Driving traffic to your Amazon listings through the likes of social posts, Google PPC, Amazon Advertising and video content is a great way to increase conversions. However it's difficult to track the precise impact this external marketing has on sales. And without this data you can't optimize your campaigns.
That's why Amazon recently introduced a way for brands to track the success of their non-Amazon marketing efforts. Amazon Attribution allows advertisers to understand how customers find and buy their products. They can then use this information to boost conversions.
In essence Amazon Attribution is an analytics solution that allows brands to track their Amazon marketing across a wide range of channels. In other words brands can use it to measure the impact of their off-Amazon marketing methods.
This allows brands to figure out which strategies are most effective and implement changes to improve their ROI sales and customer experience.
This Amazon tracking tool is available in the US the UK Canada Spain Germany France and Italy. But only sellers and vendors who are members of the Amazon Brand Registry can access it. (If you're not eligible for Amazon Attribution right now watch out for changes as Amazon frequently expands its availability.)
Access to Amazon Attribution is available through Amazon Advertising as well as third-party analytics tools that integrate with the Amazon Ads API. To gain access you'll need to sign up for an Amazon Ads account - if you don't already have one.
A wide range of advantages come with using Amazon Attribution. Simply put it provides unique insights that allow brands to optimize their Amazon marketing campaigns and boost conversions. Plus it's completely free.
Let's take a closer look at some of its perks:
Amazon Attribution provides detailed insights into your sales funnel. This is hugely important as more digital channels appear and the modern consumer journey becomes more complex.
Whether your audience is on Facebook Instagram or Google Amazon Attribution allows you to track the customer journey from first click through to conversion. You'll gain access to click metrics page views conversions and shopping cart data. It even shines a light on the actions of prospects who click your ad but end up purchasing a competitor's product instead.
Plus all this data is reported in real-time. So brands can start assessing their campaigns from the moment they go live.
With oversight of the sales funnel brands can identify which channels and campaigns are most effective at driving traffic to their Amazon listings. This allows them to focus on what works and eliminate the strategies that don't.
This Amazon tracking data also allows marketing teams to improve their campaigns by retargeting prospects through the Amazon Advertising DSP. So if a Facebook user clicks through to one of your Amazon listings but fails to convert you could retarget them with highly relevant follow-up product ads the next time they visit Amazon.
This unique benefit is available because Amazon Attribution is connected with the platform's internal data.
By reallocating resources to the marketing campaigns that work best brands can increase Amazon sales reduce costs and achieve a better Return on Ad Spend for their external Amazon advertising campaigns.
Brands that track their PPC campaigns can also use Amazon Attribution to improve their Amazon ACOS and reduce Customer Acquisition Costs.
This may sound ambitious but many brands have found Amazon tracking to be hugely effective. For example by setting up Amazon Attribution supplement brand SmartyPants managed to grow its ROAS by 60% new customer sales by 125% and Amazon subscriptions by 268%.
Amazon Attribution uses tracking URLs to attribute sales to a particular channel or campaign. When you're running ads on the likes of Facebook or Google you can generate a unique link for each product ad or campaign to make them trackable.
To do this you'll need to sign into your Amazon Ads account and head to the Amazon Attribution console. (Alternatively you can get there by clicking 'Measure non-Amazon ads' under the advertising tab of your Seller Central account.)
From here you'll need to select the company that you'd like to set up Amazon Attribution for. If you operate a single brand only one option will appear on this simple screen.
To start setting up Amazon tracking links you'll need to create a 'New Order'. Then under each order brands can add 'Line Items'.
These terms can be confusing because they have no set definitions. Many marketers and advertisers create an order for each channel and under that add a line item for each campaign or ad group. Others create an order for each campaign and add line items to represent each ad.
However the structure of this data is completely up to you. Your organization will depend on how granular you'd like your data to be. Just remember that each line item is like a subcategory within each order.
If you're running campaigns on Instagram Facebook or Google you'll need to select the 'Upload file' option. But for all other marketing platforms you can manually create your order.
To do this Amazon Attribution simply asks you to choose the products you're advertising and to name your order. You can add up to 1000 ASINs from your catalogue but the less you choose the more detailed your tracking data will be.
When it comes to naming your order make sure the title is descriptive and distinctive from your other order names.
Next you should add a 'Line Item' to your new order. To do this you'll need to name the line item choose the advertising channel your product link will appear on and paste in the relevant product listing URL.
There's a wide variety of advertising channels or 'publishers' to choose from including Google Ads Facebook Hulu Netflix TikTok Twitch and Pinterest - to name just a few.
Once you've done this click 'Create' to generate your unique trackable URL. This can be added to the ads you'd like to track. When a shopper clicks through they'll land on your product listing where Amazon can track their every move. The data is then presented in a user-friendly dashboard.
Your Amazon Attribution insights will also appear in the Amazon Analytics dashboard alongside five other insightful reports.
If you run a lot of campaigns to promote your listings Amazon offers bulk sheet uploads. Recently it also introduced a feature which automatically populates Line Item settings based on your KPIs.
This could simplify the whole Amazon tracking process and save your team a ton of time so it's worth checking out.
If you sell products across multiple marketplaces and not just on Amazon a Where to Buy solution is another great tracking option.
This allows brands to track consumer behavior's across a variety of digital touchpoints and attribute sales across Amazon eBay Walmart BestBuy Tesco Argos and 2000 other retailers.
Brands can add Buy Now buttons to their website to direct shoppers straight to third-party product pages. They can also add trackable links to all their digital touchpoints including PPC ads social media posts and banner ads.
All the data from across your retailer network and advertising channels is brought together in one user-friendly dashboard.
Amazon Attribution is a great way to gain oversight of shopping behavior's. Plus it's getting better all the time! Amazon recently began to track in-app social attributions and mobile users can now be directed straight to the Amazon Shopping app. Amazon Attribution will continue to improve and grow so now is the time to get on board.
