Home Security Cameras - $7.7k/mo
How you could easily launch a profitable D2C security camera brand which grows through paid search.
Security cameras might not seem like an obvious product to build a brand around, and that's exactly why it's such a good idea.
Keywords around security cameras are significantly under-priced given the potential for high AOVs (average order values), and there are plenty of people searching them. These two facts make it fairly easy to run profitable search campaigns for this type of product.
Keyword analysis
You can see the top 50 non-brand search keywords here, along with an estimate of click prices at the top and bottom of each results page.
There’s plenty of demand for security cameras, with about 2.5 million monthly searches across those 50 keywords alone.
What’s perhaps more interesting though is just how cheap some of the volume is; for a $1 cost per click, you could get up to 4,000 monthly clicks from people actively researching and looking to buy security cameras.
Campaign build
I’ve put together a typical campaign build that you might use to sell security cameras 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 more likely thousands, of dollars from a marketing agency.
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Targeting strategies
In addition to paid search, you could also grow a brand in this space using social & display ads.
Retargeting
Because there aren’t certain demographic or behavioural traits that are likely to over-index on a tendency to want to buy security cameras, retargeting is going to play a key role.
Because not every searcher is going to want the same sort of camera, and they may not remember your brand, the key would be to set up dynamic retargeting campaigns which match users to the specific products they’ve seen on your site.
I’d focus retargeting campaigns on the first 1-3 days after a user has interacted with your site, given that users aren’t likely to repeat purchase and that they may have already purchased from a competitor after that time.
Prospecting
There is also an interest audience available on Facebook Ads named wireless security cameras, which would be worth testing. It’s size is 315k users, which is on the small side, so I wouldn’t bet too much on this being a good source of traffic.
I’d suggest building up a customer base first through paid search, and then using the user data from that to build lookalikes of the sort of people (home owners, smart home enthusiasts) that are likely to respond to your ads.
Profit forecasting
So, what sort of profit and ROI could you expect to see if you built a brand around security cameras?
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
If you also ran social or display ads, what sort of creative would you use?
When it comes to retargeting, there’s potential to be playful and use language that reflects the product; We’ve seen you looking around alongside a product image.
Another angle you could go down involves playing into potential customers’ emotions; be it the fear of someone breaking into your house, or the peace of mind that comes from knowing your house is secure.
It’s interesting to see that brands in the space already are playing into some of these ideas, but with a topical angle. Arlo (example below) are doing this by referencing the time of year, and they imply that this comes with a risk of increased theft.
Summary
So that’s a quick roundup of how you could grow a brand selling security cameras online.
The huge amount of search volume for these sorts of products, combined with the high cart values and low competitiveness on the relevant keywords, makes it an attractive prospect for search advertising.
If you have questions on anything above, drop me an email and I’ll see if I can help.
Thanks for reading.