Amazon PPC Advertising: How To Maximise ROI
In 2023, it’s very difficult to be successful on Amazon without engaging in any form of advertising at all. 75% of all Amazon sellers now use at-least one type of PPC advertising, so if you are not currently utilising Amazon advertising then you are likely at an instant disadvantage compared to competitors.
These are the best practices to follow to ensure your Amazon advertising budget PPC is well spent and maximises return on investment.
Optimise Listings
Advertising an outdated, unoptimized listing or even a new listing with very few reviews is almost always going to lead to sub-par results.
Before investing in advertising, ensure the product detail page that customers will be driven to by advertising are optimised for conversion.
How To Optimise Listings For Conversion:
Keyword Optimisation - Identify relevant, high-volume keywords from Amazon’s auto-suggest feature, keyword research tools, and competitor listing analysis. Titles, product descriptions, key product features, and search terms should be populated naturally with these.
Optimise Images & Videos - Images should be compliant (white background), feature the product from 3 angles, also include lifestyle images and product videos.
Price Competitively – Review your current pricing compared to competitor ASINs, and price competitively.
Enrol ASINs with low reviews in the Amazon Vine Program - Enrolling ASINs in Amazon Vine allows you to receive 30 high-quality reviews from trusted Amazon reviewers, this can increase sales by up to 30%. This is especially helpful for new product launches, as without any reviews, customers will likely be hesitant to purchase.
Offer Prime Shipping – Either through Seller Fulfilled Prime or Fulfilment by Amazon, as Amazon’s most loyal shoppers are subscribed to Prime and are often even willing to pay a premium to utilise their Prime shipping benefit.
Example of an optimised listing:
Set Up Automatic Targeting Sponsored Product Campaigns
Automatic Targeting campaigns are quick to setup and allow sellers to leverage Amazon’s large amount of data to automatically target keywords and products using the following match types: close match, loose match, substitutes, and complements.
Campaigns should be highly segmented so the automatic targeting can have the best chance of success, for example split products up into different campaigns and variations of a product up into separate ad groups.
Close match and loose match are on average the best match types in terms of ROAS, so apply Amazon’s suggested bids for these. Substitutes and complements are on average not as successful in yielding a healthy ROAS, so apply 25-50% lower bids than suggested or potentially turn these match types off in 3-5 days if no revenue is generated by then.
Add negative keywords for search terms you don’t want to rank for, for example if you’re selling luxury goods you probably wouldn’t want to rank for “cheap”.
Start out with a daily budget of around £5-£10 per campaign, to avoid overspending, and adjust as necessary in 3-5 days.
Set the campaign bidding strategy to ‘Dynamic bids – up and down’ as Amazon will lower your bid in real-time when you’re less likely to make a sale, and increase your bid 10% when you’re more likely to make a sale. This maximises your chances at efficient conversions.
Automatic campaigns are a great method to harvest long-tail keywords which may not have been identified from keyword research. High-converting keywords can then be added as exact matches into manual Sponsored Product campaigns.
Set Up Manual Targeting Sponsored Product Campaigns
Manual campaigns allow for more control, precision, and usually a higher ROAS long-term. Automatic campaigns are useful for giving products an immediate boost, but long-term manual campaigns results in more effective advertising spend.
Create Keyword Campaigns
Similarly to automatic campaigns use separate campaigns for each product and then separate ad groups for each variation, therefore keywords will be as relevant as possible to the product advertised.
Utilise the high-volume keywords identified from previous keyword research when optimising listings, as well as Amazon suggested keywords and any other high-converting keywords found in automatic campaigns and add these as exact and phrase matches to manual campaigns.
At-least 25 keywords should be added to make sure the ads receive enough impressions to allow for conversions.
Use Amazon suggested bids as guide to ensure visibility, and then review these bids in 3-5 days.
Start out with a budget of around £5-£10 per campaign, to avoid overspending, and adjust as necessary in 3-5 days.
Set the campaign bidding strategy to ‘Dynamic bids – up and down’ again.
Create Product Match Campaigns
Identify competitor ASINs and create one campaign per product with 5-10 competitor ASINs as product targets to be shown as a sponsored related product.
This tactic works best when you offer better value than competitors or a product with a higher average rating.
A daily budget of around £5 per campaign will likely be sufficient to begin with, as product match campaigns typically get less impressions than keyword campaigns. Adjust the budget as necessary in 3-5 days.
