Sensata manufactures products for several industries. For the year ended Dec. 31, 2021, Sensata reported a 25.5% year-over-year revenue increase to $3.82 billion.

But many of its automotive aftermarket channel partners have been slow to foster sales with effective online product displays — a problem Sensata is now fixing with a nearly real-time view of how its channel partners’ display its product images and descriptions.

Checking Amazon and Walmart

Sensata’s manufacturing unit for tire pressure monitoring sensors, Schrader TPMS Solutions, makes hundreds of sensor SKUs to match the specifications of different tire brands, models and sizes. To ensure that repair-shop end customers can find the SKU they need, Sensata typically forwards channel partners several product images, each showing a different angle, for each SKU.

But after manually checking channel partners’ websites, or their product listings on Amazon, Walmart or other marketplaces, Sensata often finds only one product — or one or more images that are not Sensata’s and not accurate or helpful to buyers.

“If you want to stay in step with ecommerce, you need five images,” Joe Thomas, Sensata’s global aftermarket catalogue manager, says he tells merchants.

Sensata is not alone in finding products that automotive aftermarket merchants displayed online poorly. A recent Content Status study found that 74% of merchants’ online product content pages lacked basic content requirements. For example, the study found that 30% of product displays did not mention the brand name in the title, and 64% failed to include the brand name in the product description. Content Status is a web content auditing and management technology provider.

An automated content-auditing system

Sensata struggled with ensuring that content on its branded products was displayed accurately, effectively and consistently throughout its sales channels, Thomas says.

“We have consistent content in our system, but it doesn’t necessarily flow out to trading partners,” he says.

It’s become routine for suppliers to check how merchants are displaying their branded product content. But many suppliers have teams manually scraping information from merchants’ websites. They even build online tools to do that automatically, Thomas says.

Sensata decided to go with an automated system from Content Status for auditing its branded content displayed by merchants and receiving email alerts. The system enables Sensata to check the accuracy and thoroughness of merchants’ content displays. It also checks how long it takes merchants to load fresh content.

“If we push new images out, we can now see how long it takes merchants to load those images,” Thomas says.

Moreover, Sensata can now audit thousands of product pages within a fraction of the time its former manual system required. That helps cut to a couple hours what used to take about two weeks, Thomas says.

Good content bumps up sales

More important, Sensata can also show that freshly loaded content, if done properly, leads to sales increases.

“Once we know content is live, we watch sales trends,” Thomas says. “We know from subsets of data that whoever loads content fast sees a bump in sales.”

Sensata then has data to encourage merchants slow to load content to pick up the pace, he adds.

But some merchants are quicker to change than others, Thomas says. He attributes that partly to “traditional” merchants. Many of them have a history of selling only over a parts store counter or from a vendor truck making the rounds to repair shops.

“This industry is very slow to adapt to change,” he says.

The recent Content Status survey, he noted, may have served as a “gut check” for some merchants. The study noted that, overall, Amazon and Walmart were most effective at displaying online content. That might be expected, since they are leaders in  ecommerce.

But the study also noted that even the two leaders left room for improvement in product content. That provides wiggle room for others to catch up.

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And even if it is, how do you catch up with all the discounts and special offers while keeping the margins and profits intact?

Nothing but hard cold data can address these questions. So Semrush came together with its youngest brother Sellzone to gather all their intel and explore Amazon’s pricing patterns.

Amazon is the world’s biggest ecommerce company, so the prices set on the marketplace often serve as the golden standard for the entire ecommerce industry.

That’s why any retailer—large and small—will always have a lesson or two to learn from the sales behavior on Amazon.

Key Amazon pricing patterns you need to know about

This post unwraps some of the key highlights from Semrush’s comprehensive Amazon Pricing Study. But if you want to get more details along with a more granular look at the pricing strategies on Amazon, give the full study a read.

Are higher-priced products a big no?

Intuition will always dictate that lower-priced items will always sell better unless you’ve managed to build an entire brand behind the product.

That’s often true, but our study showed more counter-intuitive findings.

Having analyzed Amazon’s 700 most popular products, we pinpointed that the average product price stands at $142,74. And this is not your typical AliExpress price tag.

The higher average price partially comes from an abundance of tech/digital goods within the most popular products list. But this only means that you shouldn’t be afraid to sell products on the higher end of the pricing spectrum.

