Amazon paid search strategy (Amazon PPC) has become an effective marketing tool used by many intelligent sellers to increase their sales. Using Amazon PPC offers marketers the opportunity to appear on the top of Amazon’s search results page.
Anyone can use Amazon PPC to increase their visibility; however, not many people can optimize it to improve efficiency, performance and generate more leads. Even when you have a good product and detailed Amazon product listing, running an Amazon paid search strategy helps you achieve your business goals faster. The key to standing out on Amazon is to have a well-defined Amazon PPC strategy.
This blog will show you everything about Amazon’s paid search strategy and the tips you need to boost your brand awareness. Continue reading to find out more.
What is Amazon PPC?
Amazon is a form of advertising Amazon offers its third-party sellers. It is a platform where sellers create ad campaigns to boost their sales, while Amazon charges a certain percentage for each time a customer clicks to see the ad. Amazon’s paid search strategy aims to increase a product’s visibility on the Amazon page by ranking it for specific keywords used by buyers.
There are three types of sponsored ads on Amazon: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display Ads, and Sponsored Brands. You can select any of the three depending on your business goals.
Sponsored products: sponsored products are the most used ad form on Amazon. It works by using keyword and ASIN-targeted ads to promote sellers’ products within Amazon search results and product detail pages. It lets sellers target relevant buyers through keywords and phrases that Amazon’s algorithm regards as pertinent to your product listing.
Sponsored Brands: Thus sponsored ad allows brands to boost their awareness among buyers. Sellers can promote custom headline, their brand logo, and three products that top Amazon search results to direct the shopper to their landing page on Amazon or their products’ store. Besides, marketers can use video ads that link directly to the product page.
Sponsored Display ads: These ads target relevant shoppers on and off Amazon – external websites, desktop, and mobile apps – to your Amazon product detail pages. It is a means to reach audiences searching for your products or similar product categories on Amazon and other websites. Unlike the first two ad types, your sponsored display ad can appear on Google, Facebook, and affiliates sites.
How to create an Amazon Paid Search strategy
You need to understand some essential factors before creating a solid and high-converting Amazon PPC strategy. The steps will guide you through:
- You should try out the different PPC ad campaigns at the onset, getting acquainted with keyword optimization and targeting to see which fits your brand best.
- Conduct thorough and detailed keyword research using Google keyword planner, Google Trends, and Jungle Scout’s Keyword Scout. These platforms narrow down specific and relevant keywords buyers use when searching for your product or similar products. Also, it gives you insight into your competitor’s products and their ad strategy.
- After choosing an ad type, set daily budgets and fix bids 50-100% higher than what Amazon recommends, and over time you can increase it. Besides, your budget depends on your niche and product life cycle. If you are just introducing a new product, you may spend more at the beginning. Similarly, a small budget like $30 a day in a high-volume niche may not reflect that much.
Regardless, it is best to set your budget based on what you want to get. If you need to get to 30 sales a day, you have a 10% conversion rate, and you have a dollar per click. That means it will take $10 to get one conversion. If you want more, do the calculation.
- Leave your ad campaigns to run for some weeks before running reports or making adjustments.
- Use your ad reports from your automatic campaigns to find relevant keywords for your manual campaigns.
- Before adjusting your manual campaign, ensure the keyword gets over ten clicks.
- Depending on your niche and your campaign purpose, which may be to rank or maximize your profit, you should at least have one manual and one automatic campaign.
- Keep reviewing your ad reports, removing, adding, and adjusting keywords as needed.
Two Types of Keyword Targeting Strategies
Automatic targeting
Automatic targeting involves using keywords Amazon considers relevant to your product listing. Amazon usually gathers data from buyers’ clicks, and purchases then adjust the ads to suit your listing and increase your conversion rate.
Manual targeting
Unlike automatic targeting, manual targeting involves selecting the keywords you want to use in your advertising. Your ad will show only if a shopper uses the specific keywords you use in manual targeted ads.
Where do Amazon Ads Appear?
Sponsored Product ads: These appear within search results and on Amazon product pages close to the top of the page.
Sponsored Brands ads: These appear in different locations on the Amazon search results page, such as above the search results, product detail pages, along with or within shopping results.
Sponsored Display ads: These ads are shown below the “Add to Cart” section on Amazon product description pages, just below the search results. Also, they can appear next to or below other websites, like Google or Netflix, and mobile apps.
How to Create Sponsored Product PPC ads
Since sponsored product PPC ads seem to be the most used ad campaign and a basic introduction to all other Amazon PPC, this article will focus on how you can create one.
- To start with, log in to your Amazon seller account, and head to Amazon Seller Central. Select advertising, and then ‘campaign manager’.
- Scroll down to the graphs and click on the yellow “Create campaign” button at the lower-left bottom.
- Select the gray Sponsored Products ad “Create” button under sponsored products.
- Fill out the information on the Settings section of the Create campaign page, featuring campaign name, start and end dates, daily budgets, automatic and manual targeting.
Campaign name
At this stage, you are expected to choose a name for your campaign. The title should be something that captures the purpose of the campaign or related to the product.
Date
This stage is where you input the start and end date for your campaign. Typically, the date depends on your campaign purpose. Thus, if you are not sure of the end date or want your campaign to run indefinitely, it is best to leave the end date.
Daily budget
You can set the highest amount of money you want to spend on ads per day. According to Amazon, if your ad spends under the specified amount at the end of a day, you can use the remaining amount to increase ads by 10% another time in the same month.
Besides, Amazon charges you ad cost when you reach $500 or at the beginning of the month. They can charge from your account balance or on the credit card you supplied.
Targeting
Select “automatic” for an automatic-targeting sponsored product ad.
Select the right campaign bidding strategy
There are three types of campaign bidding strategies for automatic targeting sponsored product ads.
Dynamic bids – down only
Amazon lowers bids when you’re less likely to make a sale. Dynamic bids ensure your ad won’t show up on irrelevant product searches.
Dynamic bids – up and down
If Amazon sees that your automatic-targeting sponsored product has the potential to convert highly, Amazon increases your bid price by 10%.
Fixed bids
Here, Amazon does not change your bid unless you choose to do so.
Create an ad group: Fill in the following information
Ad group Name
An ad group features a group of ads sharing the same set of keywords and products. It is best to group products and prices of the same range. Your ad group name can be anything, but it should indicate the purpose of the ad group. This will help you to find a specific product quickly.
Products
Select the products you want to sell. Try to select only one product per ad group when you are starting.
Set your bid
There are two ways to fix bids for sponsored product ads:
Default bid
You can set Amazon default bid for all types of matches. Amazon suggests a $0.75 start for all kinds of products, but you can go higher to make early and adequate sales.
Targeting group
You can also choose bids by targeting groups, placing different prices for each strategy.
Add negative targeting keywords.
If you don’t want your ad to show up for some keywords, you can add the keywords and terms to the automatic targeting list.
Once you have verified all details, click the yellow ‘Launch campaign’ button at the bottom of the page. If you are still not ready, you can save your draft and come back to it later. It may take between 30 minutes to one hour for your ad to show on Amazon.
Conclusion
Amazon paid search strategy helps business owners improve their sales and increase their customer base both on Amazon and external websites. Specifically, it uses different ads such as sponsored product ads, sponsored brand ads, and sponsored display ads to direct shoppers to a product detail page. Many sellers are already taking advantage of Amazon’s innovative marketing plan, but what will make you stand out is how you optimize your Amazon PPC.