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In the highly competitive realm of e-commerce, mastering Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) optimization has become the linchpin of success for sellers on the world’s largest online marketplace.
Amazon PPC offers a powerful way to boost product visibility, attract potential customers, and drive sales. However, navigating this complex advertising landscape requires a strategic approach that combines meticulous campaign structuring, keyword management, and bid optimization.
In this article, we will delve into the essential strategies and techniques that can help sellers harness the full potential of this advertising platform, ultimately leading to increased profitability and sustainable growth.
Whether you’re a seasoned seller looking to refine your advertising tactics or a newcomer seeking to make a mark, understanding the nuances of Amazon PPC optimization is the key to thriving in the competitive world of e-commerce.
Quick Guide
What are the benefits of using Amazon PPC ads?
10 tips for Amazon PPC optimization
- Ensure consistent campaign structuring
- Group similar products together within a single ad group
- Segment your ad groups based on the specificity of keywords
- Allow Amazon to identify relevant keywords for you in a campaign automatically
- Enhance your product listings to ensure that ads appear for all pertinent search queries
- Reduce costs by eliminating undesirable search queries
- Monitor your product performance to track PPC expenditure
- Establish your desired Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) target
- Monitor and fine-tune your CPC (Cost Per Click) bids for optimization
- Initiate bidding on recently identified keywords with an increased bid amount
Conclusion
What are the benefits of using Amazon PPC ads?
Not everyone is willing to invest in paid traffic, as some may find it expensive and prefer relying on organic traffic. However, organic traffic has its limitations, and sudden algorithm changes by platforms like Amazon or Google can result in a significant loss of traffic. This is where running an Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign can offer substantial benefits.
Here are five advantages of running a PPC ad campaign:
- Brand Awareness
Amazon PPC allows you to build brand awareness efficiently. Advertisers are only charged when someone clicks on their ad, so even generating impressions can help. This exposure is crucial for showcasing your brand, and it can save you money as you’re only charged for actual clicks.
- Sales Boost
Increasing product visibility among paying customers is vital for generating sales. Amazon sponsored product ads enable you to target relevant keywords within your niche, increasing the chances of getting your products on the first page of Amazon. With an optimized product listing, consistent use of sponsored product ads can drive more sales.
- Organic Ranking Improvement
Amazon’s A10 Algorithm considers sales as a key factor in organic ranking. Running an Amazon PPC campaign can lead to increased sales, which, in turn, can improve your organic search ranking. It’s an effective strategy to enhance your visibility on Amazon’s organic search results.
- Targeted Audience
PPC campaigns target buyers, not casual browsers. You can focus on users actively searching for products related to your niche, ensuring that your ads reach potential customers ready to make a purchase. Leveraging keyword search terms and browsing behavior, you can capture high-intent audiences.
- Global Reach
Amazon is a global platform, and PPC campaigns offer a worldwide reach. By running profitable PPC campaigns, you can extend brand awareness and product exposure to a global audience. This opportunity allows you to compete with more prominent brands on a relatively modest budget.
Amazon PPC campaigns offer a cost-effective way to build brand awareness, boost sales, enhance organic rankings, target serious buyers, and achieve a global reach. It’s a valuable tool for businesses looking to thrive in the competitive landscape of online retail.
10 tips for Amazon PPC optimization
In Amazon advertising, it’s important to make every penny count. The marketplace is highly competitive, so making your ad campaigns work well is essential for good results.
Here are some practical steps to make your Amazon ads perform better. If you follow these regularly, you’ll notice a big reduction in ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) and get more value from your ad budget.
- Ensure consistent campaign structuring
Your PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns help you organize your advertising efforts. This can be both good and challenging. Typically, a campaign structure follows these patterns:
- By Product Category: Grouping products like men’s shoes, keyboards, or cameras together.
- By Brand: Organizing products by brand names, such as Nike, Adidas, or Puma.
- By Top Sellers: Highlight the products that sell the most, like the top 10 best-sellers.
It’s essential to stick with one organizing method for your campaigns. If you change how you organize them, you might end up with duplicate ads.
For example, if you create one campaign by brand and another by category, the same products could appear in both campaigns. Consistency in your organization helps avoid this issue.
- Group similar products together within a single ad group
In each ad group, there are a bunch of products and a bunch of keywords that go together. It’s crucial to pick products that make sense for those keywords. In other words, the products in one ad group should all be related to the keywords in that group.
However, a word of caution: when you’re looking at how well your Amazon ads are doing, be careful. Even if the products in the same ad group have similar keywords, they might have very different profit margins. This can affect how profitable your ads are. That’s why it’s a smart idea to figure out what a good ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) is for your Amazon ads before you dive into Amazon PPC optimization.
- Segment your ad groups based on the specificity of keywords
When you have a wide range of products, you’ll also have lots of different keywords that fit those products. Let’s say you sell shoes:
- The keyword “shoe” works for all types of shoes.
- Some shoes can also use the keyword “men’s shoes.”
- And for certain men’s shoes, “men’s sneakers” is a relevant keyword.
Now, if you put the keyword “men’s shoes” in every ad group for sneakers, boots, loafers, and more, it can get confusing. You won’t know which ads are showing for which keyword bids.
To keep things organized, a good idea is to separate broader, similar keywords into their own ad groups. For instance:
Campaign 1: Men’s Shoes for Product Category 1
- Ad Group 1 (“men’s shoes”) for general keywords related to that product category, like “shoes for men,” and top-selling products.
- Ad Group 2 (“men’s sneakers”) for specific keywords like “sneakers for men,” and products that match.