 In fact, we spotted some exceptionally high-priced items on the most popular product list, with some price tags exceeding tens of thousands of dollars:

The most expensive items across Amazon’s product listings (within 700 most popular Amazon products)

Are there good or bad sales days?

Since our pricing analysis spanned a few months, we could pinpoint some daily and hourly pricing patterns that pointed to repetitive price peaks and lows.

Post-New Year days are typically the most “expensive” ones. So, if you’re running any promotions for your products, consider that January 1 – January 10 prices are the highest.

And encouraging evening sales is even better as the prices tend to peak between 5 pm and 2 am.

What about the pricing during the biggest discount seasons?

You may think that post-holiday pricing looks more appealing to sellers only because January comes after some of the hottest discount seasons, and that’s when prices drop significantly.

But that’s not exactly what we saw.

As a consumer, you may look at our findings and think “all these discount seasons are nothing but a big marketing trick”, but as a seller, you’ll interpret our discoveries differently.

We found that the biggest discount periods—namely, Black Friday and Christmas—don’t feature notable price decreases.

During the Black Friday period, the average product price only drops by an insignificant 4% margin. During Christmas, the prices even go up by that very same 4%.

You can blame it on the supply-demand market structure—since the demand for products spikes, the higher prices follow—or on the smart sellers that pump up the prices just before the discounts begin, but numbers don’t lie.

In fact, we saw a lot of cases when the product’s original price was artificially increased just to showcase a more impressive discount, while our data showed that the product never came with the quoted price during the entire analyzed period.

So, if you’re afraid of losing profit during the hottest sales seasons, it doesn’t have to be the case because other sellers manage to capitalize on the demand spike rather than lose their margins.

What can trigger your sales?

On top of pricing, a few other drivers help the customer make the final purchasing decision and choose in your favor.

We looked at the most popular Amazon deals and labels that indirectly point to the additional buying triggers.

If you think it’s the larger discount percentage or the Best-Seller label that seals the deal, you’ll be wrong.

The overwhelming majority of the most popular and in-demand products feature just the Prime label.

This implies that what consumers value the most is fast and free delivery.

And it’s not just true for Amazon shoppers. The marketplace just sets the bar for customers’ expectations, which means that whatever ecommerce platform you’re on, you must meet these new expectations.

About Semrush and Sellzone

Semrush is a comprehensive platform for all things online visibility and content management. It is power-packed with 50+ tools that cover your entire digital presence: SEO, online advertising, social media, market analysis, competitive research, content marketing, and even agency management.

Sellzone, brought to you by the Semrush team, is a toolkit for managing your Amazon business—from product research, Amazon SEO, and split testing to listing protection, growth hacking, and Amazon PPC automation.

All the Amazon pricing data came from Sellzone while Semrush’s data teams have put their brains to create a data analysis model that helped to process and analyze all this intel to bring the study to life.

Over to you

As you can see, ecommerce pricing strategies aren’t always as straightforward as you’d expect. Previously, we’d say that only experience and a journey of trial and error can guide you towards higher profits and wider margins.

But with more big data on our hands, we can actually use it to track certain pricing patterns, understand other sellers’ hits and misses, and learn from their tactics and the general market’s trends.

This post only revealed the key highlights of our discoveries. If you are a seller and occupy a certain market niche, make sure to dive into the full Amazon Pricing Study to unwrap category- and product-specific pricing patterns we haven’t brought up here.

The post [Sponsored content] Are your ecommerce pricing strategies in line with the key market patterns? appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Ken Stout

Content marketing was once a buzzword. Today, it is table stakes for B2B companies—and it’s more data-driven than ever.

In a recent DemandGen report, B2B buyers indicated they are spending more time researching purchases (77%) and expecting more personalized attention from providers based on their specific needs (76%). In the same report, B2B buyers outlined how crucial relevant content was in their decision-making process. Respondents indicated content relevancy affected their decision-making, with 76% saying the winning vendor’s content had a significant impact on their buying decision.

Likewise, 70% of buyers ranked “relevant content that speaks directly to our company” as “very important” in the survey, and 96% of B2B professionals considered messaging that “spoke directly to our industry needs” to be important.

