How do you manage Amazon PPC campaigns? Are you using the same strategies you did last year? If yes, then you should probably rethink your strategy. The landscape has changed since 2017, and new tools and tactics are now available.
PPC (pay per click) advertising is a form of paid marketing where advertisers pay each time someone clicks their ads. This is done through Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, or Amazon. In order to maximize profits, businesses need to optimize their campaigns.
Before we go to Amazon PPC strategy, let’s tackle some basic aspects of Amazon PPC.
Amazon PPC Campaign Types
Sponsored products are the most popular form of advertising on Amazon. Third-party sellers use them because they’re easy to create and manage.
An automatic campaign means that you set up your ad campaign based on keywords related to your products or services. This type of targeting allows you to reach the most relevant audience for your business. On the other hand, manual targeting requires you to manually select keywords that describe your products and services. You can also target people who are interested in your products by using demographic information such as age, gender, location, and interests.
Automatic Campaign
Automatic targeting means using keywords that Amazon’s algorithm finds relevant to your product. You can target specific keywords or broad categories. You can also choose to exclude certain keywords from being targeted. For example, you could exclude keywords that are too competitive (meaning there are many other products selling those exact words).
Close Match Ads appear when shoppers use search terms that are closely related to your product. Loose Match Ads appear when shoppers search keywords that are loosely related to your product but are sold by a different brand. Substitute Ads target shoppers who are considering similar products but are sold by another brand.
These types of ads are called Complement Ads. These ads appear when you view the product details page. They show up as an image or video related to your selected items.
Manual Campaigns
You can manually target your ads by choosing specific keywords. Ads will only show up when someone searches for those keywords. Manual targeting allows you to monitor advertising costs and adjust accordingly.
Negative Keywords Targeting
You’ll want to add what’s called “negative keywords,” as well. These are words that you don’t want your ads to show up for. Keywords that are non-converting, low click, not related, or high-spend can be considered as negative keywords. Updating your negative targeting weekly can increase your product’s profit and performance.
Sponsored Product Ads
The way these ads work is simple. When someone searches for something like “running shoes,” an advertiser with a sponsored product would bid on this relevant keyword. After bidding, the advertiser gets listed at the top of search results.
When someone clicks on this listing, they land on the advertiser’s landing page. There, they see all the features and benefits of the item.
Sponsored Brand Ads
Sponsored brands are advertisements that appear above the organic search results. These ads are sponsored by companies who want to promote their products. They usually show the company logo, a short description of the product, and sometimes some pictures of the product. When clicked, they redirect the customer to the product details page or the brand’s storefront.
Sponsored Display Ads
Sponsored Display Ads is the newest kind of Amazon PPC campaign, but it isn’t as popular as other types of PPCs yet. Just 25% of third-parties Amazon sellers use Sponsored Ads. You will see these type of ads inside a product listing.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s proceed to the tips. With over 100 million customers worldwide, Amazon has a huge audience to target. If you want to succeed in Amazon PPC management, you need to take advantage of these opportunities.
Effective Amazon PPC Strategy in 2022
1. Go from Specific to Generic with your Target Keywords
Long-tail keywords are more specific than short-tail keywords. You should start off by focusing on long-tail keywords because they’re more likely to bring you customers who are looking for what you sell. Generic keywords are used when people search for a keyword phrase that doesn’t give them an idea about what they want.
See our guide on Amazon PPC keyword research.
2. Optimize Based on the Ranking of your Listing
We want to increase our ranking for a specific keyword by increasing our bid/budget ratio. Our strategy is to run three different ad campaigns, with different bids and budgets. The bids and budgets vary based on the search rank of our listing.
The first thing you should do here is to track the top keywords for your product. You’ll want to analyze the page rank and position for each keyword. Then, you should implement the following plan:
You should focus on a few keywords that have higher conversion rates. Don’t waste too much money on bidding on keywords that aren’t converting well.
Similarly, for those keywords ranked 3rd, 4th, and 5th page, you can follow a moderate strategy that focuses on the top-performing keywords as usual. You should keep bidding consistently over time, and see which keywords are generating the most sales. Using these keywords, you can optimize your advertising campaigns accordingly. Amazon automatically enhances the organic rankings of your listings for these queries as they start to generate conversions.
Lastly, for keywords that are ranked on pages 1 and 2, you should bid aggressively. You are just a few spots away from the top rankings, so you want to make sure you get there first.
3. Adjust Bids depending on Ad Placements
Amazon PPC has a new feature that allows you to optimize your campaign with much more finesse. You get more control over where you place your ad and how much money you’re willing to spend.
This strategy deals mainly with adjusting bids based on placements, as you know, your ads will appear in either of three places. Your ads will be placed top of the search results on the first page of the search results, within the rest of the search result pages, and within the second page of the search results.
You can view the placement report for every campaign that you run. Based on this insight you can set the bid multipliers for each placement between 0 and 900%. This allows you to increase or decrease your chances of getting more impressions, clicks, and conversions.
Ads should be placed at the top of search result pages. A Click-Through-Rate of 2% is excellent. To get even better CTRs, you could increase the multipliers by 100-200%. This may also work well because the top position on page 1 of Amazon SERP is your prime real estate.
