When it comes to capturing and keeping the attention of a customer, we have a few creative tricks up our sleeves. Show don’t tell, the active voice, and relevant emojis are all effective tactics for boosting clicks and conversions. But one strategy helps level-up a customer’s loyalty: name dropping.

It’s time we ditch the conversational stigma of name dropping and start using it to our advantage in our copy. And we have a very timely occasion for when this tactic can work best: Amazon Prime Day.

Learn how to capitalize on one of the biggest commerce days of the year (hitting all of our Prime accounts in July), as well as how to build trust with your audience by showcasing your expertise. But more specifically, we’ll address…

• How name-dropping Prime Day affects conversion rates.
• How name-dropping Amazon can boost CTR and lower CPCs. 
• Commerce content best practices.
• Different ways to leverage expertise in your ad copy.

The Magic of Amazon Prime Day

When we think of the big commerce and affiliate opportunities, Q4 usually comes to mind, right? While Black Friday, Christmas, and end-of-season sales might dominate the conversation toward the end of the year, there’s another huge commerce event coming up in July: Amazon Prime Day. The online retail giant started Prime Day back in 2015, and since then, it’s become a record-breaking shopping event, bringing in $11.19 billion globally during the 2021 event.

With that in mind, it’s two days of commerce frenzy that businesses and marketers can’t afford to ignore. And in order to attract higher-intent customers, prioritize these things in your copy: urgency, clarity, active language, and of course, what you’re promoting.

With such a lucrative opportunity for conversions, don’t be afraid to be a bit more salesy in your messaging, as long it remains clear what is being sold. Here we have some examples of Prime Day copy from previous campaigns that generated higher conversion rates:

Notice a trend in all of these ads? Whether it be in the headline or ad copy, all of these high-performing Facebook ads mentioned Amazon or Prime Day. Prime Day is so well-known at this point that it doesn’t even have to be accompanied by “Amazon” in order for audiences to understand what’s going on. This is what we call name-dropping gold.

But the luster of Prime Day doesn’t just stop at conversion rates. What are some other benefits of including “Amazon” directly in your copy? When looking at a sample set of 200K out of millions of data points, we filtered for ads that included “Amazon” in either the headline or post copy. The result? These ads …

• Generated over $96K in spend.
• Had an average CTR of 6.5% (nearly 2X higher the typical average CTR).
• Had an average CPC of $1.3 (13% lower than the typical average CPC)
• Generated 11.16M impressions.

Plus, it’s beneficial to not only mention Prime Day in the copy and headline, but to highlight it also in the ad’s imagery. In the past, we saw that a graphics-style image with the Amazon logo on it was able to scale 2X more over a general lifestyle image.

When in doubt, use Amazon’s (or any other well-known brand’s) notoriety whenever you can in your ad copy.

Amazon Prime Day and Beyond

But let’s not forget that Prime Day isn’t the only time we’ll need some commerce know-how. Marketers and brands can incorporate name-dropping and a myriad of guidelines all year round to boost their commerce efforts. Here are some other best practices to keep in mind when gearing up for Prime Day (or any big commerce event):

Be Direct 

The hard sell works. Whether it’s in the ad copy or in the headline, using phrases like “Find deals,” “Upgrade,” or “Add to your carts” can create lift. Beating around the bush won’t help you convert, so being clear about what it is you want your customer or audience to do. When it comes to crafting compelling copy, less is more.

Name Drop

As we’ve seen above, mentioning “Amazon Prime Day” in the ad, particularly somewhere on the image, can help boost conversions — as we saw above — and is easily recognizable by the audience. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to mention it in the copy itself as well. Plus, there are several ways in which you can name drop and leverage a more expert voice (more on this to come). 

Use Active Language

As the holy grail for creating effective copy, the active voice creates the urgency that advertisers need to drive users to convert. Similar to being direct, you just need a few select power words to get your point across quickly and effectively. Stuck on which words to choose? Check out our comprehensive guide on using the active voice to boost your engagement. 

Brand Your Imagery

We mentioned before that name-dropping on your ad imagery can be another useful tactic for attracting more eyes to your content. But you aren’t limited to just brands like Amazon — incorporate your own business name! Do this by creating graphic-style images that are branded and have their own unique style. This creates brand recognition among your audience. So, the next time you’re selecting the right image to use, here are a few things to keep in mind: Are you optimizing for clicks only or post-click events? Are you using imagery to inspire curiosity or send a clear message? Does your image stand out in the feed?