B2B marketers know that they need an always-on content machine to deliver leads consistently. To craft relevant pieces with the reader in mind, organizations can use audience data to personalize content based on:

• Where they are in the buying cycle
• Who they are (job title, role, level)
• Their business needs
• Their personal needs, interests, and values

B2B marketers can also use campaign and behavioral data (e.g., email opens and clicks, display ad conversions, browsing history, etc.) and third-party data (e.g., intent) to guide content creation and choose the right content types, channels, timing, and frequency for their outreach.

Take Nationwide Insurance, for example. The company offers a resource center for businesses that are looking into insurance and insurance-related topics. The resource center guides businesses across various sizes and industries, from mom-and-pop shops to manufacturers and agribusinesses. The content topics, which are unique and relevant to the company and stakeholders, answer questions about insurance products and provide helpful safety tips and business advice. Nationwide runs targeted social media and display ads to promote their resources to each audience segment to draw in new leads.

Targeting  content to the right person and buying group

Once you have top-notch content, you need to be able to get it in front of the right people. Effective B2B marketers target leads in many ways—by their role in the buyer’s journey and marketing funnel, by their job title, by their industry, by their behaviors, or by a combination of these factors. Here are some of the top methods B2B marketers use to reach their audiences:

Organic outreach: A 2020 report from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found that B2B marketers are actively using unpaid methods for distributing their content. Social media was the top earned media (91%), followed closely by brand websites (89%) and email (87%). Email newsletters were identified as the top approach for nurturing leads (31%).

Paid programs: According to the report from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 84% of B2B marketers use paid distribution channels for content marketing purposes. Marketers can use paid search, display, and social media ads to target business decision-makers across the web and within social media channels’ walled gardens. You can also use these platforms to target new prospects, retarget website visitors who have not converted, or upsell new products to customers who are already in your database.

Native advertising and branded content: With ad-blocking technology and the phase-out of third-party cookies, more B2B companies are using native advertising and branded content to get their expertise in front of potential customers. By carefully selecting publications that are a natural fit for your target audience, you can deliver native ads (branded content that looks like editorial content) that can help increase brand awareness and lead generation.

For example, IBM created a multi-part native advertising campaign in The Atlantic to reach a specific target audience: executives in the athletics industry. The series included interactive infographics and research that illustrated how sports teams are using technology to improve performance both on and off the field, as well as real-world examples outlining how IBM has helped companies in the athletics industry improve performance. Created to blend into The Atlantic’s tone and content, this highly targeted campaign offered unique and relevant information to decision-makers in one of IBM’s key segments.

A steady stream of content is not only essential to bring in net new leads; it’s also an integral part of nurturing existing ones and guiding them further along the funnel. B2B marketers can target and engage current customers to help lower attrition, particularly in industries with high turnover rates (e.g., technology companies with a subscriber-based service model).

Your content can position your company as an expert in your field and serve to educate prospects and customers about the benefits of your products and services. Designing content around who you are ultimately targeting ensures you have relevant messaging for multiple buyers and accounts—and that you’re serving the needs of your prospects and customers along with those of your business.

Ken Stout is a senior vice president at Data Axle, a marketing and data services agency.

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Lori Wizdo, principal analyst, Forrester Research

But in today’s constantly evolving B2B ecommerce environment, customers’ demands for more contextually relevant shopping experiences is rapidly growing. And B2B marketers should address this challenge by leveraging new data and analytics tools and strategies to fine-tune those segmented audiences into microsegments, Forrester Research Inc. says in a new report, “Microsegmentation Yields Contextual Customer Experiences That Convert,” by Lori Wizdo, a Forrester vice president and principal analyst for B2B marketing.

Letting go of outdated segmentation

Traditional segmentation has lost its mojo, the Forrester report says, because many B2B marketers are still holding onto a legacy mindset of what it calls static macrosegmentation. Macrosegments cast a wide net—placing audiences into large demographic groups such as company size, industry, geography and the end market served.

Advancements in data and analytics technologies means B2B companies know more about their customers than ever before. Where traditional demographic macrosegmentation was once a cutting-edge marketing strategy—identifying such customer demographics as company size, industry, and geographic location—it still had the potential to be vague. But Forrester says new data and analytics capabilities now allow B2B marketers to break these demographics down further into microsegments—covering, in addition to demographics, such criteria as customer buying behavior, record of sales growth, price sensitivity and aspirations—which allows sellers to reach even more targeted audiences.

