Amazon advertising is still an indispensable promotion method for most Amazon sellers. There are also many large foreign sellers who are very successful in using the advertising model. However, there are also many sellers whose advertising is ineffective, and there are even many who suffer huge losses. This is because advertising is not something that can be done well by just spending money. A lot of work still needs to be done, especially online advertising, which requires precision in its placement.
1. Create a balanced mix of automatic and manual campaigns
I suggest you first ask yourself whether you are using a combination of automatic and manual Sponsored Products campaigns. While most people generally agree that manual campaigns are more important, each ad type serves a different purpose, and it’s best to use both automatic and manual campaigns to achieve comprehensive ad coverage.
Automatic campaigns have a wide coverage, so ideally you’d include all the products you want to advertise in your automatic campaigns. Group similar products together in the same ad group to ensure that some ads reach those products. Manual ads are more targeted and generally have higher returns, and using both ad formats will maximize traffic to your products.
2. Check the advertising structure of the three traffic types
The next thing to consider is whether your ad structure is built around three different traffic types: brand, category, and competitor. Creating keyword campaigns that target one traffic type is essential to understanding how your account is performing. Because branded keywords generally produce better returns, if they are combined with category or competitor keywords in a single ad, they can artificially boost the ad’s overall revenue.
Additionally, categorized keywords may not receive as much exposure, so to allocate ad spend correctly, you must distinguish between them. This will also help you understand the performance of your ads for each traffic type.
3. Use three types of advertising keyword matching
Using Broad, Phrase, and Exact keyword matching methods can maximize your advertising coverage.
Broad matching can get the most traffic and exposure, and can bring more potential users to visit your products. For sellers whose products are unpopular or whose audience is very small, this method can be used to increase clicks.
Phrase match and exact match, on the other hand, will limit traffic to a more precise target audience. Ideally, you should focus more on exact match, as these have higher keyword relevance and higher conversion rates. However, sellers don’t have to limit themselves to just one of these methods, but should combine all three based on your products and keywords.
4. Use ad formats that make sense for your advertising strategy
It’s important to utilize all ad formats that align with your overall advertising goals on Amazon.
1) Sponsored Products Ads with Traffic and Flexibility
Compared to other advertising formats, Sponsored Products ads typically generate the highest traffic and the highest sales per click. It’s recommended that you run Sponsored Products ads frequently because they can be tailored to any strategy, including branding, rapid growth, and achieving advertising sales cost goals.
2) Sponsored Brands for brand promotion
If your focus is to promote your brand or increase sales by expanding your brand’s reach to new consumers through advertising, then a Sponsored Brands campaign is a great brand promotion opportunity.
A prominent banner position can not only increase traffic to your Amazon store, but also promote your brand well, allowing more consumers to know your brand or products. However, due to the limited prominent placements, CPC (cost per click) is usually higher than Sponsored Products advertising costs, and the ad click-through rate is much higher, so Sponsored Brands advertising is not as beneficial for achieving lower ACoS (advertising cost to sales) indicators.
3) Product Display Ads that can target interests and product pages
Similarly, Product Display ads can provide consumers with information about your brand by targeting interests and product pages (including your competitors’ pages). However, Product Display campaigns should be reserved for strong brand promoters, as they are typically the most expensive form of advertising and may also generate lower sales.
5. Avoid keyword duplication
Duplicate keywords in the same ad format can lead to inefficient account management and make it difficult to know which products are receiving traffic for specific keywords. Since keywords on an account have different bids, duplicate keyword competition can crowd out positions, and one keyword may receive more traffic than the others.
I suggest you analyze Amazon’s Targeting Report for duplicate keywords and consider removing poorly performing keywords. In an ideal Sponsored Products ad structure, a keyword should appear in only one ad group.
You can select a group of high-priority products that are closely related to your keywords and will then appear in this ad group. The same is true for Sponsored Brands campaigns. Specific keywords with the same match type should also only be included in one campaign, and the most popular related products can appear in banners and landing pages.
