Tips For Optimizing Amazon Sponsored Products

Selling on Amazon, but experiencing sales tad below your expectations? You can really consider opting for Amazon’s dynamic PPC (Pay per Click) program. Participating in this program would enable your products to get an outstanding position in Amazon SERP and get noticed by the buyers easily. It doesn’t matter even if your product is best in the market, if it is not discovered by the buyer, it won’t get sold.

With the increasing competition on Amazon, it becomes extremely important for the sellers to adapt high level resources and emerging marketing tactics in order to grow the business and get ahead of the competitors. For sellers – “It is dangerous to remain stagnant”

With the proven performance of Amazon Sponsored Products listing, sellers these days are considering it as the strongest pillar of their marketing strategy.

The sponsored products can appear on the right side, top and bottom of Amazon SERP and also highlighted on the product detail page. The products appearing in the sponsored listing are highlighted differently from the products included in organic listing and thus are successful in grabbing the attention of the buyers. Accelerated clicks can be expected due to increase in product visibility on Amazon SERP resulting to increase in sales. The more products you sell, the higher position your products get in organic listing too!!!

So, now if you have decided to include Amazon PPC program in your marketing strategy, you need to know few of its intricate details required to achieve expertise in this domain.

What is ACoS?

Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) is a jargon used by Amazon for its sponsored ads. It is a key metric used to measure the performance of your Amazon sponsored products ad campaigns. It signifies the ratio of ads spend to total sales and is calculated applying this formula –

ACoS = 100* (Total Ads Spend ÷ Total sales)

So, if the seller has spent total $20 on their sponsored products, and their sales resulted to $80, the ACoS can be calculated as – 100* ($20 ÷ $80) = 25%. If the profit margin on this sales is 40% ($32), and ACoS is 25% ($20), you can consider ($32-$20) = $12 as profit from your total sales of $80.

Different Types of Ad Campaigns

Similar to Google Ads, Amazon sponsored ads get listed based on the bid amount placed by the seller on that particular ad. The bid is the maximum amount you would like to pay as soon as the ad is clicked. Higher the bid, more the chances of your ad getting displayed on the top of the list of sponsored ads. There would be hundreds of sellers bidding for the top position and so the sellers keep on changing the bid amount depending on the competition and the category of products they are selling. The sellers have 2 options when it comes to selecting the type of ad campaign for advertising their products –

Automatic Campaigns

If you have selected automatic campaign, Amazon would target your ads for all your relevant keywords based on the information available on your product details page. You don’t get an opportunity to choose specific keywords for your sponsored ad. Your automatic campaign fetches all the information from your product details page. This means, that the success of your Amazon sponsored ad depends on the quality of your product details page. This type of campaign is recommended for the beginners not familiar with the complexities of PPC campaigns.

Manual Campaigns

Manual campaigns allow sellers to select keywords through which they want their sponsored ads to appear in Amazon SERPs. The selection of keywords can be based on broad match, phrase match and exact match –

• Broad Match: This type of match enables exposure of the ad to broad traffic. For example if you have selected the keyword “Denim Pants”, then your ad can show up for even keywords like “Jeans for Women”, “Girls Denim” and many more.
• Phrase Match: If you have selected phrase match in your campaign, Amazon would list your sponsored ad when the buyer searches for exact phrases or close phrases similar to the keyword phrases you have mentioned in your campaign. For example, if you have selected “Denim Pants”, your ad can show up for “Denim Pants for Women”, “Denim Pants for Men” etc.
• Exact Match: This match type would enable your sponsored ad to get listed when the buyer searches for the exact match of keywords or close variations of what you have selected in your campaign. For example if you have selected “Denim Pants”, your ad can be listed when the buyer looks for “Denim Pant” or “Denim Pants” only. Plurals or punctuation variations are only allowed in this type of match.

For each manual campaign, 1000 keywords are allowed for a single ad group. Since most of the Amazon visitors’ intent to make positive buying decisions, the keywords should be chosen carefully and selecting right bidding amount for all the keywords should be your priority while launching an ad campaign.

Tip 1: All products should be given equal opportunity to perform

Initially, ad campaign should be launched for all your products. This will give you an idea about the products having high search volume. It is suggested to run an automatic campaign for all your products and place all of them at a starting point. The sales results would show which products are high in demand and require step by step manual campaigning. Also, it should be noted by the sellers that the sponsored ad campaign can be successful only if you are occupying the buy box. You would never prefer to drive traffic to the product detail page, where the competitor is occupying the buy box.

Tip 2: Bid after thorough competitors’ analysis

Before placing a bid on a product, it is important to identify the relevant keywords through which the products can be discovered. Look for the keywords through which your competitors’ ads show up. Identify those keywords and select those in your manual ad campaign. There is Amazon keyword research tool available which can give you the list of relevant keywords by simply entering ASIN of the product. Identify high searched keywords, bid wisely and achieve success by getting your product listed on the top of sponsored ads.

Tip 3: Wait for few weeks before editing any information in your ad campaign

After launching the ad campaign, it is always suggested to wait for few weeks before you edit keywords or the bidding amount. Analyze the impressions and clicks of the sponsored ads and then decide future strategy depending on your sales goals. Accurate assessment cannot be done based on incomplete data, so it is advisable to have patience for profitable results after launching ad campaign on Amazon.

Tip 4: PPC insights can be used to optimize organic product listing on Amazon

From your sponsored ad campaigns, you can have better insights on the highly searched keywords relevant to your products. You can edit product details based on those insights and gain ranking on organic product listing too.

To Conclude…

Launching ad campaigns would definitely drive more traffic to your products and increase sales which would ultimately lead towards improved organic ranking of your products. Amazon is an extremely competitive marketplace and staying on the top consistently can be a challenge which every seller dreams to overcome.

Whether you are selling a new product or want to boost the visibility of existing products, this marketing tool is worth considering for the expansion of your online business.