Using data and analytics technologies, Forrester says marketers can develop various types of microsegments. A “context” microsegment, for example, categorizes an audience based on factors such as the products they own or their maturity level. A “behavior” microsegment identifies customers by the content they consume, their engagement level or where they are in the buying process. And a “choice criteria” microsegment groups together those customers who might be sensitive about price, delivery time or product quality.

While traditional macrosegmentation helps B2B sellers find customers, Wizdo says that microsegmentation helps marketers build content so B2B buyers can more easily find the most appropriate B2B sellers. “68% of buyers say it is important that vendors provide relevant content at each stage of their buying journey without having to rely on sales reps to deliver it,” she writes, adding: “By targeting the drivers of customers’ actions, you can build trust through more empathetic, relevant content and accelerate the buyer’s journey.”

A microsegmentation strategy delivers results

Microsegmentation, which allows B2B marketers to collect, analyze and manage data to segment audiences based on a wide variety of factors, provides multiple benefits to B2B businesses, the report says.

B2B marketers have reported that inbound marketing efforts are falling short on delivering enough targeted traffic and leads, the report says. That places outbound marketing—such as email and advertising—at center stage with regard to generating new, high-quality audiences. The most successful outbound marketing campaigns rely heavily on research, a fact that Forrester says underscores the likely success of a microsegmention strategy. Microsegmenting those audiences means the audiences targeted will most likely benefit from those products or services—which will improve the performance of those outbound marketing campaigns.

The Forrester report also points out that microsegmentation will boost a B2B company’s return on its content marketing and inbound strategies by using customer information to “customize experiences that persuade and influence specific clusters of customers.”

Also, the report says that microsegmentation will help B2B companies build a high-yield marketing portfolio. To maximize their return on investment, B2B companies need to be able to get the products in their portfolio in front of the specific customers that need specific products. Microsegmenting is the strategic process that identifies those high-potential audiences for those specific products.

Ultimately, the report says microsegmentation benefits both the B2B customer and the B2B seller because it results in more relevant shopping experiences for the buyer and increased conversions for the seller.

Cate Flahardy is a Chicago-based freelance journalist covering business and technology.

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The news has left many online retailers—many of which are already struggling to meet delivery expectations and contain shipping costs—wondering what that means for their future.

One reaction may be to rethink their approach, says Steve Congro, director of omnichannel fulfillment technology at Saddle Creek Logistics Services. “A huge mistake retailers make is trying to compete head-to-head with Amazon and its offer of free one- or two-day shipping, but that’s just not economical for the average retailer,” he says.

Instead, retailers should focus on implementing omnichannel fulfillment and delivery strategies that allow them to become more reliable to their customers. “Even if your strategy isn’t one-day or two-day delivery, you need to ensure you can deliver consistently at a manageable cost while keeping customers happy,” he says. “It’s important to weigh the cost of expedited services against consumer demand.”

Keeping products near consumers is one way retailers can keep costs down, Congro says. “If you can utilize inventory that you already have located close to your customer base, that will not only speed up delivery to your customer, but also save on shipping costs,” he says.

That’s where recent advances in order and inventory management technology can help retailers. The systems that work best add a layer of intelligence that enables them to handle multiple fulfillment locations, receive orders from multiple sources and manage back orders.

“Technologies that were once considered luxuries are now becoming much more commonplace,” Congro says. “Omnichannel fulfillment has gone from being a concept you’d hear about from time to time at a trade show to something that retailers know they must take advantage of to stay competitive.”

Some logistics companies offer order management and shipping rate shopping services that help online retailers take advantage of these advanced technologies. “Saddle Creek, for example, can help retailers manage fulfillment and delivery for a fraction of the cost of pursuing on their own,” he says. “Our in-house expertise allows us to work with clients on industry best practices and maximize technologies in a mutually beneficial manner.”

In the midst of rapid growth, The Honest Kitchen, a pet supplies online retailer that sells through about 5,000 independent pet stores as well as ecommerce outlets, needed to rethink its logistics network. The company implemented Saddle Creek’s OMS, among other systems, to build an automated system that supports its omnichannel environment. These tools allow The Honest Kitchen to execute faster shipments by utilizing Saddle Creek’s distribution centers in Joliet, Illinois, and San Diego.

“Saddle Creek’s systems decrease transit times to our customers, which is really important when you’re trying to compete with the likes of other online retailers that are providing two-day shipping or less,” says Jake Fuller, vice president of operations at The Honest Kitchen.

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