February 1, 2023
How to Optimize Your Amazon PPC Strategy
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Are you having a hard time figuring out how to optimize your Amazon PPC strategy? Do you want to get your ad campaign up and running in no time? If you're looking for some tried and true strategies to maximize your amazon PPC campaign’s effectiveness, you're in the right place.
Amazon is gradually dominating online commerce. Market surveys in 2022 showed that Amazon ranked second in terms of gross merchandise volume (GMV) share across the web, accounting for 13 percent of overall online GMV. The company also accounts for 37.8 percent of the U.S. e-commerce market, making it by far the leading online retailer in the country.
Mastering Amazon PPC strategies means accessing a wide range of potential customers. But you can imagine how fierce the competition can be. Every brand tries to outperform others with more advanced methods and strategies. Still, with an optimized PPC strategy and the right ad campaign structure, you will be able to find your competitive edge and make money.
If you're not an Amazon PPC strategist, don't worry! We're going to help you find some of the market-proven practices to optimize your ad campaigns so that you can generate sales from the organic rankings.
Ready? Let's dive in:
Amazon PPC (Pay-per-click) is an advertising system that hosts third-party sellers. Amazon PPC allows sellers to create advertisements for their products and present them in front of customers.
PPC means you will only get charged when a customer clicks on the ad or product listing -hence, pay per click! Amazon's PPC campaign is an incredibly powerful method for boosting sales and building brand awareness.
You can easily target specific keywords and focus customers' attention on your main selling points and unique values. Your ad placement on Amazon's search results depends on how much you are willing to spend and how successfully you can compete with other bidders.
Amazon PPC ads consist of three main categories: Sponsored Ads, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Displays. We will examine each category later, but what you need to know here is that optimizing the PPC campaign depends on choosing the right type of ads.
Each PPC ad requires different practices and timelines and yields different results. So, if you're going to maximize your PPC advertising investment, first, you should understand what type will suit your eCommerce store and business goals better.
Amazon's Sponsored Product ads are pay-per-click ads that appear in strategic locations of the website, including above, next to, or inside the Amazon search results page. These ads give your products more exposure and purchase opportunity. According to recent surveys, 76% of Amazon third-party sellers choose this type of advertising to get more eyes on their products.
To activate the Sponsored Product ads, go to your account, select the products you want to showcase and set your daily budget and bid. Once you complete this process, you should craft a compelling copy to encourage buyers to click on your ad.
Amazon Sponsored Products ads use keywords to devise a targeting algorithm. You have two main choices here: automatic targeting or manual targeting. In automatic targeting, Amazon will choose your keywords for you (highly recommended for beginner marketers.)
If you have some prior experience in advertising, manual targeting is the right choice for you. You can collect your data analytics from your current campaigns and pick your own keywords.
Note that Amazon has three types of keyword matching, including Broad match, Phrase match, and Exact match. Before running a campaign, make sure to understand each type, their potential, and the pros and cons to help boost your ad's performance.
Sponsored Brand Ads, formerly known as Headline Search Ads, are banner ads that appear at the top of Amazon's SERP. This type of Amazon ad is only available to brands registered by the Amazon Brand Registry.
Sponsored brands are recommended for startups and aspiring business owners looking for an effective way to establish brand awareness among their target audiences. With this type of ad, you can promote your brand with keyword-targeted ads of multiple products above, below, and alongside search results.
Sponsored Brand advertisements can target three types of keywords:
We often recommend using a combination of these three types of keywords to improve your online discoverability.
A Sponsored Product Display ad works similarly to PPC advertising on other platforms like Facebook and Google. First, you need to register your brand, and then you can target your audiences based on their shopping behavior or retarget customers who have visited your product pages.
This advertising category also allows for advertisements both on the Amazon platform and on Amazon's affiliate sites like Google, Facebook, and Netflix. The Sponsored Product Display ad also allows you to add your brand logo and a headline to attract more customers.
The overall campaign will cost you at least $100, constituting 25% of Amazon's ad requests.
Here are some of the key advantages of Amazon PPC advertising for your business:
Every business owner wants to rank high on the search list of Amazon. There is probably no better way to secure a high rank than devising a fail-proof Amazon PPC strategy. PPC campaigns and sponsored ads allow you to promote your brand and products, gain more visibility among high-intent audiences and rank higher on Amazon SERP pages.
In today's competitive market, standing out in your niche industry can be a bit challenging. But running PPC ads helps your products to show up more frequently and get more recognition from people. Remember that building a brand reputation doesn't happen overnight, but a PPC campaign can pave the way for long-lasting brand awareness.
People you target on Amazon differ from those on other PPC platforms like Google, Instagram, or Facebook. They are Buyers, Not viewers! They explore the website to find and purchase the products they need.
In a sense, running PPC ads is a win-win situation. Relevant sponsored ads will save customers' time by helping them find the best purchasing options by offering products they need. It also helps you target people with the highest chances of converting to an ad.
PPC advertising is, by definition, a money-saving tactic. Because you only pay when someone clicks your ad. Moreover, Amazon's wide range of ad solutions gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of managing your spending.
