Amazon advertising has long been considered the next big thing in the online marketing industry. Regardless of whether it's branding or performance campaigns, the e-commerce giant covers all areas — with success. Last year, Amazon generated advertising revenue of around ten billion US dollars.
Seven tips for branding and performance campaigns on the online marketplace:
1. Don't mix goals
Treat yourself to their own campaigns for awareness and sales goals. Headline search and display ads are more suitable for making your brand and, for example, new products present how brands manage to present themselves beyond websites and apps. With Sponsored Products, you focus more on sales goals and reach customers who are closer to buying. A clear and consistent naming helps you keep track of your various campaigns and their goals.
2. Make good use of automatic campaigns
Automatic campaigns are a very good source of new keywords and are better than external tools. They are also easy to set up. But that is also the danger, because here Amazon brands manage to have a presence beyond the website and app is not yet ready for you to achieve excellent results on autopilot. Use this option in a dosed manner and look at the new keywords for your profitability. Then transfer them to manual campaigns where it makes sense.
3. Respond correctly to bidding dynamics
The newly introduced bidding dynamics throw many strategies for Sponsored Products upside down. It is advisable to work with differentiated campaigns in which the respective bidding strategy is assigned to the goals of awareness (fixed bids) or sales (up and down, i.e. dynamic). Amazon then optimizes according to the conversion probability — it is essential to keep an eye on the CPCs.
4. Keep ACoS in focus
In addition to ad quality, CTR, conversion rate, reviews, how brands manage to be present beyond websites and apps, ratings and, for example, the use of A+ content, the relevance score is heavily influenced by ACoS. In this “advertising cost of sales”, Amazon compares advertising costs and sales. Since the ACoS of brand keywords is often better, it is important to look at the ACoS of non-brand keywords separately so as not to fall into false conclusions and to neglect necessary optimizations.
5. Control competitors
Amazon customers are generally less guided by brands when researching products than on other platforms. That's why it's all the more important to be present with your own brand keywords — and not to leave them to your competitors. The ads can be placed at relatively low costs.
6. Be permanently present with relevant products
Evaluate regularly for all ASINS (Amazon Standard Identification Number) whether you have ads for your products and derive from existing results within which cost range (at which initial bids) for advertising the further range of products is worthwhile. Scale what works - don't limit yourself in time. Only if you advertise broadly throughout the year can you recognize trends and seasonalities and take advantage of them.
7. Don't persist in rigid campaign setups
Give your campaigns time to achieve a high relevance score through good performance. Conversion rates and reviews in particular must develop. But don't run into the “Setting it, forgetting it” case. Bidding must be regularly optimized, campaign data needs to be evaluated and taken into account. Keep an eye on both Amazon promotions and the competition and react to them.
This post is first posted at Internet World Business appeared.
