Power Banks - $3.7k/mo
What you need to launch a D2C single-theme store around power banks, and grow it through paid digital channels.
Whereas last week we looked at a product that had seen search interest surge throughout the pandemic (solar lights), this week we’ll take a look at a product that’s had its demand supressed over the last 12 months: high-end power banks and portable chargers.
Given that one of the main motivators for buying power banks is travel, it’s no surprise that there’s been a drop in volume since the pandemic hit.
A quick look at search interest for related terms might give the impression that they’re on the decline, but when you mark out the start of the pandemic you can see that search volume was largely stable before that point.
What this suggests to me is that demand will likely rise back to (and beyond) historic levels once we come through the pandemic, and travel demand rises. While existing brands may have been burned by the drop in demand, and pulled back on ad spend, planning for a growth in demand now could put you in a good position to capitalise on future demand.
I often see people write that you should only be looking at verticals or products with growing demand, not stable. While this seems trivial at first, I don’t think it’s true. What matters far more is how ad prices compare to AOVs (average order values) and expected conversion rates.
Keyword analysis
You can see the top 25 non-brand search keywords in the space here, along with an estimate of click prices at the top and bottom of each results page.
While the top of page upper bid estimates are in many cases too expensive to be able to turn a profit on this sort of item, you can reach the lower end of the top of the first page with low bids on many of those keywords. This allows you to essentially skim off a decent flow of traffic, all while paying far less than most are paying on these terms.
Campaign build
I’ve put together a typical campaign build that you might use to sell power banks via paid search. You can find it here.
If you’re not familiar with this type of spreadsheet, it’s basically a list of keywords and ads that you can upload into a search ads platform to start bidding on relevant keywords.
Each keyword has its own tailored ad copy, meaning you can serve relevant ads on every keyword that you’re bidding on. This might cost you hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars from a marketing agency.
Get a full growth strategy for a new business every week.
Keyword analyses, search builds, forecasts, creative & targeting strategies - straight to your inbox.
Targeting strategies
In addition to paid search, you could also grow a brand in this space using social & display ads.
Because you’re trying to target people pre-emptively before they travel, targeting is a bit of a challenge. Facebook has some relevant audiences like frequent international travellers, but the size (>600 million, even right now) is so large that these audiences aren’t likely to help much.
Instead I’d focus on bringing in as much search volume as possible in the early days, and using lookalikes of site visitors/purchasers to inform your targeting.
The lack of obvious targeting strategies also increases the importance of retargeting; see the Creative strategies section below for ideas on how you could push people towards conversion by using familiar imagery and emotion-based messaging.
Profit forecasting
So, what sort of profit and ROI could you expect to see if you built a brand around power banks?
I’ve put together an interactive dashboard here which lets you forecast the profit you could make from running paid search campaigns in this niche.
You can adjust the inputs along the top of the dashboard to see how different conversion rates, margins, and bids would affect your results. If you’re unsure, you can enter ranges for the inputs, and your outputs will be displayed as probability distributions.
The numbers in the dashboard rely on forecasting data from Google for the relevant keywords. They’re also just projecting profits on Google search ads, not including any other channels, so are really a lower estimate of the volume you could generate.
Creative strategies
I think the main danger here is in producing creatives that are too dry or simplistic. You’re going to have a hard time getting someone to buy with nothing but a product pic.
Some fun ways to evoke emotion could be to produce creatives with screenshots of the dreaded ‘10% battery remaining’ popup that iOS users will no doubt be accustomed to, or by playing around with other familiar imagery like this.
I think what works about this sort of approach is that it’ll likely let you build creatives that don’t immediately stand out as ads. The familiarity (and dread) of these images evokes a response, and you can even tailor it to a user’s device (by serving different creatives to iOS vs Android users).
Summary
That’s a quick roundup of how you could grow a brand selling power banks online.
While demand is no doubt suppressed right now, I’d expect it to rise considerably once travel picks up post-pandemic. Laying the groundwork now could put you in a strong place to capitalise on this resurgence.
If you have questions on anything above, drop me an email here and I’ll see if I can help.
Thanks for reading.