Now, if you’re using the placement multiplier along with your normal bidding strategy, then your default bid amount should be $1.00. However, if you’re using an aggressive bidding strategy, then your bid amount should be $2.00.
Dynamic bids work well for some products but not others. For example, dynamic bids work great for books because you can raise your bid up to 100% and then lower it back down to zero if the book doesn’t sell. However, for other types of products, such as electronics or clothing, dynamic bidding doesn’t work very well because there isn’t much room to adjust your price.
Ads at the top of the page are more expensive than ads elsewhere. Placements are priced equally regardless of the likelihood of a sale or conversion.
The placement multiplier is 1 + 0.1. The dynamic bidding increment is 10% of the current bid price, or 0.10. So, the final bid amount is 1 + 0.10 = 1.10.
4. Improve Visibility by Grouping Variations Together
When creating a new product, it is important to know what kind of products are already out there. You should also consider how your product fits in with existing ones. This helps you decide whether or not you need to create a new variation of your product.
A great idea to tackle this problem is grouping individual variations into one single pack and then selling it on Amazon under a single ASIN. For example: if you are selling four kinds of beef jerky at 15 dollars each, it is better to put them together and sell them as one pack of four for 50 dollars.
You should group similar variations together if you want to increase your average order values. Otherwise, you’ll lose money by running separate campaigns for each variation.
This is also how Google Adsense works. When someone visits your website, they’ll see your ads as well as the other variations of the product. People who prefer the original version will buy it, while those who prefer another option will buy that instead. So the sale you get here comes from an ad that was initially shown for your top-selling variant.
You should create separate ad groups for each flavor. Then, you can place them in the same ad group.
Black pepper is the most popular flavor among customers. However, if you focus your marketing efforts only on black pepper, you’ll miss out on potential sales of other flavors. A customer originally looking for black pepper might also buy the cajun or even the teriyaki versions.
You could increase the price of black pepper slightly more than other flavors. Or alternatively, you can create different campaigns for different variants. That is, instead of grouping all the four flavors in the same ad group. This gives you better control over your ACoS and daily advertising budget.
5. Also Target Indirect Keywords
Your product should be described in a way that highlights the features and benefits of the product. You need to make sure that the description is creative and engaging.
As an online seller, you can use Amazon Sponsored Products to promote your product by targeting keywords related to your product. You can also target long-tail searches related to your product.
The words to target can only be found by analyzing the products of your top competitors and the pain points of your target audience. You should also make sure to include those benefits in your organic listing description.
Your ads should be more than just a list of links. They should provide value to your readers. Cast a wider net by adding more items to your product listings. Optimize your campaigns after a few weeks to increase their effectiveness.
6. Monitor Product Performance and Tweak Ad Campaigns
We often create ads based on the performance of specific keywords. If we see that a keyword is converting very well in our auto-campaigns, we move it to our manual campaigns and set match types for more control over bids and daily budget. This has proven to be an effective strategy to improve our products’ rank on Amazon. However, it can be tricky to control the overall Average Cost Per Click (ACPC) because some products may require fewer clicks than others to make sales.
This input shows us that we should create separate campaigns for each product because they are performing differently. We can also see that the products with higher ACoS are more important than others.
With this, the first thing I’ll do is reduce the overall ACoS score of my first campaign. Secondly, I’ll be able to easily work on reducing my ad spend and improving the performance of my PPC campaign. Lastly, I’ll be able to see how well each product performs individually.
7. Product Targeting Ads
This advanced Amazon PPC strategy allows you to target customers based on specific products and categories. You can target specific Amazon sellers’ ASINs and display ads on their product pages.
You should target your ads towards the most profitable ASINS. This means that if you want to sell more books, then you should advertise on the page of the bestselling book.
You can run an Ad campaign for a few days and see if it makes sense. If it does, then you should continue with this strategy.
8. Experiment on Bid Amounts and Match Types
A good Amazon PPC strategy involves using different parameters for each campaign. You should try different match types, different bids, etc. The goal is to find the right combination that drives the most traffic and converts into sales.
You should vary the campaign parameters by changing the bid amount, the number of ads, ad position, and ad rotation. This allows you to test different combinations of these variables and determine which ones work best for you.
9. Make Use of the New-to-Brand Metrics
Sponsored Ads are useful in increasing brand recognition or promoting certain products. They’re also useful in increasing brand awareness, thanks to their new-to-brand metrics.
This metric allows you to see how many people are buying your products after being exposed to your ads. It also shows how much money you’re making off of each customer.
The new-to-brand metric helps us know how many people are coming back to our brand after buying something else. We can also use this number to target products or services to those who haven’t bought anything before.
On the other hand, if you’re trying to attract a lot of new customers to your brand, then it makes sense for you to promote your brand aggressively by using sponsored brands. This will make people more aware of your brand. You’ll also be able to increase sales.
10. Be the Customer
If you want to understand your customers, be the customer. Buyers looking for something precise often use the exact description. Therefore, they help you reduce to the exact thing. Having a buyer persona is very essential not only for Amazon PPC but also for any marketing strategies.
Conclusion
I hope this article helps you reach the top of Amazon search engine rankings. There is a lot of trial and error involved, but if you put in the time and effort, you’ll get there. Try any of these tips and let me know if that improved your campaigns.
Contact us if you need help improving your Amazon PPC strategy and increasing profitability for your brand on Amazon.