Amazon has recently launched a new “Advertising Console” which has replaced the previous Sponsored Ads dashboard.
Using Amazon Sponsored Ads is a very important part of the overall Amazon Seller Strategy and it can be a huge boost to sales if done correctly. Part of the reason it’s so essential is because it has the effect of establishing (as part of your launch strategy) or boosting organic Amazon ranks because once your PPC ads start to convert, Amazon has sales data about your listings.
I generally prefer to have PPC as part of both launch and maintenance of Amazon listings.
Amazon ACOS for Sponsored Ads
Depending on how what your breakeven ACOS is, you can decide what percentage you want to go for. If you’re a large brand like Microsoft, it probably doesn’t matter what the ACOS is as long as the keywords are relevant. If you’re everyone else, you’d want to have ACOS at around breakeven for example or max out at 100% ACOS.
Keyword Bids on Amazon
If you’re not getting impressions for certain keywords, try increasing bids or using dynamic up, especially for relevant terms. If that doesn’t do the trick, it might be the case that they keyword is just not getting that many searches to begin with or Amazon doesn’t think your listing is relevant for that keyword. You can try putting that keyword on your listing too to see if that makes a difference.
Campaign Performance
It usually takes a bit of time to get your campaign to perform at a good rate so be patient when starting out and don’t be discouraged if your ACOS is quite high.
It also takes a while for the results to show in your Amz Sponsored Ads dashboard for analysis as the data is delayed.
The Overall Amazon PPC Process
- KW Research
- Group Into Portfolio
- Automatic Campaigns
- Manual Campaigns
- Targeting Types
- Optimization and Maintenance
The mindset to take with Amazon PPC is really with a few months of set up and optimization work to do well.
The Role of Automatic Campaigns
You don’t want automatic campaigns running long term. The idea is really just to figure out what terms are converting and then bringing them over to your manual campaigns so you have more control.
Target Competitor Listing
You can experiment with competitor targeting campaigns with groups for lower reviews, new competitor product arrivals (where they might be driving a lot of traffic for their product launch), and strong competitor listings.
Reducing ACOS Over Time
Once you’ve found good keywords that convert, you can try experimenting with things like different targeting types and reducing bids to see if impressions are also getting reduced.
Sort your keywords by total spend to find any keywords that aren’t converting and turn them off.
Frequency
I find it useful to have the ads reviewed weekly (during Monday sales review).
Budget
If you have a very low budget, one strategy to try is to go for exact match, low bid, long tail keywords. The only thing is that you will miss out on a lot of high converting keywords and some of the words you think will convert will not actually be the case in reality.
Amazon PPC Automation
Amazon Sponsored Ads is a significant part of making an FBA business work.
Having worked with Amazon PPC agencies, I’m generally much more in favor of keeping this in-house with the assistance of Sponsored Ads software like Sellics and Helium 10.
The people I know that do very well on Amazon (8+ figures) never outsource such an important task.
The problem I’ve found is that they’re usually juggling lots of clients and also trying to attract new clients which means that can’t be 100% focused on your business.
Certainly if you’re neglecting the Amazon Advertising side of your business, then the right Amazon Agency can be a great choice. And I’m sure there are decent Amazon Ad Agencies.
Overall, if you’re running an FBA business, I think that sponsored ads is a core part of your business and something that either you or a part time employee can master.
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