Solon Security were our first client and to date our biggest success in terms of growth.
They subscribe to our "hands off subscription" package where we manage everything except stock and stock management.
WHO ARE SOLON SECURITY
Owned by director and CEO John Fearnall Solon Security are the UK’s leading supplier of quality crime prevention and community safety products.
Their ethos of working in partnership with their customers to develop and deliver market-leading solutions is as strong now as it was at their formation in 1995.
Over this period they are proud to have developed a reputation as industry leaders in quality. Solon is the only company in our marketplace to be ISO 9001:2015 Quality Assurance certified. They are also proud to be a Secured by Design member company, with the widest range of Police Preferred Specification products on the market.
As well as being wholesalers to many global brands they also own three Amazon-specific brands, Defender, Solon Security, Hylite and Vecta. Within these brands, they cover a host of categories including personal safety, home security, lighting and heating.
Following our first meeting, we understood the brief. To take the hassle of managing Amazon away from their inexperienced team and get their Amazon channel profitable as soon as possible so they can get back to what they do best looking after wholesale customers and finding/developing new products to bring to market.
Direct B2C was a new thing for SOLON.
They had the foresight to know that they needed to be on Amazon but didn't have anyone in-house with the essential Amazon skills to drive it forward.
WHAT ARE THEIR ISSUES
Solon Security is a household name and what I would consider a legacy brand, we knew from the outset we could add some serious value to this account.
Many households would already be aware of their brands and would know, like and trust them already.
We needed to fully optimise their product listing pages and needed to create the right message for the right customer and serve the ads at the right time.
Of course we knew we would be going up against some of the biggest names in the world like Yale, Masterlock, Maglite within the security category. We knew this was going to be a challenge, but at Consultancy Worx HQ we love a challenge.
Their competition are global companies with very deep pockets and a huge network of sellers across the world.
Amazon is known best for affordable products at amazing prices, so we needed to price our products accordingly and SOLON was transparent with their costs and what margins they needed. We worked collaboratively to come ups with a pricing structure that works for their products.
Solon Security also had a HUGE catalogue listed within seller central at the time we began to work with them, many SKUs simply were not moving and costing them to leave stock unsold in the FBA warehouses.
The DIY and household categories are notorious for attracting new sellers and then just as quickly as they appear they're gone in a matter of weeks. We consider this category definitely one of the most competitive categories outside of health supplements. Also within this category, there are many Chinese, extremely low-priced sellers, so we knew it was going to be tough and take at least a couple of months for our changes to propagate.
The build quality of Solons products are second to none as the direct John Fearnall is a stickler for build quality and value for money. At this point in their journey is where we needed to acquire as many product reviews from there customers sales as possible because we know that they need to social proof and Amazon also need to be confident that they are promoting the right product to their customers.
Buying traffic initially was very expensive as I'm sure you can imagine the larger competitor brands have the categories locked down, commanding any new sellers to pay a premium to list their products alongside theirs. However, later on in the game we can use this to our advantage.
HOW WE FIXED IT
Working closely with John & his team, we had to firstly get their catalogue under control and easier to manage from a cash flow and management perspective. We liquidated out all the products that were not selling and that increased cashflow from aging stock and reduce FBA storage fees.
We needed to get Solon and their associated brands enroled within the 'Brand Registry' program.
Solons Security is the owner of several trademarks, and with this we knew exactly what to do. We have several in-house SOPs that we could immediately action when taking on new clients. Sometimes these processes can take time to approve from Amazon's side so we knew we had to submit Solons trademarks as soon as possible.
We contacted the brand registry team, submitted the trademarks and quickly gained access to the advantages of being part of the brand registry team;
1) A+ content
2) PPC brand targeting
3) Video targeting ads
4) Amazon experiments + more
5) Retargeting campaigns
6) Brand data
7) Experiments
The security industry from our perspective appeared to look a little antiquated and their competitor's images and listings also looked a bit dated and boring.
" It seemed to us that the competition had gotten a little complacent which obviously for us meant a great opportunity. "
Firstly we began creating eye-catching 'hero images' of the products and their packaging something that we noticed no one else was doing, all the other listings just had the product on a white background. We knew this new 'style' would stand out in this crowded market. This technique set up the brand to stick out from the noise of the boring cheap Chinese products and made Solon and their sister brands stand out proudly from some of the larger household names that we have all grown up with.
We showcased details about the company and that they are proud to British and supply our own Police with safety equipment in the bullet points, we wrote about how long Solon Security has been trading for all to build further trust. For some products, we used customer quotes in our bullet points and also in the sales copy.
We took a deep dive into the specifics of the products to tell our customers that we knew exactly what they wanted, we noticed that no one in the industry at the time was doing this which gave us a HUGE advantage.
Great copy, great images, a brand story, and A+ content was awesome but we also suggested that the team at Solon begin to make some Amazon-specific videos. We knew that we could then add these product videos/how-to videos and lifestyle videos to the product display pages and also use them as marketing assets for their video ads.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
At Consultancy Worx we are blessed to have some of what we believe to be the smartest minds in the Amazon advertising space. They began their keyword research by looking at competitors and using our in-house software to find the correct keywords that we know would convert. We matched up this keyword data with the data on the front-end product display page listings we had built and then began to build out the campaigns using both positive and negative targeting to curtail any wasted ad spend or vampire keywords.
We were expecting a huge increase of traffic brought around by Amazon advertising which would mean we were getting more eyes on Solon's catalogue and hopefully many more sales which would hopefully fall in line with their profitability model.
We built a robust set of sponsored products keyword targeting campaigns using the different match types and various calculated bid ranges, we set-up product targeting campaigns using competitor ASINs and we also leveraged automatic campaigns as well as sponsored brands and sponsored videos.
We continue to build new campaigns each month and are always working towards scaling our ad spending to increase revenue.
THE RESULTS
The benefit for us, working with an already established brand was that the trust was already there!
Solon's products within their category were already 'doing ok' and now with their relaunch, it was like we added fuel to the fire.
Our success strategy which was discussed at length on our initial call was beginning to take shape. We felt like we hit a home-run straight out of the gate. We could see that with the new-look listings we were also achieving lots of NTB sales which was also great for us to see.
Over the coming months, sales were going from strength to strength.
Once the ACOS was at a level where SOLON was comfortable we could once again "open the taps" and give Amazon advertising to as much ad spend as they wanted.
This triggered what Amazon call the 'flywheel' effect, more sales, more positive reviews leading to more sales!
We were well and truly in the flywheel and with this new easier-to-manage catalogue stock flow to amazon's FBA warehouse was seamless and their account went from strength to strength. In the last three years, we have tripled their revenue and there seems like no slowing down.
Predictably "Best Seller" and "Amazon Choice" badges started to appear all over their catalogue of products,
The winning product display pages aided with new-to-brand sales were helping to bring the average cost per click down significantly. This is caused by the relevancy score from the advertising.
This meant the ACOS% was decreasing and profitability starting to increase.
Month on month we continue to gain market share and are well on target to achieve £3m+ in revenue just on the Amazon.co.uk platform.
The plan is to continue to work together for the foreseeable and we look forwards to many more new product launches. We are beginning to make plans for this and can't wait for the next chapter in the Solons book of Amazon's success.
We have loved every day working with John and his team and will work towards achieving even more in the future of Solon Security and its associated brands.
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