For more than a decade, audiophiles in search of minimalism and functionality have been drawn to Cleer Audio, a brand that designs high-performing headphones, earbuds, and speakers from its San Diego headquarters. Since its founding, the brand’s mission has been delivering uncompromising, crisp sound quality to their customers. Cleer Audio has steadily expanded its retail presence over the years, landing on shelves at places like Best Buy, Target, and airport retail.
Though Cleer Audio had a robust sales channel on Amazon.com, its biggest online revenue mover, the brand wanted to expand its ecommerce presence on cleeraudio.com.
That’s where Power Digital, an award-winning growth marketing firm, entered the picture.
“They were wanting to see as much volume and growth as possible, and we created a strategy that was custom-tailored to that,” says Jeremy Way, Associate Director of Retail Marketing at Power Digital.
Preparing for the biggest sales season of the year
The team at Cleer Audio put their trust in Power Digital not a moment too soon. Their busiest sales season, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, was less than 30 days away when they asked Jeremy and his team to craft a strategy in late 2022.
“We were approached by Power Digital about this Buy with Prime opportunity that could provide our customers with an alternative to the already-robust payment and freight options on our website,” says Scott Ashbaugh, Director of Global Sales for Cleer Audio.
Cleer Audio’s obsession with its customers had the team looking for more ways to make buying easier and ultimately build a shorter path to purchase. They had effective retail distribution, but for increased growth, the team wanted to optimize their ecommerce site. Buy with Prime presented a chance to do this while giving shoppers an experience they could trust.
“Cleer Audio had been wanting to collaborate with Amazon in any possible way. They were already on Amazon.com, so adding Buy with Prime to their ecommerce site was a natural next step,” says Jeremy.
It was crunch time now. The biggest sales season of the year was coming in hot. According to a 2022 report from the National Retail Federation, nearly 200 million Americans would shop online and in stores in the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, the highest figure recorded in five years. Cleer Audio’s ecommerce site needed to be prepared to get the most out of every shopper visit and capture as many sales as possible.
Creating a clearer path to purchase
With the clock counting down, Jeremy and Scott got to work.
Power Digital added the Buy with Prime button to the product detail pages of Cleer Audio’s bestselling SKUs, like the Alpha noise-cancelling headphones and the Ally Plus wireless earbuds. They also added a prominent Buy with Prime banner to the homepage carousel and placed the Buy with Prime badge on applicable products. This gave Prime members a secure, familiar way to check out.
“This was all happening in the lead-up to Black Friday. From when we pitched Buy with Prime to Cleer Audio to when the Buy with Prime buttons were implemented on their most popular SKUs, it was a brief time span of a few weeks,” says Jeremy. “But they were interested in anything that would help increase their topline revenue during an important time of year.”
There was apprehension from the Cleer Audio team about testing out changes to their product detail pages during such a high stakes moment. What if it didn’t pay off? What if it was too big of a change too soon?
“We recognized the Buy with Prime opportunity, but since the holiday season had already begun, we were very concerned about the disruption that could occur during this critical time period for us. Thankfully, with an intelligent approach, our Power Digital team launched this new Buy with Prime offering to our customers in a seamless transition,” says Scott.
It ended up being the right call.
From November 2022 to December 2022, Cleer Audio’s conversion rate saw a nearly two-fold increase from 1.10% to 2.12%. This represented a 92% increase in conversion. Year over year, the conversion rate also saw a dramatic jump when comparing December 2021 to December 2022.
“In the end, we’ve found that having Buy with Prime on our site has added a lot of efficiencies for our customers. To top it off, the Buy with Prime business development team could not have been more supportive,” says Scott.
Building stronger trust with relevant ads
The team at Cleer Audio wanted to increase web traffic to their ecommerce site. This meant investing in paid search and using retargeting display ads. During this crucial holiday period, Cleer Audio and Power Digital decided to launch paid ad campaigns on Meta.
“We wanted to stay top of mind for shoppers during that holiday peak,” says Jeremy. “As part of our omnichannel marketing strategy, anywhere we thought potential customers might be, we wanted to be there to meet them.”
Power Digital conducted A/B testing on Meta ads for Cleer Audio SKUs where they added the Buy with Prime badge to certain ads and left the Buy with Prime badge off on others. The results of that test? The Meta ads that featured a badge had a 63% higher click-through rate than the ones without the badge.
Jeremy feels the Buy with Prime branding created a sense of trust with shoppers and encouraged them to click into the product detail pages. Earning trust can be one of the biggest challenges when it comes to growing an ecommerce store, and by leveraging the Buy with Prime marketing toolkit, the team was able to inspire that trust.
“The shopper sees the badge on the ad creative, then sees the badge again on the product detail page along with the Buy with Prime button. It creates a clear path to purchase, and the shopper is more mentally prepared to buy,” says Jeremy.
Continuing on the path to growth
After a successful holiday season in 2022, Power Digital and Cleer Audio are already looking ahead to the 2023 holiday season to see what learnings they can apply to future high-volume shopping events like Black Friday.
“Brands are having to prepare earlier and earlier. You can’t only think about your holiday strategy during the holiday season,” says Jeremy.
Jeremy has plans of adding the Buy with Prime button to more Cleer Audio SKUs, building a Buy with Prime collection page to make it easier for shoppers to find Buy with Prime products, and implementing the Reviews from Amazon feature to display authentic Amazon.com star ratings and reviews alongside Buy with Prime products.
Scott feels that Buy with Prime made a real difference for Cleer Audio and is eager to see what else is in store.
“All in all, it’s been a good addition for us, and we look forward to more increased sales due to Buy with Prime.”
Find out more about how agencies like Power Digital are using Buy with Prime to level up their merchants.