Around 50% of shoppers online start their search on Amazon. Many studies differ on the actual number, but what is clear is that people who come to Amazon have one thing in common – they intend to buy!
Amazon has cashed in on its rising prominence through various marketing services. While Google is still the undisputed leader in search advertising, Amazon is quickly catching up, according to an eMarketer study. Amazon pocketed nearly 13% of total revenue from search ads in the US in 2019. The retail giant’s share is only expected to grow.
The high purchasing intent of Amazon users and the platform’s sophisticated advertising platform offers a potent advantage to Amazon sellers. The most effective marketing tool available to all Amazon sellers is the Sponsored Product Ads. The simple Amazon (PPC) advertising solution is a great way to kickstart your business and boost sales. Let’s look at the best ways you can leverage Amazon Product Ads.
Quick Guide
- What are Amazon Sponsored Product Ads?
- Hacks to boost sales with Amazon Product Ads
- Hack #1: Use Automatic Campaigns
- Hack #2: Use negative keywords
- Hack #3: Don’t advertise non-performers
- Hack #4: Use category-specific targeting
- Hack #5: Structure your campaigns
- Hack #6: Make data-informed choices
- Hack #7: Bid on your own brand
- Final Thoughts
What are Amazon Sponsored Product Ads?
All third-party sellers can create a sponsored product ad. This makes it the most common type of PPC advertising on Amazon. These ads use a PPC model where the seller is only charged if a user clicks on the ad. Sponsored product ads show up on almost every page of the buying journey. They appear within the search results and product listing pages. This is why they are incredibly valuable for sellers.
They also have a higher conversion rate compared to the other ad types Amazon offers.
Sponsored product ads can be further divided into two types:
- Automatic-targeting: Amazon’s algorithm finds relevant keywords from your product listing. Over time, Amazon uses the data it collects from clicks and purchases to optimize the ads for conversions. The automatic-targeting ad campaigns cannot be manually optimized.
- Manual-targeting: The seller inputs the relevant keywords and bids. The entire process is manual, so the seller needs to constantly monitor the keywords and bids, and make changes to optimize campaigns. Manual campaigns give you more control over your ad spend and will help you achieve your target ACoS (advertising cost of sale.)
Hacks to boost sales with Amazon Product Ads
While business goals differ from seller-to-seller, these tips are designed for everyone. These proven strategies have helped countless sellers make the most out of their advertising budget!
Hack #1: Use Automatic Campaigns
While creating sponsored product ads for any product, it is usually a good idea to create a manual and automatic campaign. While automatic campaigns are slightly inefficient compared to a well-managed manual campaign, they are a great source to find new high-converting keywords for your manual campaign.
Amazon Keyword research is a key part of optimizing your PPC listings. The right keyword targeting can make or break your PPC campaigns. This is why discovering new high-volume keywords that convert is profitable in the long-run. Once you discover high-converting keywords from your automatic campaigns, move them to the manual campaign for further optimization.
Hack #2: Use negative keywords
Have you noticed keywords with lots of clicks but no conversion? This is probably because the keyword is not relevant to your listing. Sponsored product ads have a handy feature to ensure these irrelevant keywords don’t eat into your advertising budget. You can mark them as ‘negative’ keywords. Identifying negative keywords can drastically help you reduce your ad spend and improve your ACoS.
Once you mark a keyword as ‘negative,’ your product ads will not show up for those keyword searches. Before you mark a keyword as negative, make sure you are confident that it is not relevant to your listing. Additionally, there are two ways you can optimize your ads using negative keywords:
Negative Phrase: Ads will not show for the search term and close variations of the keyword.
Negative Exact: Only the exact keyword is marked as negative.
Hack #3: Don’t advertise non-performers
If your product isn’t selling despite a large number of clicks, it is time to rethink your strategy. Whether you’re either looking to boost sales or improve brand recognition, a product that doesn’t sell is a drain on your budget.
Success on Amazon has a lot to do with finding the right product. No matter how much money you spend on advertising, if your product doesn’t meet customer standards, it won’t sell. If this is the case, stop advertising the product. It’s that simple. If you’re unable to find a breakthrough product with high-demand, you can use SellerApp’s product research tool to find the niche that works for you.
Hack #4: Use category-specific targeting
Sponsored product ads allow sellers to use category-specific targeting. This will pair your products with complementary ones, thereby increasing the odds of converting shoppers. The feature is called Product Targeting. According to Amazon, you can use a “combination of category and refinements available from the Amazon catalog” to target your advertisements. This means that instead of using keywords, you can target your ads using a category, price, brand, or a set of ASINS, among others. This granular refinement can help you create ads that show up alongside your competitors’ products if necessary. You can also target top-performing ASINs to potentially poach a few sales!
Note: One advertising campaign can only use one type of targeting – either keyword targeting or product targeting.
If you’re launching a new product, this is a great way to get traction early on. Just target the biggest players in the category, or competitor brands to capitalize on those searches.
Hack #5: Structure your campaigns
Organize your campaigns. You don’t want to be in a position where you are bidding against yourself for a target keyword. This is why you should categorize your products when creating ad groups. You can categorize them by product, brand, or competitor brands. Whatever categorization method you pick, make sure you are consistent to avoid overlap.
You should also ensure that the products in an ad group share similar target keywords.
Hack #6: Make data-informed choices
All your decisions should be based on actionable data. Instincts rarely work when it comes to digital marketing. Amazon provides a lot of raw data for you to work with. Extracting useful information from it can be difficult though. SellerApp’s data analytics solutions make this process easier by giving sellers actionable data at their fingertips!
Hack #7: Bid on your own brand
If you have an established brand already, you should bid on your brand name when launching a PPC campaign. You’re probably wondering why. The answer is simple, your competitors are probably bidding on your brand name as well. Let’s say you’re an established brand selling tea. In order to poach your loyal customers, your competitor will probably launch PPC campaigns to target search terms for your brand’s products. You can dissuade this, or even prevent this from happening if you bid on your own keywords!
In short, you need to bid on your own brand to protect your customer-base and prevent your competitors from stealing your market share.
Final Thoughts
While these hacks are guaranteed to boost sales and improve ACoS, their effectiveness will depend on how often you optimize your campaigns. A successful sponsored product campaign depends on constant optimization and tweaks. This is why you need to check on your campaigns on a regular basis. I recommend analyzing your campaigns every 15 days to identify high-converting and non-performing keywords.
Optimizing your PPC campaigns is a full-time job. If you’re shorthanded, you can always hire management services like SellerApp to optimize your campaigns and give you the best bang for your buck.
Author Bio
Arishekar is a content marketing and growth marketing strategist, He helps companies to grow their revenue.
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