Around 1.5 million businesses currently list their products on Amazon. This means brands face steep competition on the marketplace. Luckily Amazon Sponsored Products provide a way to stand out from the crowd and quickly establish new listings. They're easy to set up too!
Here's everything brands need to know to get started.
Amazon offers brands a range of PPC options including Sponsored Brand Ads and Display Ads. But Amazon Sponsored Products are the most popular. In fact retailers spend three quarters of their Amazon ad spend on these sponsored listings.
Their popularity can be attributed to their effectiveness in boosting both visibility and sales. But their accessibility is a big plus too. Unlike other Amazon ads you don't need to be a member of the Brand Registry to run a sponsored listings campaign.
Amazon Sponsored Products are similar to Google's product listing ads. They appear when consumers search for certain keywords and brands only pay a fee when someone clicks through.
However Amazon's sponsored listings show up on almost every page of the marketplace. They appear throughout search results competitor product pages and category pages. This makes them an essential part of Amazon's customer journey.
Setting up a sponsored listings campaign isn't too tricky - especially if you hand the reins over to Amazon's bots. Below we run through three key steps you need to consider before launching Amazon Sponsored Products.
The first decision you need to make is whether you want to run an automatic or a manual ad campaign.
Automatic campaigns are simple to set up because Amazon chooses the keywords for you. However you'll need to optimize your listings beforehand as Amazon's bots use the information and keywords available here to target your ads.
With manual campaigns brands choose their own keywords. They also have more control over ad bids and targeting which means they can adjust their campaigns for maximum impact.
Automatic campaigns are great for beginners but experienced marketers should use them to conduct keyword research too.
Setting match types helps customize your campaigns to suit your business goals.
For automatic campaigns you can choose between four different keyword match types:
For manual campaigns you can choose between:
With manual Amazon ads marketers can also target specific product categories and competitor product pages.
For automatic campaigns you simply set an overall budget and a maximum bid for each click. Whereas with manual campaigns you can choose a specific bid for each keyword.
Amazon offers bid suggestions to help you beat out other advertisers. If you bid high enough your ads will show up in prominent positions. But if your bids are too low they mightn't appear anywhere. It's also worth noting that you can increase your bid specifically for prime placements such as the top of search results.
Remember your bid is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click. However you won't always be charged this amount. If your competitors bid lower you could pay less.
Brands can also opt to give Amazon's bots some control over their bidding. They can automatically adjust your bids up or down based on the likelihood of a conversion taking place.
Amazon Sponsored Products are just one way to increase your marketplace sales. With reasonable conversion rates and a simple interface it's no wonder 34% of sellers have increased their Amazon advertising budget in the past year.
At the very least brands should invest in Amazon PPC ads to establish new product listings. This allows them to build up a history of sales and reviews that will help them rank organically in the future.
