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7 Best Practices for Your Amazon Advertising Strategy

What Is Amazon Advertising?

Amazon Advertising is based on the pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning your business will not be charged for an ad until a customer clicks on it. To buy an ad, Amazon relies on the auction method: businesses name the price they’re willing to pay for a click, and those that win the “auction” have their ads appear.

7 Best Practices For Optimizing Your Amazon Advertising Strategy

Winning on Amazon isn’t easy! It has different rules than any other ad channel—online or offline. But Amazon Advertising presents a unique opportunity if you can take full advantage of it. Here are seven Amazon advertising strategies you can implement to see better ROI on your Amazon marketing campaigns:

Here are seven Amazon advertising strategies you can implement to see better ROI on your Amazon marketing campaigns:

  1. Master Sponsored Products
  2. Master Sponsored Brands
  3. Including keywords in product listings
  4. Ensure product listing descriptions are accurate and robust
  5. Use high-quality images
  6. Garner positive reviews
  7. Use a tool to manage your campaigns

 

Amazon advertising strategies 101: master the paid ads

The first step to creating a killer Amazon advertising strategy is understanding exactly what constitutes an Amazon ad. Amazon sells ads based on the pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning your business will not be charged for an ad until a customer clicks on it. To buy an ad, Amazon relies on the auction method: businesses name the price they’re willing to pay for a click, and those that win the “auction” have their ads appear. 

The two main types of Amazon ads are Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands.

Sponsored Products: Amazon’s Sponsored Products show up in search results as well as alongside organic search results on product detail pages. These ads appear based on keywords, and businesses can choose which keywords prompt their ads or allow Amazon to suggest search terms to target the ad. 

Amazon product ads are a hot topic. We’ve delved into how product-led advertising is helping fuel digital’s growth. And we’ve covered how cross-channel product advertising campaigns can increase customer engagement. Now we’ll share some tips to help make your Amazon product ads campaigns a success. Product ads are having a moment According to eMarketer, more product searches start on Amazon than anywhere else. And brands across a range of verticals—from consumer packaged goods to electronics to fashion—want in on those queries. They know they need to be visible when consumers search on Amazon, as well as other popular online retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy, Target and others, because these consumers are signaling a high intent to purchase. Ad placements in front of this audience are particularly appealing for brands, and can be quite effective. Skai data shows that monthly spend by advertisers on Amazon Advertising tripled between July and December of 2017. In 2018, Amazon’s overall advertising business more than doubled year over year, reaching $10 billion. And analysts expect a robust 50% growth this year as well. Clearly, brands are seeing good performance in this new channel— and they’re looking for scale. In order to find that scale, advertisers will have to become proficient in the three main ad units for Amazon product ads: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Product Display Ads. Amazon Product Ads: Sponsored Products Most advertisers get started with Sponsored Products by running auto-targeted campaigns. Amazon indexes a brand’s individual Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) and Product Detail pages and then runs machine learning algorithms against that index to select target keywords. You can take the learnings from the best-performing keywords in these campaigns and use them to seed manual campaigns. Manual campaigns on Amazon Advertising provide you with greater control over the specific products, keywords and ads you can include. It’s worth spending a little time on this point about auto-targeted campaigns and their unique ability to drive ongoing keyword discovery. As Amazon does not offer a native keyword tool, leveraging these types of campaigns to continuously “learn” from is a great way to keep seeding your exact, phrase, and broad campaigns on an ongoing basis. It’s best to earmark some small percentage of your budget for research, so you can take advantage of the queries and terms that Amazon’s systems can find for you. As of today, Amazon is still in beta with a program to extend the serving of Sponsored Products out across their display network in a syndication model. While it’s still early days, this could provide an interesting path toward more reach for advertisers. Optimization tip: Get very granular with the way you structure your Sponsored Products campaigns. Set up a separate campaign for each product, along with a set of associated keywords. You’ll have greater clarity and better control over individual optimizations at the product level. Example: You sell iPhone X cases in multiple colors and styles. With auto-targeted ads, grouping each of those variations into one campaign would result in Amazon indexing each product detail page for each variation—features, colors, styles, etc.—to seed the whole campaign. In your manual campaign, you may have separate campaigns for pink leather iPhone X case and black plastic iPhone X case. This kind of structure gives you the granularity to filter out particular colors/queries at a specific product level by not including them in your bids, or by specifying them as negative keywords. While initially, it’s tempting to go with a strategy of attracting a wide audience with a broad set of keywords across your whole iPhone X cases inventory, this won’t work as well when it comes time to optimize performance. To do that, you’ll want to narrow down the specific keywords for each product and use negative terms to exclude underperforming queries. Amazon Product Ads: Sponsored Brands Sponsored Brands are ads that include your brand logo, a headline you specify, and up to three of your products. These ads appear at the top of search results in a banner format, or in other placements below the fold, and help generate awareness for your brand and products. Eligibility is key here: If Amazon finds any one of your products to be ineligible, your campaign will be paused and your ads will not appear— and you’ll miss valuable opportunities. Your product’s eligibility for advertising is determined by a number of aspects related to the commerce experience, e.g. if the product is out of stock or is not profitable enough for Amazon. Optimization tip: Have backup ASINs for your brand in case one of your original choices becomes ineligible. In addition, be sure to pay attention to your notifications so you can react quickly to ineligibility issues and minimize campaign disruptions. For Sponsored Brands, we anticipate that the ability to create will soon be available in the API. This will allow technology platforms like Skai to really innovate on top of this ad unit, given its many moving parts—image, headline, multiple products. Amazon Product Ads: Product Display Ads Product Display Ads appear on Amazon’s product detail pages. You can target consumers by their interests or by selecting specific products (or ASINs) they are searching for. This could be your own products or those of your competitors, or even related products you think your targets might be interested in. Brands often use these ads for conquesting or defensive campaigns. Conquesting: As the name suggests, this campaign involves running ads on the detail pages of competitive products. The purpose is to entice consumers who land there to purchase your product instead. In order to be successful with this strategy, not only do your ads have to be on point but your on-page merchandising, images, reviews, pricing, etc., must be well coordinated as well. This may take some trial and error. Defensive campaigns: This strategy involves buying up ad inventory on your own product detail pages to ensure competitors aren’t able to conquest there. The trick with this strategy is to try to upsell to a later version or higher specification of your products or perhaps create product bundles to encourage consumers to spend more. While this ad unit is not used with the frequency of the previous two, it’s a great fit for certain advertisers, particularly those who are looking to lure away customers of high-priced products with lower-priced options. The future is, however, a bit unclear for Product Display Ads. Amazon is rolling out a simple display ad unit but details have not yet been shared as to where this unit might deliver. Clearly, ecommerce advertising is still growing. Brands are sorting through how Amazon product ads work in conjunction with traditional search, social and display campaigns. If you’re already using Skai Ecommerce to manage your Amazon campaigns, your Skai representative helps you implement these tips and optimize your performance. If you’d like to learn about the Skai Ecommerce platform, contact us for a demo today!