Build Trust Through Your Expertise

Mentioning specific companies or events like Prime Day isn’t the only way name drop, so to speak. Publishers and marketers have also found it useful to leverage either their own expertise or the experts in the field.

It’s likely that your target audience gets exposed to an endless sea of content every day, but they are more likely to stop scrolling and click on content or a product from a business that they know is a leading voice in that particular subject. Showing that you’re the expert (or have access to the experts) builds a stronger trust and relationship between marketer and audience.

And there are few different ways to go about this.

One of the easiest ways to give an ad an instant credibility boost is name-dropping or referencing a professional. Doctors, professors, field specialists, and other experts add both intellectual and practical value to an ad. Additionally, with so much misinformation out there, users are more likely to trust businesses with professionals ready to back up any claims. Another way a publisher can leverage its credibility is through data. People often think of numbers as dry, but when used effectively in ad copy, data points and statistics provide context and clarity for the user.

What does this look like in action? Let’s take a look at a few real life examples.

In The Headline

The One Trait All Geniuses Have In Common, According to a Yale Professor

Everything the Queen eats in a day, according to royal chefs

Direct References

Board-certified dermatologists say these affordable products are the créme de la crème.

Here are the five best shoe brands for foot health, according to podiatrists.

Having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep? We spoke with a sleep physician, and here’s what he recommended us to purchase.

Direct Quotes

“Things like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kombucha—any sort of fermented food can help to increase that good bacteria in your gut,” says dietitian Krista Maruschak.

Pulling From Statistics

U.S. economy adds eye-popping 379,000 jobs in February

Lots of bitcoin have been lost for various reasons — maybe as much as 20%, the trouble is, there is no way to know exactly how much.

So now that we know what leveraging an advertiser’s credibility looks like, how do we know these tactics are actually building stronger, more loyal audiences? To test this, we chose a few keywords to see how ads fared with this more subtle name-dropping. The lucky keywords that were chosen? Expert, Doctor, Scientist, Dietitian, Dermatologist, and Professor.

Using our database of nearly 200K ads, we filtered out ads for each of these words to see how performance fared. Here are some of the key takeaways:

• With the exception of “Expert”, CPCs lowered across the board for ads containing these words. In fact, the average CPC for ads containing these keywords was 28% lower than the overall average.
• “Doctor” and “Dietitian” had the largest jumps in CTR — Dietitian even hitting double digits with 10.2%.
• “Dietitian”, “Dermatologist”, and “Professor” all had CPCs of under $1, compared to an average of $1.14.

And in one campaign optimizing for paid subscriptions, ads mentioning an expert generated as high as a 61% increase in complete registrations than ads without. 

So, not only does this creative strategy give ads added value, it can also build strong trust between a publisher and users — encouraging them to engage and click even more. 

Bringing It All Full Circle

And of course, there are ways to incorporate this type of name-dropping strategy into your Amazon Prime Day and commerce content. People trust expert recommendations when shopping for various products (think: skincare, supplements, workout equipment, etc), so why not put a few of our keywords into your copy? And just what would this look like? 

10 Dermatologist-Recommended Moisturizers For The Summer Months

The Three Most Important Supplements To Take, According to Doctors

Sleep Experts Reveal Their Favorite Bedroom Essentials For The Perfect Night’s Sleep

10 Dietitian-Approved Protein Bars (And They’re All Available on Amazon)

Leave the Name-Dropping to Anyword

So, we’ve name-dropped quite a few names over the course of this post. But what’s one more thrown into the mix? Enter: Anyword. This AI copywriting platform not only pushes out stellar marketing copy with just a few clicks, but also allows users to input specific keywords that they want to use in the text. So, want to make sure your ad includes “Amazon” somewhere in the copy? Tell Anyword, and it’s a done deal.

And while we’ve spent the last few minutes of your busy schedule showing you the effect that name-dropping and leveraging an expert voice can have on your copy’s performance, Anyword takes it a step further.

Along with each copy variation generated by the AI writer comes a unique Predictive Performance Score. This numerical score gives you a pretty good indication of how that piece of copy will perform for you audience (before you even push it out into the world). Plus, if you hover over this score, you also get a sneak peak into which age groups and genders that copy will appeal most to.

If you’re gearing up for the frenzy that is Amazon Prime Day or just looking to spruce up your marketing content in general, turn to Anyword to tackle all the name-dropping, content generating you need. Test the waters today with a free, 7-day trial or book a demo.