by Daniel Skoda, Managing Partner at adlicious
Giving brands and products visibility is one of the central challenges of every marketer. There is hardly a more suitable advertising environment for this than where both generic and explicit information has been requested and processed and presented to the user: in search engine results. In comparison, as a search engine with a market share of 87.66 percent, Google is far ahead of all competitors. Meanwhile, recent US studies show that, despite Google's impressive market dominance, product searches have started more frequently with online retailer Amazon since 2018. Amazon offers vendors and pro sellers almost identical options to manage performance campaigns in the still separate user interfaces, the Advertising Console and the DSP. Sellers and vendors can place brand ads (formerly Headline Search Ads) at the top of the search results or at the end, as well as on the side of the search results page and Amazon Sponsored Products. Vendors can also place product display ads in particularly exposed places on detail pages of their own and third-party products. These advertising formats allow marketers to make products and brands visible at key points and to achieve awareness, engagement and sales goals. For some forms of advertising, the fulfilment of certain conditions is a prerequisite for advertising to be placed. For example, in order to be able to place Sponsored Product Ads, advertisers must have won the Buy Box for the corresponding product. Versatile targeting options that allow you to create targeting based on data from your own CRM as well as from transactions, user profiles with InMarket and lifestyle segments, set the platform apart from other channels. Sponsored brand ads are particularly suitable for creating visibility. Especially because targeted generic searches for which there is no brand or product preference yet can be targeted. There are five golden rules to maximize campaign success and consistently achieve high ROIs.
1. Align your campaign's KPIs with your advertising goals
In order to assess whether an Amazon campaign is achieving its desired effect and to efficiently utilize optimization potential, it is first necessary to clarify for which purpose you advertise, how the measurement & control criteria are best put together and what significance you attach to them. To increase brand recognition The following KPIs are the best way to assess reach in the desired target group:
Golden yardstick for measuring the success of sales are conversions that, depending on whether it is your own or external shop on Amazon, can be displayed in the Amazon Advertising Console (formerly Amazon Marketing Services) or in the Amazon DSP. Default tracking windows for Click and View are only included in the DSP. In addition to Amazon's own attribution, it is possible to integrate external tools for measuring success in order to individually control campaign optimization. Since 2019, Amazon has also been offering new-to-brand metrics for targeted new customer acquisition. These enable advertisers to determine whether a purchase was made by an existing or new customer (no purchase within the last 12 months). New metrics include:
2. Use keywords & targeting in a targeted manner to achieve more visibility
Amazon offers advertisers a range of targeting options, ranging from product-related variants such as ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) to interests (lifestyle targeting) and keyword targeting. The targeting options in the DSP include product categories, such as garden, sport or animals, in-market segments (e.g. users who are about to buy clothing), lifestyle segments (e.g. cycling enthusiasts) and other segments, including socio-demographic and geotargeting. Keywords are primarily used to make brands and products visible in the results of content-related searches. However, anyone who thinks that keywords should always describe the product and brand as precisely as possible for search ads is a false assumption. In fact, generic keywords work particularly well at this point. Prospective buyers who search for a specific product category such as writing pads and not directly for “fountain writing pad” or “college block student DIN A4” offer advertisers great potential with brands and products to stand out. In addition to their own design, automatic campaigns are a valuable source of new keywords. They achieve better results than external tools and are easy to set up. However, care should be taken here; without manual evaluation, the results may vary. The technology is simply not yet ready to consistently generate optimal results once set in motion. It is therefore important to use this option in doses and always evaluate new keywords for profitability. If the performance is good, keywords can be transferred to the manual campaign where it makes sense. Established brands should also use defense campaigns with brand-related keywords to assert market shares over smaller competitors or Amazon's own brands. Keywords with direct competitors can also strengthen your own position. For example, when Nike places its products in the context of similar Adidas products, this can influence the purchase decision in favor of Nike.
3. Always keep an eye on performance and optimize in a goal-oriented manner
The bidding strategy should absolutely be tailored to the objectives. It is advisable to work with differentiated campaigns that use fixed bids to increase brand awareness and dynamic (up and down) to achieve sales. Amazon's bidding algorithm automatically optimizes according to the conversion probability, although it is advisable to regularly check the CPCs and not blindly rely on the algorithm in order to achieve optimal performance. In comparison, Amazon Ads offers more efficient campaigns and therefore a cost advantage over search engines such as Google - whose primary goal is to generate clicks and not, as with Amazon, conversions. Marketers should be aware of how the bidding algorithm works and the differences with other advertising platforms in order to be able to manage campaigns with maximum performance. When measuring the success of Sponsored Brand Ads, Amazon only differentiates between “Top Search Placements” and “Other Placements” (page and two options below the search results). The performance of “Top” and “Other Placements” can differ massively. Impressions are generated regardless of the position of the advertising medium, but do not lead to clicks and conversions in the same way. A placement below the search results is logically less powerful than the top search ranking for the same impressions. A cost driver can slumber here, because the low click rates (CTR) of a “different placement” also push the average CTR down. As a result, the relevance of advertising materials determined by Amazon is falling and costs are increasing. Basically, Amazon offers advertisers simple and meaningful measurement options. In particular, by mapping the entire purchase process on one platform, it is easier to measure success than, for example, the combination of Google Ads and your own online shop. However, Amazon only provides part of the data and user information such as demographic data, keywords or geo-data, which is collected by the advertiser in its own shop, is omitted. Amazon is limited to data such as purchase behavior, return and conversion rates, which are collected on the website itself. Even though Amazon continues to expand its targeting, advertisers at Google, with their differentiated analytics, currently have even more diverse options available.
4. Test, test, test campaigns
The basis for results-oriented campaign optimization is intensive testing of display elements according to the A/B pattern. Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads offer the ability to test elements such as header image, headline, etc., and adjust them as needed. When testing, make sure to test multiple campaigns simultaneously for one variable at a time, monitor the changes for at least two weeks, and evaluate them with regard to campaign goals. These ad elements should be tested for their performance:
5. Check profitability, avoid rigid campaign setups
Amazon uses the Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) to compare advertising costs and sales and thus allows direct conclusions to be drawn about advertising effectiveness. In addition to ad quality, conversion rate, CTR, reviews and ratings, Acos influences the relevance score. Brand keywords naturally perform better than nonbrand keywords when it comes to measuring ACoS. Therefore, you should always divide into brand and non-brand keywords in order to prevent false conclusions and to be able to carry out the necessary optimization. Good things take time! Over time, consistently high-performance campaigns achieve a high relevance score, which can encourage the allocation of advertising space in the bidding process. Therefore, you should give campaigns time to perform and regularly optimize bidding over the course, evaluate campaign data and have a look at Amazon promotions as well as the competition.
This post first appeared on Internet World Business.
