Advertising on Amazon opens up a world of possibilities for sellers. There are hundreds of millions of potential customers using Amazon to search for that great new item. Amazon’s marketing tools are increasingly effective for those eager to make use of all the tools at their disposal, and boasts high conversion rates sure to appeal to savvy digital marketers. With an audience of around 600m customers regularly using Amazon, this represents an enormous wealth of untapped potential for those yet to get to grips with advertising effectively on this growing platform.
Amazon advertising has been a little slower on the uptake than some comparative platforms, but with increased functionality and a more user-friendly approach, competition for the audience’s attention is growing. With this in mind, how can you ensure your own advertising efforts are a success? Read Clear Ads guide to creating ads to get up to speed and then read on for our tips to get the most out of your Amazing ad budget.
Keep your account organised
With so many products listed for sale on Amazon, you might be worried that your own offerings will be drowned out amid the noise of the platform. It’s true that Amazon offers buyers access to millions of customers searching in one place – but using ads to reach them is the best way to ensure your items reach the top of listings and compete in such a crowded marketplace.
Optimising your Amazon ads and creating a comprehensive marketing strategy is essential, so whether you’re just getting started in online advertising or already have some expertise using online marketing tools, there’s always something new to learn. We recommend closely examining the goods you sell and then building your strategy around that. You may decide to create separate ad groups which bring together the different categories of product you sell, or separate out by subgenres if you specialise in a particular category. Keeping your advertising account organised is the best way to set yourself up for success and using the right Amazon PPC software is a good way to do that.
Use your search term reports
Search term reports are a great way of ensuring your search terms are on the right track, as they tell you which terms people are searching for when they find your items. This data is invaluable for testing your keyword strategy, and then refining it to ensure optimum success. Making these reports work for you means understanding how to read the data – and this an area where many advertisers on Amazon struggle. We recommend leaving at least a week between reports, to ensure you have enough data to mine before making any changes to your existing strategy.
When you read your report, look out for the order numbers (how many people bought a particular SKU following a search for any given keyword) and the impressions metric (to see who looked at your item after searching using a keyword). There are many other metrics which will prove useful, but these are the most essential ones to note when you look at your report. From this basis, you can continue to test your keyword ideas using PPC campaigns and additional Amazon advertising options.
Enrol your brand in Amazon’s Brand Registry
Amongst the many great tools which are offered by Amazon’s advertising platform as a way of boosting your profile, enrolling yourself in the Amazon brand registry is a great way to help elevate your presence. Giving you access to a range of new features, joining the registry ensures sellers have more control over their brand by providing trademark protection. Enrolling has been kept swift and simple, and only needs to be done once. Read this guide on Sellerapp for more information.
The system is designed for sellers who manufacture the products they sell, own the brand or distribute and re-sell items with permission from the original brand owner. You must belong to one of these categories in order to be accepted into the brand registry. There are lots of reasons why enrolling might work for you and your brand, and many of these benefits are connected to the way the Amazon platform works.
Regular sellers are kept to fairly rigid standards and bound by the requirements of Amazon’s algorithm, while as a part of Amazon’s brand registry, many of these systems are less conformist. This means greater freedom to play around with your product details, titles, images and more. In addition, the amazon seller brand registry provides an added layer of approval from Amazon, proving you own the rights to the products on sale and keeping them uniquely linked to your account.
Following your approval into the registry, you can look forward to greater protection from theft of your product details.
In summary, the major benefits of joining the registry include:
- Enhanced advertising opportunities with Sponsored Brand campaigns
- A unique store-front for all of your Amazon-listed items.
- Enhanced brand content via the Amazon Brand Registry.
- The registration process takes around two weeks in total, with delays possible if Amazon needs to ask for further details before giving your account the go-ahead.
Make the most of ASIN targeting
The term ASIN refers to Amazon’s Standard Identification Number system, which helps keep everything in your account organised. The ASIN works similarly to an ISBN code, and almost everything for sale on the platform has its own unique variant.
Using your product detail pages (otherwise known as ASIN pages) to host ads helps make your Amazon advertising efforts much more effective, as it allows you to increase your market share and stand out from the competition. Adverts have always been a feature of ASIN pages, but until recently the details on these pages have been decided by search behaviour and a variety of other factors instead of your own advertising efforts. There are several key ways to help ensure you get the most from this new way of targeting your ads.
- We recommend that you conduct a comprehensive search of your competitors, and scout out those products which are either similar or complementary to your own, yet where you feel your offerings could really shine.
- This could be demonstrated through reviews, cost advantage or associated factors. You can then target get each of those products in your ASIN advertising, to ensure your own ads appear below theirs and potential customers feel compelled to click. In this hypothetical scenario, you can help your target audience find what they need at a lower price or with a more effective solution (as indicated by your reviews).
- As with so many areas of Amazon advertising, testing and re-testing is essential to your success, and you can easily scale your efforts in categories where there is less competition.
- Keyword targeting is a major factor in determining whether your ASIN advertising will work, so before you even begin a campaign, be sure to research your keywords from a standpoint of relevance – try not to over think the process, or you could end up wasting time on keywords which mean little to those looking for the items you sell.
ASIN targeting remains a new approach, so few digital marketers and Amazon sellers are currently using it, let alone using this function to the best of its abilities. Now is a great time to dive in and begin crafting your campaigns, before the rest of the world catches on to the possibilities!
Explore your options
If you’re just getting started with Amazon marketing, then you’ll no doubt have been struck by the sheer wealth of possibilities available to you as a seller -this is one of the major perks of the platform, because it is not only comprehensive, but forever updating to become more efficient. Your own efficiency is likely to be a gradual process, achieved through trial and error.
We highly recommend you take a look at the options open to you when crafting your campaigns, to create a strategy which truly works for you and the products you are trying to sell. There are many tips which we would suggest in this regard, with some of the key factors to remember including:
- Scalability – there’s no need to begin your campaign with an enormous budget of ad-spend. Start small, and work your way up as you become better acquainted with the tools at your disposal and how to get the most for your money.
- Consistency – you need to ensure your messaging is consistent across the platform, to avoid making mistakes or negatively affecting your brand imagine. This trait also applies to your approach to the advertising process itself; put in consistent effort, and you’ll see consistent results.
- Trial and error – no campaign is perfect at the outset, and working with digital marketing tools requires a flexible approach and the constant refinement of your strategy based on new information. Keep your mind open to the possibilities of Amazon’s advertising and you’ll find it works for you with far more ease and efficiency.
These are just a few of the areas which budding advertisers should be aware of when using Amazon as a seller, and as the platform develops, no doubt a new series of tools and tricks will begin to emerge.
