How to Optimize Your Amazon Ads
Between all of the products on Amazon, you might be suspicious that the platform could harvest your business a return. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to stand out from the opposition in the massive Amazon marketplace. It just needs going into it with an informed Amazon advertising strategy.
Following are six tips to get you started on the right foot.
1. Create well-structured campaigns by product category
If you are a skilled AdWords advertiser this is something you’ve likely already mastered. You can use your AdWords organizational skills to assemble your campaigns and ad groups with Amazon’s ad platform. The finest plan here is to have a separate campaign of each of your main product categories, and then under each campaign create ad groups that are more specific. For example, let’s say you sell women’s sporty wear; you might decide to start with three of your top-selling products:
1) Women’s workout pants
2) Women’s workout shirts
3) Women’s sports Under Garments
Under each campaign, you should make ad groups around more specific groups. Like, in campaign Number 1 you might have three ad groups – women’s yoga pants, women’s running pants, and women’s lounge pants. Then you’ll want to create a list of applicable keywords for each ad group (I’d recommend staying between 15-30 keywords per ad group). Finally, you’ll craft relevant ads for each keyword grouping.
A compact account structure will confirm your ads are relevant, which will in turn save you money and raise your ROI. This tip is a tremendously critical one to reap the benefits of advertising on Amazon.
Check out this guide on AdWords account structure if you’re new to the game.
2. Create compelling & urgent Ad copy
Confirm your ad text is not only accurate in terms of what you’re selling but try and insert some creativeness and humor into your ads if possible. Standing out is more important than ever amongst the cluttered search results of Amazon.
3. Ensure your Ad copy is as specific as possible
Your ad copy should also be very exact in terms of what you’re selling. Like, if you’re selling a water bottle, I want to know how many ounces/cups of water it holds if it’s BPA-free if it preserves my water cold for up to a certain number of hours etc. While it might be hard to uncover all of this information in the ad text, it’s important to jam the most important information in there.
4. Bid on popular brands that sell similar products
When suggesting keywords to bid on, don’t forget about your well-known competitors. For example, if you sell backpacks, you should be bidding on terms like “L.L. Bean backpacks” and “North face backpacks” because these are well-known brands that are frequently searched for and purchased. This will allow you to gain publicity and pursue someone to buy your much cooler, less well-known brand name backpack.
By finding your top competitors, do a generic search on Amazon for products in your vertical – say, “backpacks” – and see which brands come up the most in your search results.
5. Experiment with all three Ad formats
In Sponsored product ads might appear to yield the fastest and most visible ROI, headline search ads might lead to more loyal, repeat buyers. It’s worth testing with all three ad types to see which yields the highest returns, and then once your numbers can paint a clear picture you can re-allocate according to your budget of the results of your campaign.
6. Use negative keywords
Just like when advertising on Google, negative keywords are key to dropping wasted spending from irrelevant clicks. Like, if you are marketing musical flutes, and bidding on the word “flutes” with phrase or broad match then someone could type in a champagne flute and your ad could still populate. If someone accidentally clicks on your ad you’ll be charged for a click from someone pointed for a $10 glass rather than a quality musical instrument.
It can also help to be more traditional with your match types, steering clear of broad match, and putting higher importance on phrase and exact match. Make sure to conduct some keyword research to confirm you’re targeting the right words as well.