‘During peak moments, we generate a significant portion of our annual revenue’

Since 2021, SUITSUIT has been selling its travel and lifestyle items directly via bol, where they are the exclusive provider of their items. For their sector, the brand primarily targets a niche audience consisting mainly of women. The advertising tool sponsored products helps them better reach this target audience and promote new collections. Additionally, sponsored products helps SUITSUIT make the most of peak moments. 

• With sponsored products, you reach your target audience more effectively.
• Ensure your content is perfectly in order.
• Adjust your sponsored products strategy in preparation for a peak moment.

Question for bol: How does bol help new partners set up their online marketing on the platform?

Sanne de Hoog, Retail Media Consultant at bol: ‘We offer our partners various tools to achieve their goals. Are you just starting with advertising and want to focus primarily on sales? Then we recommend starting with sponsored products. This allows you to easily get started yourself and build a solid foundation. Perfect for new partners. Have you been active for a while and want more brand awareness? Then our team can help you with display and social advertising, to reach consumers earlier in the purchasing process.’

Fan of sponsored products

As soon as SUITSUIT started selling their items via bol themselves, they immediately began using sponsored products. Anna: ‘A major advantage of sponsored products, in my opinion, is that the tool is very easy to use. You can clearly see what works and what doesn't, and you can easily test, improve, and learn. As a result, you see results quickly. Although we cannot specifically target our audience with sponsored products, we can still reach them effectively by choosing the right keywords. The search trend tool from bol helps us with this.’

Question for bol: Does setting up sponsored products require specific prior knowledge?

Sanne: ‘Some basic knowledge will certainly help you. Therefore, on the Partnerplatform, we offer an e-learning and various webinars with both basic tips for setting up a campaign and more advanced insights to improve your campaigns. Additionally, with sponsored products, you can also set an automatic bidding strategy. When you choose automatic bidding, you can set a desired ACoS (the percentage of your revenue you want to spend on sponsored products). This desired ACoS is then used as a guideline for the bids in that campaign. This way, you don't have to do it manually, which is especially useful when you have many campaigns running, for example.’

Focus on non-branded keywords

Because the brand already has significant recognition within the Netherlands – and they are the exclusive provider via bol – they focus on non-branded keywords with sponsored products. Because people searching for SUITSUIT will find their items anyway, they don't allocate budget to that. Anna explains: ‘Sponsored products is very important for us to push new collections or items, for example. We also use it to give a boost to items we want to promote more, for example, because we have a large stock of them.’

Question for bol: How long does it take to see results from a sponsored products campaign?

Sanne: ‘Every campaign needs time to start up and learn. How long that takes exactly depends on various factors. Think of the competition in your category or the popularity of your item. That's why we advise our partners to wait at least 2 weeks before evaluating a new campaign. The algorithm needs that time to learn. If you want to use sponsored products during your peak moments, we advise setting up the campaign sooner — preferably several weeks to months in advance. Even better is to run an always-on campaign. This way, you create good visibility throughout the year and can optimally build on this during peak periods. The automatic bidding strategy is also very useful for such an always-on campaign, because you don't have to constantly manage it yourself.’

A game of finding the right balance

SUITSUIT always uses sponsored products for new collections. Anna explains: ‘For these campaigns, the ACoS is higher than average, but we accept that — sponsored products is simply important for bringing these new items to attention. Moreover: as soon as items from the new collection are sold and we receive reviews, the ACoS usually goes down again in the end.’

‘In addition, the team always has campaigns running for a selection of items they truly believe in. Anna: ‘Here, it's especially important that we continue to test and improve. It's a continuous process of excluding or adding keywords; excluding items based on ACoS or deciding to increase the budget. We keep a close eye on this and check the results a few times a week.’

Anna’s tip for beginners in sponsored products

For everyone who wants to start with sponsored products, Anna has one important tip: ‘Make sure your content is in top-notch condition. bol has several best practices for this, which can be found in this e-learning. Be sure to follow those tips. From experience, I know that texts with good content perform better. If your text and images are not good, you will immediately see this reflected in the return on your sponsored products campaigns.’

Question for bol: How can partners selling via bol best respond to peak moments?

Sanne: ‘It is very important that your content is in order. Via sponsored products, your item appears on consumers' radar, but it's through the content of the product page that you can truly convince them to make a purchase. So, make sure your item has a good and complete title, that your descriptions are fully filled out, and that your images are clear and complete. Also, ensure your bids are set correctly and keep an eye on your daily budget. During peak moments, it can happen that you get more clicks than usual, causing your budget to run out by the afternoon — and that's a shame, especially when you know that 40% of all purchases are made after 5 PM.

Make the most of peak moments

Especially during peak moments, it's important that all content is complete, clear, and appealing. For SUITSUIT, the most important peak moment runs from May through August. The company then generates a significant portion of its annual revenue. Anna: ‘Peak moments are very important for us; that's when we really have to deliver. So, in April, we already make sure all content is completely in order and everything is ready. Additionally, we always time the launch of new collections around or during peak moments so that we are extra relevant to our target audience.’

They also adjust their sponsored products strategy in the run-up to a peak moment. Anna clarifies: ‘About 4 to 6 weeks before a peak moment, we adjust our ACoS upwards. Our costs are higher then, but that way we reach more exploratory traffic that will hopefully still convert later. We also always strongly focus on branding campaigns, both online and offline. With out-of-home campaigns, for example, we ensure that we are top of mind with our target audience.’