Drive More Sales With Amazon Advertising Strategies

A technique for promoting your products or service is advertising. Advertising aims to attract customers ready to pay for your goods or services. And a strategy is an organized plan that convinces customers to select your goods or services above your rivals.

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In 2021, Amazon estimated an income of 31.2 billion dollars from ad services. This assisted in making the marketers gain more visibility and increased sales. It was anticipated that this amount would continue to rise over the following decades, reaching a projected amount of 39.45 billion US dollars in 2023. Brands must create an Amazon advertising strategy for supply chain delays, increasing PPC costs, and a marketing plan and budget.

An Overview of Amazon Advertising

Amazon is one of the major ecommerce marketplaces. Many online shoppers passionately support Amazon and will purchase from them without hesitation due to their popularity and trustworthiness. As a result, Amazon Advertising is growing rapidly and sellers need to develop a comprehensive yet adaptable marketing strategy that will provide the highest return on investment. Before diving into specific marketing tactics, it's important to understand Amazon Advertising - an advertising program introduced by Amazon for its sellers.

In 2018, Amazon launched "Amazon Advertising" (formerly known as Amazon Marketing Services or AMS) as a search marketing option for Amazon sellers. Similar to pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google, sellers only pay when shoppers click on the ads.

If you aren't already, your team should consider leveraging Amazon Advertising strategies. Businesses can potentially utilize Amazon Advertising as their primary advertising platform. Amazon's advertising business is expanding rapidly thanks to its wide variety of products across its ecosystem. Sellers can now target shoppers on Amazon.com, IMDb.com, Amazon Freedive, Kindles, Fire TV Sticks, mobile apps, and other sites using Amazon's Demand Side Platform (DSP).

Choosing the Right Amazon PPC Ad Type

Amazon offers a range of PPC ad types with flexible targeting options. Especially when first getting started, it's advisable to experiment with the various Amazon ad formats you have access to, particularly auto-targeted Sponsored Products ads and manually-targeted Sponsored Brands.

It can be helpful to first think about your goals for return on ad spend (RoAS), especially if working with a limited ad budget. In other words, consider how much revenue you expect to generate from sales for every dollar spent on advertising.

Some ad types and tactics produce higher RoAS than others. For example, running Sponsored Brands ads and using tight, relevant keyword targeting typically result in the highest sales of any PPC ad format. Optimizing Amazon PPC ads takes time and effort, and results can vary drastically from seller to seller. However, having a general benchmark for ROI can inform your decisions.

Figuring out which PPC strategies will work best for your business can be challenging, especially for SMB sellers. Controlling PPC bids is one of the most common difficulties. By testing different ad formats, you can learn what is and isn't effective for you personally. After gathering sufficient data, you can eliminate any underperforming ads while increasing investment in those that are working.

Types of Amazon PPC Ads

Your creative team has produced some nice display ads for branding that you'd like to promote, but you also want laser-targeted ads to boost ecommerce sales. Fortunately, Amazon offers both options - you've come to the right place!

The three main types of ads available through Amazon are Sponsored Product ads, Headline Search ads, and Product Display ads. There are also Amazon Native Ads, Amazon Video Ads, and Amazon Stores.

Amazon Sponsored Ads

Amazon Sponsored Product ads are keyword-targeted, pay-per-click display ads for specific products on search results pages and product detail pages. With Sponsored Product Ads, you can choose to target one of three types of keywords if you want granular targeting: broad match, phrase match, or exact match.

Amazon Headline Search Ads (Sponsored Brand Campaigns)

Now referred to as Sponsored Brand Campaigns, this type of Amazon ad format allows you to serve keyword-targeted ads for multiple products at the top, bottom, and side of search results. With Sponsored Brand Campaigns, you can target three types of keywords: branded product terms, related product terms, and auto-targeted terms for sponsored products.

Amazon Product Display Ads

"Display ads" for products, called Product Display ads, appear on customer review sites, deal listing pages, product detail pages, and under search results. You can also include these ads in abandoned cart follow-ups, recommendations, and order emails. Cross-selling and upselling are their primary use cases when engaging with your customers.

With Product Display ads, you can target campaigns by product or interest. The contextual targeting method called product targeting allows you to target specific products and related categories. The behavioral targeting method called interest targeting reaches a broader audience by targeting customer interests.

Amazon Native Ads

Amazon Native Ads allow you to serve ads on the website for your brand. Native ads come in three types: search ads, custom ads, and recommendation ads.

You can insert recommendation ads within your website's product detail pages. Since these ads are dynamic, Amazon will serve the most relevant product recommendation based on site content and users. Search ads show up on your site based on terms your visitors enter into Amazon or your site's search bar. With custom ads, you choose which products to promote then place those ads anywhere on your product page posts.

