There are many advertising options for getting more eyeballs on your product listing pages. Amazon has a great program part of your professional selling account: Amazon Ads. They are also referred to as pay-per-click or sponsored products program. The Amazon Ads that show up from running the sponsored programs allow your product to appear on the first page for specified keyword search results. Customers will see your product even if you are on the last page organically. This Amazon ads post will cover what Amazon ads are and how to set up Amazon Ads.
What are Amazon Ads
Amazon ads are products that sellers have paid for to appear on the first page of a desired keyword. This program is still in an early stage, so there are keywords that are very cheap for certain niches. Here is an example of how a customer sees an Amazon ad:
As you can see, in a very competitive niche like silicone gloves, these products appear on the first page above the organic product listings.
How to Set Up Amazon Ads PPC
Setting up ads are very easy. The process for setting up sponsored products is as follows:
- Choose the products you want to promote and select the keywords you wish to target.
- Decide how much you want to spend on your campaign
- Your ads appear on product pages, below the search bar, or along the side (see image above)
- Customers see your products, click on your listing and are taken to the detail page
- You only pay when customers click on your ad
Amazon Ads in Practice
Now that we have the general idea of how to set up sponsored products, I will show you how it is actually done on your seller central account. First thing you need to do is access your campaign manager listed under Advertising on the top bar. Note: You need a professional seller account to access this.
Your next step is creating a campaign. Click create a campaign and you should be brought to a page that looks like this:
- Name your campaign. It can be very generic such as Campaign 1.
- Input an average daily budget. I recommend $20 to start if you are just learning. This does not mean you will for sure spend $20/day, it just is your maximum budget.
- Set a timeline for when you want to end or start.
- You can either have Amazon decide which keywords to target by hitting automatic, but I prefer to manually choose keywords to see which keywords are being targeted.
The next page you will be brought to ad groups. This is where you can segment your products by category. I suggest naming campaigns based on different categories you sell in. For example, if you sell electronics, create different campaigns for cords, chargers, and selfie sticks. You will then choose your products that you wish to target. As you click products, the screen will look like this:
Start selecting keywords that, as a customer if you were to search for these terms that it would make sense that your product would appear in search results. You will be asked what bid you would like to make. Here is my strategy for selecting bids:
- Make a bid that is high enough that will win the bid, Amazon will give you the lowest bid price
- Discard keywords that do not make sense, if you are selling silicone gloves, do not have keywords that target silicone mats. It is not what the customer is looking for so you will not convert
- Analyze after about a week to identify if there are any keywords that are really cheap, in the $.05 range
- Continue to test and add new keywords. Try adding your competitors brand name.
Conclusion
Amazon Ads can be a lucrative marketing channel for allowing customers to see your products, and make purchases. Launch a campaign and identify the cost of the keywords you are going after. If you have any questions about how to set up Amazon Ads or anything related to selling more products on Amazon, please reach out below.