How we grew Athletic Annex's Sales by $320,000 in 30 days (while improving ROAS)

Athletic Annex is a high seven-figure business on Amazon that specializes in reselling shoes. Their product offering and established market presence have made them a recognized name in the footwear category, but they were struggling to unlock their full potential for revenue growth on the platform.

Athletic Annex faced a significant challenge when attempting to scale their revenue through advertising. Despite increasing their ad spend, they did not observe a corresponding increase in top-line revenue. Instead, the additional advertising appeared to cannibalize their organic sales, resulting in no real net gain.

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This issue was stalling their growth, as the expected return from scaling their advertising efforts was consistently falling short.

To help Athletic Annex overcome their challenge, we developed a structured strategy to optimize their Amazon advertising and scale revenue without cannibalizing organic sales. The steps we took included:

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1. Goal Alignment and Account Cleanup
   • Client Collaboration: We aligned on specific goals with the client, defining return on ad spend (ROAS) targets and budget allocations to ensure everyone was on the same page before executing the strategy.
   • Account Cleanup: Utilizing the Search Term Report, we identified and eliminated wasted ad spend across their advertising console. We also renamed all campaigns for improved clarity and better campaign management.
   • Bid and Budget Optimization: We adjusted bids, placement modifiers, and budgets across campaigns to ensure optimal performance, based on a thorough analysis of historical data.
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2. Strategic Campaign Structuring
   • Catalog Categorization: We categorized Athletic Annex's ASIN catalog into three separate tiers—Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3—based on their parent ASIN sales distribution. This categorization allowed us to prioritize efforts based on product performance.
   • Phased Campaign Launch: We developed a timeline to launch new campaigns, starting with the top-selling ASINs (Tier 1), then moving to Tier 2, and eventually Tier 3. This phased approach ensured we optimized high-impact products first.
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3. Strategy Execution and Ongoing Optimization
   • Conservative Launch Approach: After gaining client approval, we executed the new strategy by starting with low test budgets, conservative bids, and Dynamic Down-Only Bidding. This allowed us to minimize risk while gathering performance data.
   • Scaling High-Performing Campaigns: As soon as we identified promising results, we scaled successful campaigns by:
     • Increasing bids and budgets.
     • Adding more relevant targets.
     • Applying placement modifiers to improve visibility and drive more sales.
   • Optimizing Underperforming Campaigns: We continuously optimized poor performers by:
     • Decreasing bids.
     • Adding negative keywords.
     • Reducing budgets to focus spend on higher-value areas.

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The implementation of our structured advertising strategy led to impressive results for Athletic Annex in just one month:
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1. Sales Growth
   • Total Sales Increase: In July, prior to working with us, Athletic Annex generated $770,000 in sales. By August, with our support, their sales increased to $1,090,000, reflecting a $320,000 increase in just 30 days.
   • Year-Over-Year Growth: Athletic Annex experienced significant growth, moving from 9% YoY growth in July to 36% YoY growth in August.
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2. Advertising Performance
   • Ad Spend: Advertising spend increased from $23,800 in July to $38,500 in August as we strategically scaled their campaigns.
   • Ad Sales Increase: Ad sales rose from $168,000 to $286,000, resulting in an additional $118,000 in ad-driven revenue.
   • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): ROAS improved from 7.05 to 7.43, demonstrating increased efficiency in advertising spend.