- Ad Group 3 (“men’s boots”) for specific keywords like “men’s boots,” and the products that fit those terms.
- This way, you can manage your ads more effectively and make sure the right products show up for the right keywords.
- Allow Amazon to identify relevant keywords for you in a campaign automatically
Consider running two types of advertising campaigns for the same products: an automatic campaign and a manual campaign. Start with the automatic campaign and let it run for a few days or weeks. After this period, review the search terms that have resulted in the most sales.
Then, take those successful search terms and incorporate them into your manual campaign. This approach allows you to use the automatic campaign to discover which keywords work best before optimizing your manual campaign based on these findings.
- Enhance your product listings to ensure that ads appear for all pertinent search queries
Amazon wants to make sure that the ads displayed to customers are closely related to what they’re looking for. Typically, ads are allowed for keywords that are found in the product listing text, such as the title, attributes, description, and search terms.
To expand your reach and target more potential customers, check if keywords with no impressions are included in your product listing text. If they aren’t, consider adding these keywords to your product listing text. This ensures that your ads can run for these keywords and helps you reach a wider audience of potential customers.
To enhance your Amazon product’s visibility, consider using the SellerApp Amazon Keyword Research tool. It helps identify effective keywords that perform well. For instance, if you’re selling a wireless smartphone charger on Amazon, this tool can help you discover and add relevant, high-performing keywords to your product listing.
- Reduce costs by eliminating undesirable search queries
Amazon ads can appear for a range of search terms, not just the exact keywords you’ve bid on. To control your ad visibility and avoid unnecessary costs, you have two options:
- Keyword Match Types
Amazon offers three match types for Sponsored Products ads:
- Broad Match: Your ad can show search queries that contain all the words in your keyword, regardless of their order, and it considers variations like misspellings and synonyms.
- Phrase Match: Your ad appears for searches that include your keyword(s) in the exact order you specify, with close variations like singular/plural.
- Exact Match: Your ad displays only when the search query precisely matches your keyword, including singular and plural forms.
- Negative Keywords
You can also use negative keywords to control when your ad doesn’t appear.
There are two types:
- Negative Exact: Your ad won’t show if the search query exactly matches the negative keyword or has minor variations like singular and plural forms. It’s like Exact Match but excluding terms.
- Negative Phrases: Your ad won’t appear if the search query includes the negative keyword as part of a phrase or as a whole. It’s similar to Phrase Match but excludes terms.
These options help you fine-tune your ad campaigns, ensuring your ads show up for relevant searches while avoiding irrelevant or costly clicks.
- Monitor your product performance to track PPC expenditure
In an ad group, you often have multiple products using the same keywords. As your campaigns run, you’ll notice that certain products perform better in that group.
A crucial part of optimizing your Amazon PPC is to focus on getting the most sales from that ad group. To do this, gradually remove products with poor performance from the ad group. This way, you’ll channel impressions and clicks toward products that are more likely to turn those clicks into purchases. By avoiding spending money on products with low conversion rates, you can make your ad campaigns more cost-effective.
- Establish your desired Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) target
It’s important to set a clear target for how much you’re willing to spend on advertising compared to how much you want to earn from those ads. This is known as your Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS), and you can use the Amazon ACoS calculator to determine this, and it can vary depending on your campaign’s goals.
If your main aim is to make a profit, your target ACoS will be based on your profit margin. Typically, ACoS targets range from 5% to 15%.
However, if you’re launching a new product and want to boost its visibility in search results, you might be willing to spend more on advertising, even if it means not making an immediate profit. In such cases, your target ACoS could go as high as 100%. This strategy focuses on long-term gains and building a brand presence.
- Monitor and fine-tune your CPC (Cost Per Click) bids for optimization
Choosing the right bid for each keyword in your manual campaigns is crucial, and it can vary from keyword to keyword. It’s important to have enough data to make informed bid adjustments, so wait for at least a week between changes.
Here are some general principles for optimizing your Cost Per Click (CPC) bids:
ACoS Above Target: If a keyword’s Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) is higher than your target, consider lowering the bid. This helps test if you can improve the balance between ad spending and sales.
ACoS Below Target: When a keyword’s ACoS is below your target, try increasing the bid. This can test whether increasing your bid expands your ad’s reach and generates more sales.
Low-Performing Keywords: For keywords that aren’t making sales or getting enough visibility, try raising the bid. A higher bid can lead to better ad placement, more views, and clicks.
Non-Performing Keywords: Keywords that only cost you money without generating sales or can’t be adjusted profitably should be paused or stopped.
Regularly update your campaigns based on these principles to find the right balance between ad spending and sales for each keyword. This helps you reach your desired advertising goals.
- Initiate bidding on recently identified keywords with an increased bid amount
When you add a new keyword to your campaign, it doesn’t have any past data for Amazon to work with. So, to kickstart it and get some visibility, it’s a good idea to set a higher bid initially, typically around $0.75 or more (depending on your product category).
By offering a higher bid, you can get the keyword to show up in searches and gather some clicks and impressions. Once it has a bit of a history, you can often lower the bid gradually as you figure out the optimal bid price for that keyword. This process helps you find the right balance for bidding on new keywords effectively.
Conclusion
Amazon PPC optimization is a dynamic and essential aspect of a successful e-commerce strategy. To thrive in the competitive Amazon marketplace, sellers must employ a combination of strategies, including campaign structuring, keyword management, bid optimization, and cost control.
By implementing these optimization techniques, sellers can maximize their Amazon PPC campaigns, boost visibility, increase sales, and ultimately achieve greater success in the ever-evolving world of online retail.