An example of Sponsored Products

Sponsored Brands: Sponsored Brands are keyword-targeted ads that feature the brand’s logo, a custom headline, and up to three product listings. These ads appear within search results and generally at the top of the page.

amazon sponsored brands

 

An example of Sponsored Brands

Amazon advertising strategies 101: understand organic search optimization (SEO)

But understanding how to advertise on Amazon is about much more than simply purchasing ads. While Amazon’s search ads might mean that businesses see a boost in sales immediately, search engine optimization (SEO) has important long-term effects, moving products to the top of search results (and keeping them there) over time. On a regular search engine such as Google, SEO is about getting pages to rank at the top—on Amazon, SEO is about getting product listings to the top.

While optimizing for Amazon search, creating excellent product listings—whether they’re for paid ads or for organic search results—is critical for any successful Amazon advertising strategy. 

Keywords Count

When creating a product listing that will appeal to both buyers and to A9 (Amazon’s search algorithm) keywords in the product title are critical. Try to include as many keywords as possible without sacrificing clarity. So, for example, instead of calling a product a “Backyard Planter,” try something like “Delectable Garden Cloth 12 Pocket Hanging Vertical Garden Wall Planter for Yard Garden Home Decoration” (an actual top result that pops up when searching for “backyard planter” on Amazon. 

The bullet points that list additional information about a product are also valuable in order to help customers compare products and to help A9 yield accurate results. Try to avoid repeating any of the keywords from the title in these descriptions, as repetition doesn’t seem to affect search ranking, and customers will be looking to these bullet points to try and differentiate one product from another. Use the bullets to really pitch the utility of your product in keyword-rich language. 

Make sure the text stands out

As much as most of us would like to believe that grammar and spelling lessons belong purely to school days, well-written, typo-free copy actually means a great deal when it comes to an Amazon advertising strategy. Customers are pretty wary of Amazon scams, and many take poor grammar, unclear product descriptions, and misspelled words as a sign that a product might not be on the up and up. 

All of the words used in titles and product descriptions should be informative and focused on the benefits of the product. Why might the searcher want the 12-pocket hanging wall planter over other, similar planters? Make sure your descriptions are not only accurate and easy to read but also sell your item. 

Picture Perfect

For online shopping, where customers are always worried about the hassle of returning a not-quite-right product through the mail, images can make or break a sale. So it is crucial that retailers pay close attention to the visual element of Amazon advertising campaigns. 

First, make sure all pictures of your products follow Amazon’s guidelines, which call for high-quality images of at least 1,000 pixels or larger. It’s also important to keep your images focused on the product being sold. And be sure the image listed on Amazon is an accurate representation of what the product looks like in real life. 

Reviews Matter

But even if your copy is excellent, images high quality and realistic, and your stellar Amazon advertising strategy has paid off in the form of clicks and (hopefully) sales, you’re not quite done. Customer reviews also matter a great deal. Because even if you’ve invested heavily in Amazon search advertising, it’s a good idea to always have one eye on your business’s organic search results as well. And on Amazon, an abundance of good reviews is a great way to get to the top of SERPs.

However, because fraudulent sellers often try to game the system by posting thousands of reviews clearly written by bots, most Amazon shoppers have gotten rightfully suspicious when there are too many glowing, yet awkwardly written reviews. 

To combat fake reviews, Amazon has pretty strict rules around what sellers can and can’t do to solicit customer feedback, but there are absolutely ways to ethically make getting good reviews for excellent service a part of your Amazon advertising strategy. Send follow-up emails after a sale or include package inserts politely asking for reviews. Be careful not to come off as demanding a review or offering up a bribe. Instead, ask your customers nicely to, if satisfied with their purchase, leave a review. 

Also, provide a way for dissatisfied customers to contact your business directly rather than leave a negative review. And as for those negative reviews that will inevitably pop up, make sure to respond and resolve the problem quickly, which shows other shoppers that your business cares about keeping customers happy. 

Amazon advertising strategies 101: have a great tool

As part of Skai’s omnichannel marketing platform, our Retail Media solution empowers brands to plan, execute, and measure digital campaigns that meet consumers when and where they shop. Built with best-in-class automation and optimization capabilities, our unified platform allows you to manage campaigns on 30+ retailers including Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Instacart all in one place.

Client results include:

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