You can argue that Amazon Pay Per Click advertising is as effective as it gets when it comes to digital advertising. When it comes to Amazon, ads are seen by people who already have their wallets in their hands and are more likely to buy what you are selling. If you were to advertise on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, you would not be putting your ads in front of people who are necessarily looking to make a purchase.
Being an effective Amazon seller means that you are constantly working on your PPC and making adjustments as time goes by. An important thing to know is that the Amazon algorithm doesn’t seem to differentiate between an organic sale and a sale that came from an ad. This means that the more items you sell using ads, the higher your organic ranking will go, which leads to more sales that don’t come from ads.
Here we will go through creating a single sponsored product campaign and explain how to make it as effective as possible.
Step One: Find Keywords and Pick A Product
The very first step is to search for keywords. For example, we can use the AMZScout keyword explorer to get all the relevant keywords that contain the keyword-weighted blanket:
You can export a .csv file containing all the keywords and proceed to remove keywords that are not directly relevant to your product, such as the dimensions or the color.
Step Two: It’s time to create the campaign
The first step is to name a campaign, set a daily budget, and pick the type of targeting. In this case, we are creating a primary manual keyword-targeting campaign. Manual targeting means you will like the targets yourself, as the name suggests. The other option is automatic targeting, where you let the Amazon algorithm choose your targets. It does so based on the contents of your listing, the keywords included, and your category and subcategory.
Next up is the type of targeting, and we have two options:
Keyword targeting – as the name suggests, you are targeting searches containing specific keywords, and your ads will be displayed just like a standard listing. This is the option we are using for our example campaign today.
Product targeting – ads of this type will be displayed below a product listing from another Amazon product. You can choose individual ASINs or have broader targeting using entire subcategories.
Step Three: Сhoose a Bidding Strategy
For starters, it’s best to choose the “bids down” option. The “bids down” approach mean that your Cost Per Click will be at a maximum of the price you set, and the algorithm will adjust according to performance and efficiency. You can switch to the other strategies depending on how aggressive you want, but that’s better once you filter out less effective targets over time.
Step Four: Select Your Products and Name Your Ad Group
The next step is to put in your targets and set up a bid for each one. Here, you should input all the keywords from the list you’ve compiled and pick out the bids. Depending on how granular you want, it’s best to put the same offer across the board and adjust the bids regularly according to performance. If this is a new campaign, it’s best to go with a default bid. However, following the suggested bid with a dynamic strategy can pay off.
You also have the option of adjusting bids according to placement. For example, you might want to overpay your request to be displayed at the top of the search. However, it’s still best to look at the data and adjust the placements accordingly.
In this instance, we are making an exact campaign, so there will be no need to use negative keywords to limit the movement. This is a straightforward, same campaign meant to get you organic rankings on the most relevant searches to your product, which in this case, is a weighted blanket.
Now that you have a running campaign, you need to monitor it and make adjustments based on performance and the data from the reports.
Step Five: Monitor and Improve
- Keep an auto campaign running at all times – Auto campaigns are great for Amazon PPC. You should create an auto campaign and use all your manual campaign targets as negatives. As time passes, you should extract positive hits from the auto campaign and target them more precisely with your manual campaigns. Auto campaigns allow four types of targeting:
- Close match and lose match are related to keywords – Most likely, those searches will be related to the general interest surrounding it or complementary products. As the name suggests, a close game would be more relevant to “on-point” searches, while a lost match may include investigations that are not necessarily directly related to your type of product.
- Substitutes and complements targeting are related to products – The first targeting type will display your ads under the listings of direct competitors. The complements target displays the ads under the products in your subcategory and can be of interest to people who would like to buy your product.
- Extract search term reports regularly – your Amazon PPC structure requires regular maintenance, and you need to know what is going on with your campaigns. Every campaign that isn’t exact manual keywords or single ASIN product targeting is impossible to manage without reports. You need to get reports at least once a week and identify the targets that are working to target them more precisely, as well as to identify poor-performing or irrelevant targets and add them as hostile targets.
- Use hostile targets – to ensure no wasted spending caused by multiple campaigns bidding on the same targets; it’s important to use negative targeting. Once you extract a keyword or an ASIN from an auto campaign and move it to a precise manual one, add that target as a negative to avoid double spending on it. If you create a new campaign with precise targeting, ensure that all those targets are harmful in any movement that might contain them under broader targeting.
- Use keywords that you are indexed on in your PPC – the basic rule of Amazon SEO is that you cannot get indexed on a search term if you don’t have the corresponding keyword in your listing copy—being indexed means that you have an organic rank on that search. Over time, using those keywords in your PPC will increase your organic ranking, so make sure you target them.
- Neatly organize your PPC structure – using proper nomenclature will save you a lot of time when it comes to identifying problems or moving and removing targets. Amazon allows you to organize your campaigns into portfolios, which is handy if you have an extensive catalog. The most important thing is that the structure is organized so you can understand and manage it the best. Also, naming your campaigns and separating them by-products and targeting types can make reading reports and making decisions much more pleasant and effective if you put some effort into it.
In conclusion, Amazon Pay Per Click advertising is very effective and requires constant attention. Knowing how to handle PPC on Amazon and how it functions can be the difference between a successful product and a failure. Your organic rankings depend on it. PPC is necessary for both increasing orders and maintaining them. You do not have the luxury of not learning how PPC works in general and which aspects, campaign types, and individual targets work for each of your products.
Good luck, sellers!
