This comprehensive guide to efficient advertising strategy on Amazon was compiled from some of the best minds in the Amazon Advertising game, and is backed by real data, research, and hands-on experience from our in-house advertising team. Whether you’ve just started dabbling in the Amazon Advertising space or have been tinkering with it for a while, this guide will teach you something new about strategy creation and give you some ideas about how to stop throwing money at advertising and start spending efficiently where it counts.

Why Advertising on Amazon?

The fact that advertising on Amazon needs to be part of your overall Amazon sales strategy may seem like something that goes without saying. However, Amazon Advertising can quickly turn into a giant money dump unless you start with the end in mind.

If you’re not completely aware of how to strategize on Amazon Advertising, you’re going to end up wasting precious time and money. Here are reasons why a strategic investment in Amazon Advertising will pay off.

1. Understand ROI more clearly.

When someone clicks on an ad, Amazon tracks the whole buying experience—whether that person bought the product, ultimately bought from a competitor, or what other turns the customer took down the advertising funnel. Using Amazon Advertising clarifies the customer buying experience with metrics that will show you the return on
your investment (or lack thereof).

2. Do it for the data.

OK, OK, Amazon may be way behind Google and Facebook as far as sharing advertising data goes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t glean important info. from the ’Zon all the same. Brand Analytics, Amazon’s dashboard for brands in Seller Central, offers some juicy insights. Plus, many think 2020 is the year Amazon Advertising may start offering key data sets Google and Facebook have long offered and then some, like lifetime advertising data, a keyword planning feature, clean room technology, and even TACOS.

Quick Amazon Advertising Best Practices & Strategies

1. Use all of Amazon’s advertising solutions together.

Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Amazon Stores, DSP, Livestream, etc.

2. Advertise all your products.

Why are you selling it if you don’t want to promote it? Have a basic campaign for all items for a 25% bid or with low bids so there’s a chance of it coming up. If there’s a product you don’t want to advertise because it doesn’t sell well or have good reviews, that’s a stronger reason to promote it. If you’re selling it you’re already selling it—just not as effectively. Feed all of your children!

3. Use Automatic and Manual campaigns for your sponsored ads.

The average advertiser doesn’t think of using different types, but you need to understand that everything works in different ways. You want protein, carbs, and fat on your plate. If you’re only doing one, it’s not balanced and won’t work as well.

4. Create strategic campaigns.

Like the ones we mention above. Here are a few more examples: All Catalog, Top Products, Low Traffic Items, New Products, Top Keywords, Complementary Products.

5. Don’t set bids and budgets too low.

If you’re not getting the traffic that you want then your bid and budget are too low. If you have a low impression or click count then you know you’re bidding too low because you’re not winning any auctions.

Impressions is the best metric to measure here.

Remember, the whole purpose is to drive more traffic and get more people seeing your item. You have to spend more to win, but you can spend more efficiently.

6. You can’t have too many keywords, don’t be afraid to start with keywords.

You’ll find that only a small percentage of the keywords that you use end up generating revenue, so you’ll want to use a large keyword set and refine it over time. If you don’t have enough impressions, and your bids are quite high, consider adding additional keywords. It doesn’t matter how low your ACoS is if you’re only converting on 1 keyword.

7. Use Bidding Controls to optimize bids for top of search and detail page placement.

Allow Amazon to manipulate bids and allow your advertising team to set bid multipliers for multiple placements. When you get an impression, it can show up in a number of different places on Amazon, so the placement multiplier allows you to up the bid for the top slot.

8. Strategically (and sparingly!) use Lightning Deals and Coupons.

Don’t train your customers to think there’s always going to be a discount around the corner. If you do, your advertising is going to be less effective.

9. Have a plan for seasonality and new product launches.

Make a holiday plan. For example, have a normal campaign structure throughout the year, but make sure you have a plan in place for peak seasons. Make sure you’re aware of the time periods that are important for your items (e.g. back-to-school item, New Years, grills for summer, tools for Father’s Day, Christmas, etc.).

