Hawthorne is a luxury personal care brand selling premium cologne, deodorant, hair care and skincare. nf&co. began managing Hawthorne’s Amazon account in Q4 2022, and drove meaningful increases in sales, while improving Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Our strategic objective for Hawthorne’s Amazon account was to create a sales flywheel – a multi-armed growth strategy where improvements to each individual part also help to bolster the others, creating a sustainable and self-reinforcing growth loop. Our Amazon growth flywheel has three major components: a comprehensive paid ads strategy, high-converting product detail pages, and healthy organic conversion driven by product cross-sell, up-sell, and repeat purchases.

The first pillar of this flywheel, a strong paid ads strategy, drives efficient first-touch purchases from both new and returning customers. A by-product of an effective paid ad program is increased awareness of the Hawthorne brand among in-market Amazon shoppers. In addition to driving direct revenue from paid ad placements, the corresponding increase in awareness bolsters organic sales via repeat purchases from new loyal customers, as well as discovery of related products in Hawthorne’s Amazon Store. As revenue grows, a portion is reinvested to fuel further expansion of the paid ads program.

These two pillars of the sales flywheel - a comprehensive paid ads program and healthy organic conversion - are self-reinforcing and are further bolstered by the final pillar of the flywheel: high-converting product detail pages. Incremental increases in conversion rate across product landing pages drive huge gains in both paid and organic Amazon sales.

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Hawthorne’s Amazon storefront and product landing pages are delightful, brand-forward experiences that are optimized for conversion. Throughout the storefront, we leverage premium brand imagery, bold value-prop callouts and on-creative CTAs to introduce the brand, drive customer engagement and maximize first-touch conversion.

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Hawthorne’s storefront uses a diverse mix of modules to create intrigue from shoppers and feature best-selling products prominently. We routinely optimize the products featured in the storefront based on strategic priorities, such as getting traction for newer listings and/or driving sales from top-sellers.

Another key feature of Hawthorne’s storefront is the use of strong social proof modules from top publishers like GQ. These are featured prominently on the storefront homepage, as well as on individual product-focused pages.

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We follow similar principles on Hawthorne’s PLPs, where A/B testing of product titles, new product feature copy and product-focused modules have improved conversion across products. A key feature of these landing pages is A+ content featuring social proof. Strong reviews from influencers like Steph Curry and publications like GQ have been key conversion drivers that we feature prominently across all product landing pages.

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With high-converting product landing pages and a beautiful storefront in place, we turned next to Hawthorne’s paid ads strategy. nf&co. relaunched Hawthorne’s entire paid ads program to better control ad delivery between product types and brand vs. non brand campaigns.

We also instituted a rigorous R&D program that continuously tests new keyword and product targeting types. This program was critical to unlocking new sources of incremental scale and informing new product launches to further scale Amazon sales (including colognes and new hair sets).

Finally, we leveraged sponsored brand ads and adjacent product targeting to maintain strong results page & PLP positions against Hawthorne competitors. This has been key to scaling Hawthorne’s branded ads campaigns.

This comprehensive program (plus continuous optimization) has proven highly successful. Hawthorne’s paid sales have increased 5.1x during the course of our partnership and paid ROAS has improved 2.8x over this same time.

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