Cyber 5: Amazon Advertising Playbook for Success

Wandering around the local supermarket in September, it is no surprise to see the shelves being stocked with Christmas delights already and as I start dreaming of a white—hold on, this can only mean one thing; Black Friday is around the corner! 

You might tell me that it is ages away in the last weekend in November, right? For consumers, this event is still far off in the distance, but as an advertiser, we are already running out of time. The deadline for submitting your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals is October 8th, 2021 in Seller Central or via your Amazon reps. We need to be lightning-fast to get those deals submitted.

At Skai, there is no bigger sales event on the calendar than the Black Friday and Cyber Monday week that runs across Amazon, popularized now as simply The Cyber 5. Today, I want to provide you with some tips and tricks on how to get the most out of the event with your advertising budget across Amazon Advertising Sponsored Ads.

Cyber 5 Amazon Advertising Promotions

So let’s start with the promotions we want to run and make sure they get that Black Friday and Cyber Monday badging that comes with its own sales power. You have two options during Black Friday / Cyber Monday and those are Lightning Deals, which A) run for a limited amount of time and then B) the 7-day deal. Here you can find a link to the Seller Central deals eligibility page. Now that you have your deals submitted, let’s go through your Amazon Advertising strategy, starting with your promotions and consumer behavior.

I won’t be able to submit my deal selection before the deadline for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to get the badging. Can’t I just run some market-wide deals?

You can run any deals during this period that you want but that won’t guarantee sales just because it is Black Friday. Consumers have become savvier when it comes to these tentpole sales events. They plan & research products & prices in advance of Black Friday so that they know they are getting a great deal. Consumers build wishlists of products they hope will be discounted during this period and if the product isn’t displaying the Black Friday badge, consumers often won’t even consider the product even if it is on sale. 

One key element of getting the Black Friday badge is that the product needs to be at the lowest price since January 1st and consumers know this. Additionally, consumers will be scouring the site reviewing your Product Detail Pages (PDPs). Amazon’s “retail readiness“ best practices play a huge role in the performance of your Black Friday advertising campaigns. For example, positive reviews are an extremely important component of retail readiness as 89% of customers read them before a purchase.

Sponsored Brands Ads (SBAs)

Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of your advertising campaign, starting with Amazon Advertising Sponsored Brands Ads—so before we go on, another great little stat as to why your advertising campaign is so vital to the overall success of Black Friday is that 73% of Amazon shoppers click on Ads.

If you have store pages on Amazon, this is an ideal place to direct your consumers as you can build promotional pages specifically for Black Friday and educate the consumer with great content.

We advise two scenarios for your store pages:

1. Update existing pages that you already drive high traffic to and then switch in the ASINs on offer on the morning of the event or
2. Build specific promotional pages and drive your traffic towards those.

If building new promotional pages, it is advised that you start driving traffic towards these a few weeks in advance to build up keyword relevance—especially if you are using the same set of keywords in your non-promotional campaigns. Amazon suggests you build these at least 72 hours in advance (if not earlier).

Ideally, we suggest option 1 (updating existing pages) as there is minimal setup required. These campaigns will already have historical data so they should only be impacted due to shifting competitor bids, which we will go into later.

Some quick advice on ad copy: if you are driving to a page with deals where the Calls-to-Action (CTA) will automatically change to: “Save up to X%.”, the percentage displayed is always the highest amount off. However, you need a minimum of the 3 promotional ASINs on the page for this CTA to show.

If you want to write a specific promotional copy, you can’t say “Save 50% on {Product}” or “$20 off {Product}”. Amazon only permits promotional messaging such as; [Product] savings, Savings on [Product] and [Save now], etc. Amazon prohibits any reference to specific pricing promotions in Sponsored Brands, hence we suggest opting for the automatic CTA to appear in your ads. Also, make sure you include lifestyle creatives throughout your Sponsored Brands Ads as this takes up more space on the Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs) and the ads look more appealing. 

See the above example without a lifestyle creative versus one with below:

 Sponsored Products Ads (SPAs)

Getting your Sponsored Products Ads strategy spot on is going to be key to your success for Black Friday. Shopping periods like this bring huge opportunities to reach new potential customers that may never have considered your brand before. Make sure you expand your targeting as SPAs have a huge inventory reach.

