How to do an Ad Campaign in Amazon Ads

October 01, 2019
Antevenio
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An ad campaign in Amazon ads is a great opportunity to sell more products online, thanks to PPC. As a matter of fact, this feature arrived just in time to destroy all myths about Facebook and Google being the only one capable to manage successful PPC campaigns.

It’s clear that if you create a well-done ad campaign in Amazon Ads and you manage them following good practices, not only will you get more sales. But also, you’ll improve your organic ranking in the platform.

Is or is it not a good offer?

Besides this, it’s important to note that the Amazon’s promoted ads program is quite simple. Quite easy. More than anything, when having in mind that it was created with a 278 million dollar budget.

What does Amazon ads refer to?

Don’t think that this is something outlandish. An ad campaign in Amazon Ads will be use in a way to make you know that it is an ad.

As a matter of fact, at the moment you add a keyword in the platform’s search bar, you’ll start seeing results. And as with Google, you’ll see how the first suggestions are promoted. Meaning, you’ll see pieces that form part of an ad campaign in Amazon Ads, similarly as can be seen in Google.

But, how do the ads work?

  1. First, they display offers for predetermined keywords. All this to get more visibility in the platform’s SERP.
  2. Second, after someone clicks the add, it will be charged to your account.

But, this can be done in many ways, because an ad campaign in Amazon Ads can take different formats.

For example, as you can see in a phone case page, you’ll be able to see an mouse ad on the right side. But if you observe the main image, you’ll see all the promoted products, that are also ads.

How do the paid searches work

It’s important that to learn to create ad campaigns in Amazon Ads, you start internalizing many concepts and that you go step by step.

Starting at the beginning, is quite interesting analyzing, what’s exactly an Amazon’s paid search.

As you can imagine, the platform receives millions of searches per month, from consumers ready to buy. And many with long tail words.

Users don’t reach the platform to find inspiration and find new products. Most of them know already what they want and it’s Amazon who shows the products it considers that are easier to sell in each case.

This are the organic results. But as you can see, before them, you’ll see some paid items, as it happens in Google.

Create an ad campaign in Amazon Ads, step by step guide

The creation of an ad campaign in Amazon Ads is quite simple, but it will only work if you build it in base of a studied strategy.

Also, fortunately, you don’t need to make lots of setups for the campaign. This simplifies the process, compared with other, more complex, ad platforms.

These are the main elements you should set your sight on:

  • Create a strong keyword list.
  • Understand the different types of “coupling” that could arise.
  • Set a fixed budget.
  • Create logic ad campaigns and groups.

But with this, many questions arise. How much should I invest in Amazon?

The answer is simple: depends on many factors. Depends in how much you want to invest, how are you managing to transform this traffic in sales, etc.

But, every time you get clients in a very profitable way, you still need to keep investing in ads. Is better to think in your ad budget per unit, compared with the valuation of you spending resources from your general budget.

How to calculate an ideal ACoS?

Amazon calls ACoS to the “Cost per Conversion”. This is the information you need to know to understand what number will work for your ad campaign in Amazon Ads.

  • At what price you are selling your products.
  • The cost of sold goods. Unit cost. What you pay to your provider.
  • All the FBA fees.
  • Variables costs (sending and packaging costs, etc.)

Important: Never incorporate promotions or discounts here.

You’ll understand it better with this example:

  • Sell price: 27$
  • Good’s price: 4$
  • All FBA fees: 11$
  • Variable costs: 3$

After subtracting the COGS (Cost of Goods), the FBA and the variable cost leave 9 in profits per unit (27-4-11-3=9). Meaning that you can spend at least 9 to get a sale and still be profitable.

To calculate the ACoS Threshold to get a balanced point, you simply need to divide the net price of the sale, meaning, 9/27=33. This leaves you with a 33% of the ACoS, meaning that you’ll be earning money with any keyword that have a 33% cost of sale or with a lower percentage.

Choose the orientation of your campaign

Now that you know how to organize to set a budget, it’s time to create an ad campaign in Amazon Ads. And you can do this in two ways.

Automatic orientation

You can guide yourself by the Automatic Orientation campaigns, in which Amazon chooses which search queries will show the ad.

Creating an automatic campaign is very easy. You only need to include your campaign’s name, the budget, and starting date. Everything else will come by itself.

It’s way of working is the following. Amazon will track your list and will execute the ad campaign in Amazon Ads inside the limits of your budget. But consider that it will decide everything. This includes the keywords and the day offers.

In general, it’s a good idea to execute these types of campaigns when starting with your PPC. But once you are more prepared, we recommend you to include these campaigns in the manual campaigns. This way you’ll reduce the budget for the automatic campaigns and you’ll be able to manage them as you like.

Manual orientation

On the other hand, you can bet for the Manual Orientationwhere you’ll be able to choose your own keywords that will show the ads. This way, you’ll be able to structure your ad campaign in Amazon Ads as you see fit, with ad groups for keyword sets.

How to optimize the PPC campaigns

Once you compile a good number of data, is time to analyze them and see what works and what doesn’t work. And these are some areas where you can focus to optimize and improve your ad campaign in Amazon Ads:

1.- Filtering keywords by ACoS

After a week, you should be able to identify which keywords will turn into sales and which into ACoS. As a matter of fact, is quite probable that you’ll want to escalate the keywords and reduce the offers for all of them that have a higher ACoS than your threshold

As a matter of fact, by this same reason, is quite probable that you’ll want to identify any keyword that is below your ACoS and think in raising the offer so your ad appears with more frequency for a concrete keyword.

2.- Filter by numbers

This metric is probably the most important in an ad campaign level in Amazon Ads. But it is ideal to understand what keywords generate the greatest number of conversions.

3.- Filter keyworks by cost

It’s recommended to filter by cost, to make sure you know all the keywords in which you are investing.

You need to make sure that these keywords convert and that you are doing a profitable investment for your item to appear in a concrete search. Remember, an optimized paid search campaign will guarantee the attraction of qualified traffic to your list, at a very profitable and efficient cost.

4.- Adjust the offers

If a keyword is converting but with a ACoS above the target threshold, it isn’t necessary to pause this keyword. Instead, you can adjust your offer.

For example, if your ACoS is at 75% with 1,5 offers and you want to be closer to 50%, you can opt to reduce the offer to 1,25.

If you do these small changes, in general, from 0,25 per week, you’ll be able to get the marked objectives.

5.- Negative keywords

It marks an agreement to your ad campaign in Amazon Ads. It’s the only type of agreement that will activate your ad for any type of search query that’s remotely relevant.

Meaning, the wide agreement results in the majority of searches. That’s why your “shoes” offer could also appear in search queries for “sneakers”, “red shoes”, “comfy summer sandals”, etc.

For the moment, this is the only type of coincidence Amazon offers, so, if you desire to manage your searches with more precision, you need to use negative keywords.

With all this, are you looking for active users who interact, explore and purchase in Amazon? In Antevenio we are specialists in getting leads at the lowest cost possible. Get in touch with us!

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