of the Indian SMBs have increased the budget allocated to advertising over the past year, while 22% have maintained their budget year-on-year. The leading drivers of this increase included to raise awareness of new products or services, cited by 42 percent, and improve brand awareness, stated by 50 percent. Ahead in the next 12 months, more than a third of them plan to spend on streaming TV advertising.
How SMBs areManaging a World without Cookies
Sharma further goes on to highlight how Amazon Ads is now focused on building upto AI and machine learning-based models in readiness for a cookie-less world. For instance, their new solution for ‘Ad Relevance’, launched at Cannes Lions, deploys billions of shopping and streaming signals to render relevant ads in real-time and improve the overall customer experience.
He also said that it was not only programmatic solutions they provided, but they also do video-based solutions. They have mini-TV ads that an advertiser can use to reach relevant audiences, sponsor brand videos, and sponsor display videos, through which SMBs could create relevant content to help audiences understand the brands effectively.
