Amazon PPC Advertising
I hosted Ritu Jave, CEO of PPC Ninja to talk about Amazon PPC Advertising. This 2 episode webinar provides a good overview and understanding of Amazon Advertising.
Amazon PPC Advertising 101 (Part 1 of 2):
Amazon PPC Advertising 101 (Part 2 of 2):
You can find more info about PPC Ninja's tools, free 6 week mastermind, and other Amazon advertising tips at ppcninja.com.
Amazon Advertising Campaign Types
There are several types of Amazon Advertising Campaigns. These are:
Sponsored Products are used most often as this advertising campaign type is available to all sellers on the Professional Selling plan, while Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display are more advanced ad types that are only available with Amazon Brand Registry.
- Sponsored Products
- Sponsored Brands
- Sponsored Display
Sponsored Products are used most often as this advertising campaign type is available to all sellers on the Professional Selling plan, while Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display are more advanced ad types that are only available with Amazon Brand Registry.
Sponsored Products is where you run Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisements to promote your product(s) to Amazon shoppers searching with keywords related to your product, or viewing a relevant product category or other similar products on Amazon.
Under Sponsored Products, you can create campaigns with automatic or manual targeting:
Under Sponsored Products, you can create campaigns with automatic or manual targeting:
For Automatic Targeting Campaigns, there are 4 ad targeting types:
a) Close match
b) Loose match
c) Complements
d) Substitutes
Close and Loose match targets mainly target keywords. Complements and Substitutes always target other products.
For Manual Targeting Campaigns, you can target KEYWORDS or PRODUCTS.
Keyword targeting ads bid to run when a customer searches a keyword phrase that is related to keywords in your product copywriting (for automatic campaigns) and the keyword terms you specify (for manual campaigns). The keyword phrases customers type are known as search terms.
Product targeting ads bid to run on other product's detail pages when a customer is looking at a related product.
For manual keyword targeting, you can:
a) Close match
b) Loose match
c) Complements
d) Substitutes
Close and Loose match targets mainly target keywords. Complements and Substitutes always target other products.
- Example of a complements: If you sell a bedsheet set, your ad shows up on the product page of a quilt that a customer is looking at.
- Example of a substitutes: Your bedsheet set shows up as an ad when a customer is on the product page of another bedsheet set.
For Manual Targeting Campaigns, you can target KEYWORDS or PRODUCTS.
Keyword targeting ads bid to run when a customer searches a keyword phrase that is related to keywords in your product copywriting (for automatic campaigns) and the keyword terms you specify (for manual campaigns). The keyword phrases customers type are known as search terms.
Product targeting ads bid to run on other product's detail pages when a customer is looking at a related product.
For manual keyword targeting, you can:
- Use Amazon's suggested keywords.
- Enter a list of our own keywords.
- Set the match type targeting for the above keywords to Broad, Phrase, and/or Exact match.
- Set the bid for each keyword and match type.
- Categories - this means your ads can run on any listing within the selected categories. This is good for a wide funnel to potentially discover product target that convert well.
- Products - you specify the ASINs you want to target, so your ad can run on their product detail pages. This is especially effective if you target weaker competitor listings, such as those with a higher price, poorer review ratings, etc., where customers seeing your ad and comparing with the product they are looking at might decide to buy yours. Another strategy for this is to target your own listings, if you have related products. By occupying more advertising spots on your product detail pages, you minimize the opportunities for customers to see and be distracted by competitors products - in other words you plug the leaks inherent in the Amazon funnel.
Notes:
- Campaign Structure: One Ad group per campaign.
- Naming Structure: Have a naming system for quick identification, such as <SKU>-<Match Type>-<Bid Type> Examples: GarlicPress1-Close-H, GarlicPress1-Exact, etc.
- H, M, L are short for High, Median, Low - these figures are the Amazon bid range and suggested bid. If you do no want to have so many automatic campaigns, you could adapt to your preference such as:
- Only have an M bid at the suggested bid, or having just 2 bid points instead of 3. How aggressive or not you are wiling to be, will determine your bid strategy. For example, if you want to minimise costs then perhaps bid only at the suggested bid and/or low end of the bid range.
- Reduce the auto targeting match type diversification by grouping close and loose together, and substitutes and complements together, as these are essentially keyword targeting and product targeting respectively.
Advertising Strategy
Why have so many campaigns per listing?
Most sellers simply have 1 giant auto campaign and 1 giant manual campaign. This has major disadvantages and is missing opportunities to optimise advertising:
Most sellers simply have 1 giant auto campaign and 1 giant manual campaign. This has major disadvantages and is missing opportunities to optimise advertising:
- Lack of granularity - a lot of time is wasted figuring out what is working or not working.
- Better control of advertising spend - you can immediately see which campaigns are performing well or poorly, and therefore quickly take action to adjust specific campaigns such as by changing the daily budget, bids, bid placements, etc. This allows you to have a scalpel approach to manage your ads with great precision, rather than a carpet bombing approach which will have lots of collateral damage.
