By Shanon Roberts, on 12 July 2021
Amazon ads are one of the most interesting digital advertising options on the market. Unlike Facebook Ads or Google Ads, Amazon ads target users who are predisposed to buy, so it's much easier to generate sales.
However, as with any digital marketing campaign, it is essential to have a strategy to get the best results. Here we're covering the keys to an effective PPC campaign on Amazon Ads.
What Is Amazon Advertising PPC?
Amazon Advertising is Amazon's pay-per-click platform. As with other online advertising platforms, you can choose different placements for your ads and use a variety of audience targeting options to reach your customers.
Within the Amazon PPC ecosystem, there are ads within Amazon's website and elsewhere on the internet (through display advertising). The first option is good since you can take advantage of a flow of visitors who intend to make a purchase and therefore have a better chance of converting.
How to Choose the Right Type of Ad on Amazon
The first thing you need to know in order to run an effective PPC campaign on Amazon are the types of ads that exist and their targeting options, so let's take a look at them.
Sponsored Product Ads
These ads appear in search results and on product pages, and are very similar to organic search results. They are the most prevalent ads on Amazon PPC, with two-thirds of third-party sellers using them.
You can choose the keywords for your sponsored product ads through automatic or manual targeting.
With the automatic option, your ad will appear for the keywords that Amazon's algorithm deems relevant to your product. As the campaign progresses, Amazon improves the targeting based on ad click and purchase data. Your ads will appear when users are searching for keywords related to your product, when they are searching for products similar to yours, and when they are viewing complementary product detail pages.
With the manual strategy, you hand-pick the keywords you want to bid on. Thus, the ad will only appear if a user enters one of the keywords you have chosen. This strategy requires more time and effort but in return it allows you to better customize and control your campaign.
Sponsored Brand Ads
Sponsored brand ads (formerly known as "headline search ads") allow marketers to advertise more than one product at a time and attract the attention of buyers, as they are more eye-catching than product ads.
Within sponsored brand ads there are three different formats. The "product collection" and "store spotlight" ads usually include the brand logo, a customized slogan, and two or more products. The video format, on the other hand, is a 15-30 second video that shows a single product and appears further down the page.
Sponsored Display Ads
Amazon PPC display ads allow you to retarget users who have visited a product detail page, both on and off Amazon. Amazon display ads can appear on affiliated sites such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, and certain mobile apps.
This is the newest type of Amazon PPC campaign and it is not yet as popular as other formats, with only 25% of third-party sellers using it.
How to Choose Keywords for PPC Campaigns on Amazon
1. Use Different Types of Matches in Your Keywords
As with Google Ads, Amazon ads has different types of keyword matching that allow you to better control when your ads are displayed. Here are the main options available.
Broad match: your ads will be displayed for the chosen words and for close variants, such as plurals, acronyms, partial matches, and synonyms.
Modified broad match (only for sponsored brand ads) is the same as above, but you can specify the words you want to include in the search term by adding a + in front of them.
Phrase matching: your ads will be shown when the search term includes your exact keyword, but may include other words before and after.
Exact match: your ads will only be displayed when the user enters the exact keyword in their search.
2. Use Negative Matching
Automated and broad match campaigns can end up displaying your ads on searches that have very little to do with your product or brand.
To avoid this, use negative match to rule out searches that include a particular term or terms to make your ad more relevant. You can choose both phrase and exact negative matches.
3. Incorporate Branded Keywords
Sometimes, the most profitable keyword you can incorporate into your PPC campaigns is your own brand name.
Many advertisers don't use this resource because they think it's a waste of money. After all, if the user is searching for you directly, they are going to find your products anyway.
The problem is that if you don't create campaigns with your brand name, it is possible that your competitors will and their ads will appear before your products, so branded campaigns are a great defensive strategy.
It is also very interesting to include in these campaigns all possible misspellings and alternative ways of writing the name of your brand and your products. This way, you make sure you appear even if the user makes a mistake.