Amazon Video Ads

Amazon Video Ads are a type of Amazon ad format you can run on Amazon-owned sites like Amazon.com and IMDb, Fire TV devices, and other sites. You can choose the landing page for your ad as an Amazon product page, your website, or another web page - so Amazon video ads are an option regardless of whether you sell on Amazon.

Related: What Is Amazon OTT? A Comprehensive Guide to Streaming & Video Advertising

Amazon Stores

People can promote their business or products via a multi-page Amazon Store. You can showcase your brand's products or portfolio by dragging and dropping tiles or using one of Amazon's themes. Brands can access traffic analytics through Amazon Stores as well as obtain an Amazon URL to monitor sales, traffic sources, and advertising efforts. Also, opening an Amazon Store is free.

Amazon Advertising Strategies to Increase Sales

Here are some tips for building an effective Amazon advertising strategy for your brand:

Set Clear Goals

Amazon allows you to match expectations with objectives whether you want to increase sales or raise brand awareness. For instance, you can use your advertising cost of sales (ACoS) as a key metric for boosting sales.

For ease of use, Amazon has divided its product page into "Goals" so you can determine which Amazon ad product will help you meet your goals. If you want to build brand awareness, for example, video ads, display ads, audio ads and custom ad options are recommended.

Choose Products to Promote Strategically

You stand the best chance of increasing click-through rates by promoting your most popular items. You'll also want to confirm these products have good availability and reasonable pricing.

Alternatively, you may want to build awareness of a brand new product or service. When selecting products or services to market, consider your goals and be sure you've done the research to confirm Amazon is the right platform to start featuring your offerings.

Create Compelling Product Detail Pages

While Amazon ads can drive visitors to your product detail pages, the page itself needs to convince visitors to convert to paying customers. Using clear yet descriptive titles, high-quality images, and relevant, valuable product information when designing a product detail page will encourage buyers to purchase.

Determine Ad Placement

Amazon's extensive ad suite encompasses multiple products. For instance, you can create voice ads to play on Alexa-enabled devices, video ads for viewing on Fire TV or Amazon-exclusive sites like IMBD, or display ads to capture Amazon shoppers' attention towards your business. After deciding whether video, audio or search seem most viable, explore other options like Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products ads.

Compare Sponsored Brands & Sponsored Products

Sponsored Brands ads are best suited for brands aiming to increase brand awareness across an entire product line, although they can highlight a handful of featured products or services.

On the other hand, a Sponsored Product ad is a cost-per-click (CPC) ad highlighting a specific Amazon product listing. This may be a better fit if your goal is to increase sales of one particular item or target a specific niche (for example, anyone who has already clicked on a competitor's product).

Leverage Category Targeting

With this tactic for Amazon Sponsored Product ads, your products gain increased visibility and appear on the right-hand side at the top and bottom of search results when matched to certain categories. The goal here is to boost your conversion rates by bundling complementary products together.

Product Attribute Targeting (PAT) is an advertising option that lets vendors/sellers maximize ad space next to a defined set of items, brands or attributes. You can spotlight your product by placing it alongside similarly priced goods and complementary products.

Related: Amazon Attribution: The Key to Increase Conversion + 4 Must-Try Features

Use Negative Keywords to Reduce Wasted Spend

One of the more interesting Amazon advertising strategies is using Negative Keywords, which are keywords you don't want your ads to show up for. These are critical for avoiding wasted ad spend by keeping your ads from being seen by the wrong kinds of shoppers.

Amazon's advertising algorithms don't always match up perfectly with targeted keywords. Broad search results can lead to a hodgepodge of irrelevant product matches. Setting up negative keywords helps prevent your products from popping up in searches that have nothing to do with you.

For example, if you sell over-ear headphones, you probably don't want to target and promote the keyword "earbuds." You may get some traffic and even a few sales. But ultimately, you'll be spending a lot of money advertising to people looking for something completely different than what you offer.

Negative keywords, when used strategically to target converting keywords and avoid non-converting terms, can be very successful regardless of traffic levels. You should focus on specific, high-converting keywords and phrases and avoid broad terms with massive traffic but poor conversion rates.

Refine Your Bids

You'll want to analyze your keywords and gauge performance on a weekly basis. However, avoid hastily adjusting your keywords based solely on the most recent data. The popularity and usage of certain words and phrases can fluctuate over time due to real-world events, pop culture, etc.

Instead, test out new words your customers are using via Automatic Targeting before introducing the terms more permanently. If performance remains strong, you can shift your ads to the updated search phrases and tailor your product content accordingly. If needed, you can ditch the problematic keywords that need more refinement.

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