It doesn’t work to spend your budget evenly throughout the year. Allocate budget accordingly based on the cyclical nature of your business—don’t run out of budget at the end of the year on accident. Make a plan!

10. Have clear goals and use the appropriate metrics to track them.

Amazon Advertising FAQ’s

What is automated advertising?

A series of tools that do part of the work (there’s no catch-all). For example, these tools schedule postings, run equations that help mathematically optimize your listings, and help you find keywords. However, these tools aren’t matching keywords and moving them for you.

What is algorithmic advertising?

Ads that are served up by an algorithm. Through an algorithmic placement in search, it’s all based on what a shopper is searching for so you’re not thinking about who your target customer is. Then display algorithms use potential customers browsing and shopping habits to target ads to them based on customer behavior. Note: Algorithmic optimization is not algorithmic advertising.

What are some of the benefits of using optimization technology?

You can save yourself time and get to ad spend efficiency quicker.

What are the results from automated optimization?

It depends on where you’re starting from. If, all of the sudden, you start using an automated tool, you’re going to see a huge lift. If you have seasoned campaigns through an intelligent process, you’re not going to get a tool and all of the sudden see 20% performance improvement. You’ll still see a bump, but the big value is the time savings from your current structure. It allows you to be more robust because, if you’re not optimizing your advertising yourself, you can focus more on high-level direction (where you need to spend your time), while the machine gets to be the operator.

Recommended to read: 12 Best Amazon PPC Optimization Tools for Sellers.

Is advertising just table stakes now?

You’re never going to be as successful as you could be without advertising, and you’re opening yourself up to significant brand erosion if you’re not advertising. So, yes.

Conclusion:

Amazon Advertising can help you sell more. But forking over more ad dollars doesn’t equate to more sales—you’ve got to be strategic. We hope our strategy development method shared in this eBook will help you approach your advertising in a new way, create efficient campaigns that don’t spend more than you need to, and help you reach your advertising goals on Amazon.

Pattern’s Advertising experts would love to share a personalized analysis with you of your current advertising strategy and how our PPC automated software, Predict, can help you reach your goals quicker.

The post Top 10 Amazon Advertising Best Practices & Strategies appeared first on Amazon-ASIN Blogs - Latest from Amazon Sellers: News, Advice, and Effective Strategies.

The sponsored products target the exact buyers looking for the relevant keywords. It is a logical and affordable plan. It is not a gamble because you pay only when the ad is clicked, so it is rightly called pay-per-click campaigns.

The click takes the buyer directly to your product. This increases your visibility, brings in fresh buyers, allows seasonal promotions, and improves product visibility.

In the following sections, we will show you the high-level trending tips for improving your ROI and decreasing your ACoS.

1. Keyword Strategy
2. Rank Optimization
3. Bids Adjustment
4. Variations Grouping
5. Top Variation Campaign
6. Alternate Keywords Targeting
7. Product Performance Campaigns Structure
8. New-to-Brand Metrics to Increase Sales

1. Keyword Strategy

This PPC strategy works because, as a new seller, you will have a tough time competing with well-established players in the market. Suppose you target the highly searched keywords right initially – keywords that usually come with high competition and CPC. In that case, you will end up spending a lot of money without getting any exposure for your brands, let alone traffic and conversions. Even if your listings get the ad impressions, the likelihood of getting sales will be low since your competitors have a much better position and reputation in the market for those generic keywords.

Therefore, the plan here is quite simple: Go after the long-tail keywords right initially, as you will face little resistance in getting ranked for those phrases. With little competition and high purchase intent, you can land sales relatively quickly and boost your sales history. Once consumers start to become more aware of your brand and the product starts to achieve a superior rank in the Amazon SERP, you can start targeting the next level keywords and gradually make your way up.