In many types of advertising and marketing methods, you have zero flexibility in spending. PPC, however, allows you to work within your budget and avoid overhead costs. This means whether you are a new startup in town or a well-established multinational company, you can always find a PPC solution that fits your ad budget.
Data analytics is one of the most important resources to optimize future marketing campaigns. Amazon offers detailed product reporting to help you monitor, measure, and optimize your PPC campaigns.
Surely, you don't want your hard-earned money to be wasted on an ad without yielding satisfying results. So, here are some best practices to ensure your next PPC campaign will take your sales to the next level:
Every business campaign aims to achieve a set of objectives. Without clear goals, you have no direction, no measure to evaluate your progress, and no way to find the best practices to optimize your campaign's effectiveness.
Amazon's advanced targeting capabilities allow you to align your business goals and objectives with your targets. For instance, you may want to expand your customer base or boost brand awareness. In this case, you should focus on impressions as your metric of success and assess your performance based on an improved impression rate.
Sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone. But if you are working on a tight budget, you might miss both birds! So, it's better to take one step at a time and invest your money in one goal, like increasing your market share or creating anticipation for the launch of a new product.
Once you have determined your goals, you can easily figure out which ad product works can contribute most to your PPC campaign. You can choose among Amazon's various advertising options, including video ads, display ads, audio ads, or custom advertising solutions.
Advertising is a chance to get more eyes on services and products. But once you have the audience's attention, you must have something of value to offer. In other words, you must ensure that your products are priced and presented perfectly.
Note that the right product isn't always the one that increases your revenue in the short term. For instance, if your goal is building brand awareness, you may settle for a lower price to drive more customers to your landing page.
Any Amazon PPC strategist would also advise you to choose products that display the Featured Offer. The Featured Offer is the section of the product detail page where similar products are ranked and presented based on the customer experience. Being eligible for the Featured Offers will significantly boost your brand reputation.
Hard selling doesn't work anymore! Today's marketing methods are gravitating toward customer-centric advertisement and prioritizing their needs. Let's put it this way: your ad must address the searcher's intent and give them exactly what they're looking for.
To do this, you need to know the ad structure. Generally speaking, search ads include a headline, a URL, and a short product description. In every advertisement platform, you'll have character limitations, forcing you to make the best use of your limited space.
To optimizes your copy's impact, you should also understand your audience persona, their identity, and online behavior. Use a strong, honest, and appealing tone to get their attention and make an offer they cannot refuse.
Make sure to include the main keywords and a clear CTA so the audience knows what to do next. If you're not sure what content strategy is more effective, conduct A/B Split tests and adjust your future campaigns according to the winning version.
Your budget will determine how you structure your PPC campaign and how much you're willing to pay for the clicks you get on the ad. The good thing about Amazon advertising is that there are many different options accessible to a range of budgets.
If you're brand new to PPC ad campaigns, Sponsored Product Ad type is the perfect choice for you. These ads don't take much time and effort to set up and can be easily expanded into Sponsored Brand and Sponsored Display ads.
There is no fixed recommended budget for PPC advertising. You can always change a budget and adjust the time frame when you create your ad campaign, but ideally, your advertising budget should be approximately 10% of your total revenue.
The exact cost of a PPC ad campaign depends on a handful of factors, including:
Once you have created a well-crafted copy, you need to take one step further and optimize your landing page. The landing page is the page on your website that you send leads to after they click on your ad. The landing page should be SEO-optimized, highly targeted, and relevant to your advertisement.
A well-optimized landing page plays a pivotal role in improving User Experience, Quality Score, and conversion rate. On the flip side, a poorly crafted landing page can easily waste all the time and money you spend on a PPC campaign.
There are many factors that contribute to a well-designed landing page, including:
Most PPC platforms like Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram allow you to customize your target audience, interests, location, and search terms. Amazon is not an exception. In fact, the customization features on this platform are quite astonishing. For instance, there are 6 types of targeting available on Amazon: Manual, Auto, Keyword, Product, By ASIN, and By category.
Customization features allow you to choose who you want your ads to reach. The ad viewers will be filtered based on location, interests, shoppers' previous clicks and purchases, and of course, their search history.
Amazon targeting features are essentially divided into two main categories: product targeting and category targeting. We talked extensively about how to effectively target your high-value products, but no Amazon PPC strategist can deny the power of category-specific targeting.
With the category targeting feature, you can promote your own product categories and brands on Amazon. This way, you can focus on high-traffic product details pages and drive more quality leads to your landing pages.
This is especially an excellent way to get more traction for new product launches or advertising products that are hard to sell. Category targeting will display your products alongside top-rated products and helps you reach shoppers who've shown interest in similar products.
By now, you can see that running an Amazon PPC campaign is not the easiest job on earth. There are many details and factors that require your continuous monitoring, and it's very easy to lose track of the process. But an Amazon PPC strategist can help you overcome all the challenges and run a lucrative campaign.
JM&Co. is a leading digital marketing agency with a highly skilled and dedicated team of designers, copywriters, social media consultants, business development advisors, and SEO experts. Our mission is to help you manage and improve your Amazon PPC campaigns.
Our services include:
There's no need to wait any longer; contact us now to get your Amazon PPC campaign up and running.
The art is building the right growth campaign. The science is in the results.
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