Once again, use Amazon suggested bids as guide to ensure visibility, and then review these bids in 3-5 days.
Example of Sponsored Products Placement:
Set Up Sponsored Brands Campaigns
Available to brands registered with Amazon’s Brand Registry, Sponsored Brands campaigns allow for banner ads with a brand logo, tag line, and multiple products to display typically at the top of search results and re-direct to a brand storefront, custom landing page, or a product detail page.
Sponsored Brands has 3 ad formats to choose from: Product collection, Store spotlight, and Video. Product collection and Video are the best options for maximising conversions and as a result should both be utilised, since these re-direct to product detail pages. If brand awareness is a goal, then Store spotlight can also be utilised to showcase the full range of products your brand offers.
Product Collection
Select 3 closely related products, since they will all be showing for the same keywords, create a custom headline, add your brand logo, and custom creative.
Utilise the high-volume keywords identified from previous keyword research when optimising listings, as well as Amazon suggested keywords and any other high-converting keywords found in Sponsored Products campaigns and add these as exact and phrase matches to manual campaigns.
This campaign type is advertising 3 products at once, so the daily budget should reflect this, start with £10 per day and adjust as necessary in the future.
Use Amazon suggested bids as guide to ensure visibility, and then review these bids in 3-5 days.
Example of Sponsored Brands Product Collection Placement:
Video
Ensure your custom video creative is optimised for Amazon, which means it should be 15-30 seconds long and have subtitles – since video playback is automatically muted on Amazon. Your video should showcase the product in the first couple of seconds, otherwise shoppers may scroll past.
Again, when adding keywords utilise the high-volume keywords identified from previous keyword research when optimising this specific listing, as well as Amazon suggested keywords and any other high-converting keywords found in Sponsored Products campaigns and add these as exact and phrase matches to manual campaigns.
As with product collection, start with a daily budget of around £10 and adjust as necessary if required.
Use Amazon suggested bids as guide to ensure visibility, and then review these bids in 3-5 days.
Example of Sponsored Brands Video Placement:
Set Up Sponsored Display Campaigns
Sponsored Display Ads differ from Sponsored Products & Sponsored Brands campaigns, since Sponsored Display ads can also appear off Amazon on Amazon affiliate sites such as: Google, Facebook, Netflix, Twitch, IMDb, and mobile apps.
Break Campaigns down by product range, to ensure that bids will be as effective as possible, however ensure each campaign contains at-least 10 ASINs, as the more products a campaign has then the more auctions it has the chance to partake in, which is crucial to ensuring your campaign gets enough impressions to allow for conversions.
Sponsored Display campaigns have Product Targeting and Audiences are the targeting options, and both should be utilised.
Product Targeting
For product targeting, select ‘Similar products’ as a targeting option for your ads to be shown when shoppers are viewing products related to those you have selected.
Audience Targeting
For audience targeting, select ‘Views remarketing’ with a lookback window of 30 days, to re-engage with high-intent audiences who have viewed your product detail pages within the last month but not yet purchased.
Start with a daily budget of £15-£20 for Sponsored Display Campaigns, to avoid overspending as Sponsored Display will get a lot of impressions with all the different placement opportunities, and then adjust as necessary in 3-5 days.
Use Amazon suggested bids as guide to ensure visibility, and then review these bids in 3-5 days.
Example of Sponsored Display Placement:
Run Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display Campaigns Simultaneously
A holistic approach to advertising works best on Amazon, as when combining Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns simultaneously, advertisers can see up to 15% more sales at a better ROAS than when using one ad format alone.
Review Performance Every 3-5 Days
Due to Amazon’s attribution model, there can be a 24-36 hour delay from when someone purchases a product from an ad campaign until that campaign is credited for a conversion. Therefore, if you change bids every day or every 2 days, it won’t be clear what impact your changes have made.
It’s best to check back every 3-5 days and make changes accordingly to bids, match types, negative keywords etc. If a campaign is spending its budget but not seeing any conversions, considering pausing the campaign or specific ad group to ensure your advertising budget is not wasted.
AYKO are experts in Amazon setup, listing, organic optimisation, integration, advertising, account health monitoring, and performance tracking. We can help you setup Amazon advertising, or audit and optimise any existing Amazon advertising campaigns to achieve a higher ROAS and a lower ACOS.
Click here to download AYKO’s Ultimate Guide to Selling on Amazon.
