PPC for Amazon: Every Seller Need To Know

If you’re new to selling on Amazon, you’re probably searching “How do I promote my product on Amazon?” The answer is Amazon PPC ads.

When customers go to Amazon, they have 488 million products to choose from. The good news is your product can stand out. All it takes a great product and a little Amazon advertising know-how to climb the search results and land in front of your customers.

Amazon PPC advertising allows sellers to promote their items directly on the marketplace. The program has grown to become a great way to spread product awareness in recent years. In 2016, sellers using Amazon PPC doubled globally, and PPC clicks grew over 150%.

 

What is Amazon PPC?

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and means exactly what you think it does. When a potential customer clicks on an advertisement the seller pays Amazon for that ad space. Keep in mind sellers only pay when the ad is clicked on–not when the ad is seen by Amazon users. Every Amazon ad you see is a PPC ad and every Amazon ad you’ve clicked on in the past, a seller was charged.

Amazon PPC ads can be placed by any seller with a professional selling plan. PPC ads aren’t available for all product categories, though. An overview of all available categories for Amazon PPC can be found here (when logged into your Seller Central account).

Some of those are:

  • Baby
  • Handmade
  • Pet Supplies
  • Beauty
  • Health & Personal Care
  • Shoes
  • Camera
  • Home & Kitchen

 

Amazon PPC Ad Types:

There are three types of PPC ads you can run with Amazon: Sponsored Products, Headline Search Ads, and Display Ads. Let’s dive into each of these three types of ads.

1.Sponsored Products:

Amazon’s Sponsored Products allows businesses to advertise products based on keywords.

To get started with Amazon’s Sponsored Products, all you have to do is select your products, choose your keyword terms, and set your budget. Amazon will automatically target your ads to the appropriate audience.

Some businesses have seen better success with Amazon’s Sponsored Products.

2.Headline Search Ads:

 

Similar to the Sponsored Products, Headline Search Ads are limited to specific product categories. Headline Search Ads in Amazon are the banner ads at the top of search results with creative or the brand logo. The goal is to drive buyers to a collection of products. The placement at the top of the search results increases the chance of your products being seen.

Amazon recently announced new placement options for its Headline Search Ads. In addition to the banner ad placement at the top of the search results, they now show on the left and bottom of search results.

3.Product Display Ads:

Product Display Ads are another type of PPC ads that are shown on a product page – in a similar product section. These ads are designed to be a self-service option, which is paired with the ASINs and thereby, giving marketers greater options to focus on the behavioral segments.

Amazon PPC ads also appear on product listing pages underneath the title and pictures, but above the product description text.

Ready to boost your Amazon business with PPC? We’ll walk you through the steps of setting up your first campaign.

 Decide What You Want to Spend:

You can’t set up a campaign unless you know how much you want to bid on your ads.

To calculate your “default bid,” you need to know three metrics:

  • your target ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale)
  • Your product’s price
  • Your product’s conversion rate

You shouldn’t have any trouble identifying your product price, and your conversion rate can be easily found through your Seller Central account. The less familiar metric is your target ACoS.

Your ACoS measures the performance of your PPC campaigns. It’s calculated as a ratio of ad spend on sales.

ACoS = Product ad spend ÷ Product Sales

Target ACoS is where you want your ACoS to be at a campaign level. Low ACoS means high profitability and low visibility and high ACoS are higher visibility and lower profitability. High ACoS isn’t a bad thing as some sellers think. I often compare it to buying an ad spot in the Super bowl.

The price will be higher, but the brand awareness and sales potential are infinite.

Setting up a campaign:

So now you know the risks and rewards of running a PPC campaign. But how do you set one up?

You can start by creating two campaigns. An “Automatic Targeting” campaign, where Amazon determines which keywords to target for your product, and then a “Manual Targeting” campaign, where you choose your own keywords and ad group structure.

Here’s how you create a campaign:

In Seller Central go to Advertising >> Campaign Manager >> Create Campaign.

Additional Tip: Really simple. Just make sure you choose a good name, so that it’s easy to identify later when you have several campaigns.

While creating an Amazon Sponsor Product campaign, you can choose two available targeting options:  Automatic Targeting and Manual Targeting.

Targeting helps you to optimize your advertising campaign which in turn gives you more sales.

Automatic Targeting:

Automatic Campaigns is where Amazon decides when to display your product ad based on the keywords identified from the title, description and other sections from your product listing.

These are quick and easy to start. It’s easier to choose successful keywords. By running this automatic campaign, Amazon will collect data for you to apply to future campaigns. Amazon tracks click and spend, usually taking 2 to 4 days to process. It may take up to 2 to 4 weeks to gather enough data to see which campaigns are doing well.

Manual Targeting:

For manual targeting campaigns, sellers have to handpick keywords along with the products they want to advertise. Amazon will show your ads only if the shopper’s search query matches any of the keywords in the campaign.

Benefits of Manual Targeting:

  • Manual Targeting is great for PPC experts who have time to set up manual campaigns.
  • You can maximize your sales volume and perfect your ACoS.
  • Bidding on keywords manually allows for more precise targeting and could lead to more sales if you are successful
  • It’s easy to reduce bids or pause low-performing words.

 

Track Your PPC Ads:

Setting up your Manual or Automatic PPC campaign is just the beginning. Afterward, you’ll want to track the performance of your campaigns to make sure you’re making the most of your advertising budget.

To monitor your PPC ads, visit the “All Sponsored Products Campaigns” page in the Advertising section of Seller Central. From there, you can track your ads’ cost-effectiveness with the Spend, Sales, and ACoS metrics. You can also adjust the start date, end date, and daily budget of your campaigns, even after they’ve been launched.

Boost Your Business with Amazon PPC:

On Amazon, it’s not enough to sell a great product – there’s simply too much competition to rely on your merchandise’s quality for sales. You have to find a way to make your product highly visible to attract buyers in this crowded marketplace. The easier it is to find your items, the more likely it is that you’ll make a sale.

Amazon PPC advertising is the key to achieving product exposure. By bidding on keywords, you have control over whether you’ll rank high in product searches. PPC is an added cost to your budget, but mindfully creating and managing your campaigns with this guide will keep your advertising cost-effective, leading to greater product exposure and sales.