Four Easy Defense Tweaks Hoover Can Make To Win #1 in The Powerdash's Subcategory

Browsing exploding topics today I noticed a strange term showing 3500% growth in the last 5 years. Hoover's “Powerdash”?was on page #1 of the site's "emerging trends". See the screenshot below.

Turns out, Powerdash is an upholstery cleaner positioned to sell to pet owners with limited storage space.

The product is #2 in its category on Amazon with a moat of 70K+ reviews.

This isn’t surprising - months ago Incrementum was asked to run a comprehensive market analysis for one well-established pet product brand on Amazon, and this was the trend that led our team to make strong recommendations in favor of the acquisition in question.?

My interest evolved into curiosity around Hoover’s overall marketing strategy on Amazon’s platform - it’s surprising to see a #2 product with a larger review moat than the #1 listing especially when the #2 product sits at a lower price point.

Take a look at the brand revenue share below:?

It’s no surprise that Bissell owns a majority share of the market with 19 ASINs supporting their share of the pie, but that doesn't explain why Hoover's listing is struggling to win a #1 best seller badge. With the opportunity facing this product right now, here are four tweaks I would make that I believe will drive a big impact on the brand’s Amazon market capture.?

1??Launch One Storefront Spotlight Ad With a Branded Tagline

When searching for Hoover by name, the brand has curated the experience somewhat by featuring one traditional headline ad including their top three carpet cleaners and a standard headline with a call to action “shop hoover carpet cleaners”?

This is better than nothing, but here’s what the headline could look like:?

Using a storefront spotlight encourages true brand awareness at this touchpoint in the customer’s shopping journey. With the number of new products that Hoover is trying to generate awareness around, this ad unit is one major missed opportunity for the brand.??

2??Launch Defense campaigns targeting exact & phrase match

Take a look at the sponsored space on Hoover’s own Powerdash product page:

Not a single SD or SP product target ad unit is being used to protect this listing from bouncy customers. The comparison charts in Hoover’s A+ module are excellent, but this is not enough to prevent this product from forfeiting sales to Bissell.?

Consider how the typical customer navigates an Amazon listing. The heatmap shown below was generated through a study conducted by LookTracker Research Laboratory. LookTracker conducts highly accurate eye tracking focus group studies on web pages to produce heat map reports and was paid to produce the Amazon heatmap you see below. While this only shows the analysis for a book listing, the pattern is still significant. Notice how much attention was directed to each ad placement (highlighted in Red) on this page:?

Notice how much time was spent on the very first Sponsored Display ad from this page. This emphasizes the importance of brand protection. A customer preparing to spend $100+ on a vacuum will take their time in the consideration phase of this purchase - Hoover should prevent bouncy consideration behavior by protecting this valuable ad space on brand listings.?

3??Use More Than 47% of Allotted Characters in Titles?

Organic visibility is one of the most important strategic advantages a brand can develop over time. Currently, Hoover’s Powerdash listing is only using 71 characters of the allotted 150 in the product title. Using this space to include high visibility phrases like “carpet cleaner” and “easy to clean” would be like Hoover placing their product on 10-20 additional shelves in a hardware store. FREE. Literally, free organic visibility is being left on the table by this small oversight.?

4??Talk About How Easy It Is to Clean the Machine

Finally, I ran a quick review analysis on the Powerdash listing and found one potentially significant conversion factor that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the brand’s feature-points or secondary images. Customers who left a review mentioned that this product was “easy to clean” (that is, disassemble & clean after use) over 200 times.?

Hoover is doing an excellent job with the current benefit/feature lifestyle images used in secondary images, but the data from Helium10 shows how important this experience is to the customer. Customers considering this product might race to the “buy now” button if Hoover made this feature more prevelant in the content on Powerdash’s page.?

That’s all I have to say about Hoover for now.

Take a look at the listing yourself and comment below with the tweaks you think Hoover should make to their Amazon strategy. We would love to hear what you think!