2. Rank Optimization

If the listing is ranking beyond page five or six on Amazon, it is recommended that you focus only on a handful of keywords that are converting well rather than all the ranking keywords. This way, you preserve your funds and concentrate on the phrases that are ranking in sales but are pretty far behind in the search results. The bid here needs to be relatively modest. Similarly, for those keywords ranked in the third, fourth, and fifth pages, you can follow a more moderate strategy that focuses on top-performing keywords as usual.

You need to keep bidding consistently over time and see which keywords are getting the most sales. Then, optimize your campaigns accordingly with these keywords. Lastly, for keywords that are ranking on page one and two, you need to proceed with an aggressive stance. Since you are just a few spots shy of the prime positions, you want to be as aggressive as possible with your bidding so that you can win those positions and improve your product’s visibility.

3. Bids Adjustment

For every campaign that you run on Amazon, you can view the placement report and see which of the three positions brought you the most exposure and conversions. Based on this insight, you can set the placement bidding multiplier for each placement between 0% and 900% to further improve your odds of landing conversions and increasing brand awareness. Now here, you may have a question: If I’m using the placement multiplier along with my usual bidding strategy, what is going to be my default bid amount?

To calculate your default bid amount with all of the campaign bidding strategies:

• Dynamic Bids – Down Only
• Dynamic Bids – Up and Down
• Fixed Bids

Here is what you need to remember:

The placement multiplier is first added to the bid price. The dynamic bidding increment is then added to arrive at the final figure.

4. Variations Grouping

If your product has multiple variations, they will most likely be listed as child ASINs. In such a scenario, running an ad campaign for each of them individually may not be feasible as it will eat into your budget and more importantly, your variations may end up competing among themselves for the ads. In a way, this is product cannibalization, and as such, you could avoid it when it comes to PPC campaigns. Therefore, an excellent strategy to tackle this problem is to group individual variations into one single package and then sell it on Amazon under a unique ASIN.

5. Top Variation Campaign

Suppose you don’t have the bandwidth to create a combined package for your variations or run individual campaigns for all the variations. In that case, you can run a PPC campaign only for the top-performing variation. Again, this PPC strategy works well, provided the variations are listed as child ASINs.

Over here, you may miss out on increasing your average order value and other perks that come with grouping products together, but it will still be easier on your pocket and fairly more efficient.

The sales will eventually trickle down into the other options. It is because when customers visit your ads, they will also see the other variants available for the product in the same listing. Depending on their preference, they may opt for a different variation. Hence, the sale you consequently get here will be from an ad that was originally shown for your top-selling variant.

6. Alternate Keywords Targeting

One of the lesser-known ways to position your product well on Amazon lies in the way you present it to the audience. If you can highlight the features and benefits of your product vividly in your description in a compelling, creative, and engaging way, you stand to gain significantly from it.

But more than that, you will also have an edge if you target the not-so-direct, alternative keywords in your PPC advertisements. This is because, at times, people visit Amazon searching for solutions rather than looking for products.

In other words, they are not sure what they need until and unless they see the product for themselves.

Therefore, as a seller, you can identify these solutions your products address and target the same through Amazon Sponsored Products.

7. Product Performance Campaigns Structure

Often, we create ad campaigns based on the performance of keywords. If we see a keyword that is converting very well in an auto campaign, we move it to manual and set match types for better control over bids and daily budget. While this has proven to be an excellent strategy to improve your products’ rank on Amazon, it can be a bit tricky to control the overall ACoS simply because some products may require more clicks than others to make a sale.

So, instead of creating ad campaigns based on keywords, consider creating them based on the performance of a product.

8. New-to-Brand Metrics to Increase Sales

If your brand is registered with the Amazon Brand Registry, you should look into taking advantage of Sponsored Brands. You can customize the ads to your liking with your headlines and product selection. These ads help increase brand awareness or promote particular products, thanks to their new-to-brand metrics.

These metrics allow you to gauge your sales and orders generated from first-time shoppers of your brand on Amazon.

You can use this data to optimize your Sponsored Brand campaigns and acquire new customers.

Alternately, you can identify the proportion of your sales to recurring customers and craft your advertising strategy accordingly.

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