Amazon Advertising is a blessing for Amazon Sellers. No other advertising platform offers ready-to-buy customers for your products and smart Amazon sellers are making a killing with Amazon PPC Ads. Search for anything on Amazon and chances are good that you will see at least 3 or more product listings marked as “sponsored product”.
However, Amazon is a competitive marketplace and competition is increasing every day as more and more sellers join the Amazon PPC party. As a result, CPC bids are skyrocketing and ACoS is going higher. Unless you have a well-thought-out strategy, you may burn your money on Amazon PPC ads and make a net loss.
We often come across poorly structured, high ACoS and loss-making Amazon PPC campaigns which we usually overtake from Amazon Sellers running it themselves or other agencies managing it for them.
We, therefore, decided to put together this 15 Steps Amazon PPC Strategy for Amazon Sellers to help them better prepare for Amazon Advertising. Here we go:
- Advertising on Amazon Is The Right Decision
Whether you have been successful with Amazon PPC Ads or not, you made the right decision to start advertising on Amazon. There wouldn’t be a better time to do it as competition is increasing. So if you have started already, great job! If you haven’t then why are you letting other sellers (competitors) eat your lunch? - Optimize Your Product Listings for Organic Rankings
Before thinking about advertising, you should first make sure your product listings are optimized for organic rankings.- Are you using the right keywords in your product titles? Are they placed early in the title?
- Do product titles describe the product well?
- Are the product descriptions comprehensive, informative and well structured to highlight the benefits, advantages, key features etc?
- Are the product images high quality, attractive, elaborate?
- Focus On Earning Ratings and Reviews
Positive reviews and higher ratings sell more products on Amazon than anything else. This will be no different with Amazon PPC Advertising. Since your product listings are your ads, those with positive reviews and ratings (3.5 stars or above) will convert more prospects into customers and deliver lower ACoS and higher profits. - Know Your Profit Margin On Products?
It’s not good enough to have a rough idea about the profit margin on your products. You should figure out all the costs, overheads, taxes etc and know precisely how much net profit margin you have on every product, product group and overall. This will be vital to know how much you could afford to spend on Amazon PPC Ads. - Got Your Branding Right?
If you are in this business for long enough and take it seriously enough, then you should spare a fair thought, effort and investment on your branding. At the very least you should have a professionally designed logo that portrays your ideal brand personality and brand guidelines (logo, typefaces, styles etc). Since you are down for advertising you will need consistent branding to stand out from your competition. - Know Your Customers Well?
Knowing your customers like they were your friends and you knew everything about them is critical to your success with advertising (any form).- Who they are?
- Where do they live?
- What do they like?
- What income level?
- What is their lifestyle?
- What language/lingo do they speak?
- Figured Out Your Advertising Budget For Success?
Before you start on advertising, you should have a clear idea about the advertising budget. Success with Amazon Advertising may not happen overnight. You may first have to educate your target customers, convince them why your products are different and then make them switch from the competition. So, unless you have a set marketing budget to pursue this through, you might just get think you have failed midway and quit, even though you were actually on the right path of Amazon Advertising and making good progress. - Know Your Ideal ACoS
ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) is your metric for success on Amazon PPC Ads. Therefore knowing what is your ideal ACoS beforehand will ensure you are always in the know of how campaigns are scaling up and performing on Amazon and whether you are making a profit or loss with Amazon Advertising. - Use Descriptive Naming Convention
You will be creating several campaigns and ad groups with different campaigns types, targeting methods, keyword match types and more and things will get messy sooner than you realize. Therefore using a descriptive naming convention will help keep things organized. Even insist your Amazon PPC agency to use a descriptive naming convention that you could understand without having to ask them what was created where and why. - Hire An Agency, Focus Your Energy On Core Business
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with Amazon PPC Ads. Hire a competent agency to do the job for you. Even if you are skilled, knowledgeable and experienced enough to do setup and manage Amazon PPC Ads yourself, we still recommend hiring a competent Amazon PPC Ads agency so you could focus your time and energy in growing the business.
These 10 steps should help Amazon Sellers like you be better prepared to run Amazon PPC campaigns, whether you plan to run it yourself or with the help of an Amazon PPC Agency partner.
Are you already running Amazon Ads campaigns? Are you making or losing money with Amazon PPC Ads?
Why not take advantage of our Free Amazon PPC Audit and let our specialists show you some quick wins to help increase your profitability and decrease ACoS?