- The keywords with the highest search volume and highest competition (highest bids), will use up the majority of the daily budget. The result is only this limited number of targets gets all the exposure, with a relatively high cost-per-click (CPC). By splitting your ad campaigns out, you give the lower hanging fruit (longer tail, lower search volume, lower competition, and therefore lower CPC) opportunities for exposure.
- Maximising exposure - by having multiple advertising campaigns, your listing shows up more often in more places. This leads to a wider funnel. While maximising your product's exposure, the concurrent effect is to also minimise competitor's exposure, because every sponsored ad spot you occupy means customers see your product instead of another product.
Negative Targeting
How is negative targeting useful?
Negative targeting is particularly useful for automatic campaigns because you cannot pick the keywords or products targeted by the automatic ad algorithm. However by using negative targeting, you can specify keywords or products to be omitted from automatic campaign targeting.
Negative targeting is not essential for manual campaigns because you can simply stop (pause or archive) specific keyword or product targets in manual campaigns.
After running ad campaigns for 2 weeks or more, I like to check on their performance. This can be done 2 ways:
To tune my ad campaigns, I look for the following:
Negative Keyword targeting has been available for years, but Amazon just added Negative Product targeting on 30th July 2020 (see the screenshot below)! Before that, there was no way to stop automatic ad campaigns from targeting products that had many clicks but poor sales.
Negative targeting is particularly useful for automatic campaigns because you cannot pick the keywords or products targeted by the automatic ad algorithm. However by using negative targeting, you can specify keywords or products to be omitted from automatic campaign targeting.
Negative targeting is not essential for manual campaigns because you can simply stop (pause or archive) specific keyword or product targets in manual campaigns.
After running ad campaigns for 2 weeks or more, I like to check on their performance. This can be done 2 ways:
- Online using the Amazon Advertising Console.
- Downloading the Search Term report for the last 14 to 60 days as a spreadsheet.
To tune my ad campaigns, I look for the following:
- Campaigns with high ACOS, or worst, campaigns with no ACOS because there are clicks and spend but zero sales. I prioritise dealing with campaigns with high spend, no ACOS (but with clicks and spend), then ACOS from highest to lowest.
- Within each campaign, identify the customer search terms and product targets (ASINs) with ≥8 clicks and no sales (if the listing is new with no reviews, then give it more leeway, perhaps ≥12 to 15 clicks with 0 sales before taking action as the conversion rate will generally be lower relative to social proof). For automatic campaigns, find these by clicking on Campaign (Name link) > Ad Group (Name link) > Search terms (in the left menu bar), then sort by the table header for Clicks or Spend (click twice on the table header to sort by descending, highest to lowest).
- For manual campaigns, if I feel these poorly converting targets are important/relevant and want to keep advertising, then I might reduce the bid by 10%-25% so the ads are kept running but at a lower cost-per-click.
- For automatic campaigns, you cannot adjust bids for specific keywords or products.
- For automatic campaign targets that have poor conversion (≥8 to 12 clicks with no sales, or ACOS that is too high), such as irrelevant keywords, irrelevant products, or competing substitutes that are too strong (lower price than you, more reviews), these can be added to negative targeting so that no more money is wasted on ads that result in non-converting clicks.
Negative Keyword targeting has been available for years, but Amazon just added Negative Product targeting on 30th July 2020 (see the screenshot below)! Before that, there was no way to stop automatic ad campaigns from targeting products that had many clicks but poor sales.
Jul 30, 2020: Negative product targeting is finally available for Amazon PPC campaigns!
By adding negative keyword and negative products to advertising campaigns, you can stop ads targeting keyword phrases and products that cost a lot of money (many clicks), but do not convert well (low or no sales). This will help control your ad campaigns to achieve lower ACOS and therefore better return on investment (ROI). That means more profitable sales!
More about Amazon Advertising... I've often been asked about Amazon advertising, for help to understand it, advertising software recommendations, etc.. While I am part of a very advanced Amazon PPC course (some course members say it's like a PhD in Amazon PPC ads), I do not think it is suitable for the majority of sellers as it is very spreadsheet intensive and requires a lot of work with Excel files for bulk uploads. Most people would be lost by the first 2 hours out of the 40+ hours of video to grasp the spreadsheet sorting, formulas and processes.
The main help I do provide with Amazon Ads is as part of training program, particularly during the 1-to-1 sessions because that's when it is most productive to help setup ad campaigns and analyze ad reports, by working with live listings so actual campaigns can be launched and subsequently analyzed and tweaked. I run training in small groups from time to time and more info can be found at my Amazon Seller Live Training page.
The main help I do provide with Amazon Ads is as part of training program, particularly during the 1-to-1 sessions because that's when it is most productive to help setup ad campaigns and analyze ad reports, by working with live listings so actual campaigns can be launched and subsequently analyzed and tweaked. I run training in small groups from time to time and more info can be found at my Amazon Seller Live Training page.