If you are not already expanding your targeting, then we advise activating ‘automatic’ SPA campaigns, which enables you to reach customers via keywords and product searches. There are four targeting options available in these campaigns which will serve your ads to shoppers whose search terms are either closely related or loosely related to your products. Your ads will also be shown to shoppers who view the product detail pages that are either similar to yours or complement your product. 

During sales events, we suggest setting bids above the recommended amount to make sure you receive the most impressions possible. Higher bids on these settings—especially on ‘loose match’ and ‘substitutes’—do have a tendency of quickly spending large amounts, so check in regularly on them.

Additionally, in terms of bidding, we advise running ‘Dynamic bids – up and down’ during this period as competition can be very aggressive so you won’t want to miss out on potential sales if your bid is too low. 

Also, explore ‘product targeting’ if you haven’t run this in the past. Not every person visiting Amazon searches via keywords. Many use the category pages to browse for products so Sponsored Product Ads campaigns allow you to target these categories individually. 

Sponsored Display Ads (SDAs)

SDAs now feature the same targeting capabilities as the Amazon DSP, which enables you to remarket to people who have previously viewed your products. During Black Friday, we suggest you create a retargeting campaign for people who have viewed products that are now running deals. A word of warning: additionally to serving on Amazon these campaigns will also serve across Twitch, as well as third-party websites and apps.

We also recommend analyzing your basket level data to see if a product is often bought in conjunction with another product. Then, you can use product targeting to appear on the PDP to increase overall basket value. You can also analyze data of the next products often bought, so if a consumer buys product A, you can use SDAs for cross-selling and up-sell tactics.

Sponsored Brand Video Ads (SBV)

SBVs are a great way of increasing brand awareness during promotional periods. You may already be running SBV in your non-promotional strategy, however, being able to share your product capabilities and benefits through video are very powerful and reinforces your brand presence.

Cyber 5 Amazon Advertising: The Halo effect 

Naturally, Black Friday can have a halo effect on your brand and you may see certain products increase in sales volume that don’t even have a promotion running. Consumers may have considered one of your products in the past, but at the time didn’t end up buying it. However, they could end up buying it during this time if they have saved money on something else. Psychologically, they may be thinking that the percentage saved on a high ticket item allows them to afford to buy additional products that aren’t on sale. Additionally, new audiences may think your product is priced well even though it is not on sale.

Last words

Finally ‘Top-of-search IS’ is now a column in the Amazon Advertising console so you can see the share of top-of-search impressions the campaign was eligible to receive on that day and adjust your bids accordingly if you are seeing a low percentage.

A Cyber 5 Amazon Advertising Checklist:

• Promotional deals submitted on time – 8th of October
• ASINs have been reviewed for retail readiness*
• Store pages have been updated and custom pages have been created
• Promotional ad copy has been reviewed
• Auto and category targeting SPA campaigns have been created
• Bids adjusted across keywords, placements, and categories (especially all your brand terms) 
• SPA campaign bidding strategy has been switched to ‘Dynamic bids – up and down’
• Budgets increased across promotional campaigns and budget allocation across campaign types split accordingly; recommended split SPA 60%, SBA 25%, SDA 10% and SBV 5%
• Pause campaigns not running promotional offers on higher ticketed items or generally have a lower performance
• SBV campaigns have been created where possible
• SDA retargeting campaigns have been created for flash deals. Make sure your products are “retail ready” including best practices such as:
  • Title and description (Major product features, such as size, style, and what the product can be used for.)
  • Images and video (A minimum of 4 images is recommended with a ‘what’s in the box’ shot but do not include website URLs, pricing, shipping, promotions, or expiration dates)
  • Customer reviews (minimum 15 reviews)
  • Star rating (minimum 3.5 stars)
  • Inventory (The product is in stock)
  • Enhanced content (A+ enhanced marketing content (EMC) allows vendors to customize detail pages on Amazon that include extra features like images, etc.)

We can’t guarantee Cyber 5 success however if you follow the above tips combined with Skai’s Retail Media capabilities you stand an excellent chance of standing out against the competition and achieving your Cyber 5 goals.

To learn more about Skai^™ Retail Media solutions, please reach out today with questions or schedule a brief demo.

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