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What is Amazon PPC Basics Guide: Advertising for Beginners

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Profit Whales Team on Jan 20, 2022 in Step by Step Guides

amazon ppc basics

 

With all the major ad products on Amazon – Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display – you’re bound to be overwhelmed by all the options. And to make it easy, our guide has everything you need to know about your Amazon advertising journey.

So let’s go!

 

Table of content:

 

Amazon PPC Ads and their Value for Your Business

Amazon pay-per-click advertising campaign, otherwise known as Amazon PPC advertising, is a type of advertising campaign in which advertisers pay fees every time someone clicks on their ads. 

This is how you pay to promote your product digitally on Amazon. 

With Amazon PPC ads, you set the budget, target keywords that your audience searching for similar terms to your products are most likely to use, and Amazon then helps you promote your product with the right content and ad copy to drive more sales.

Why do you need to spend money on Amazon PPC advertising? 

Because there are astronomical amounts of data that can be gleaned off Amazon, PPC advertising in the Amazon search engine is a useful way to get that data. Amazon PPC advertising is unique. Rather than serving ads to people without identifying who they are, Amazon instead uses analytics and other information that it gathers from the millions of transactions it processes each day to determine which ads the average customer is likely to respond to.

With a large-scale platform and a great search engine, Amazon has a lot to offer sellers. Yet, in order to succeed, they must explore it carefully.

 

Amazon Sponsored Products

Sponsored products are similar to Google ads. You can select the products you want to advertise, add relevant keywords or product attributes to target using the CPC (cost per click) amount. Your ad may appear when buyers type one or more keywords that you target.

 

Where Do Sponsored Products Appear?

This type of ad is so perfectly integrated into organic search results that most of the time shoppers have no idea they are watching an ad. Depending on the applicable bids, they can work effectively right from the start. The first day you launch your product, the advertising may display at the top of the first page for each of your primary keywords.

For instance, let’s type into the Amazon search bar “vegan soap”. In the pic below, you’re seeing the first results of the search. Right beneath the photo of the product, you can see barely-noticeable “Sponsored” tags. So, these products are being advertised. Organic search results will be displayed below these ones.

Amazon Sponsored Products

 

The Sponsored Product Ads might occur on competitors’ listings, which could also result in driving traffic to your store.

 

Advantages of Sponsored Products 

You can use Amazon PPC Sponsored Products to achieve the following:

  • Boost sales for recently launched items.
  • Ensure the top placements in the search results for certain keywords.
  • Lure your competitors’ shoppers.

Increasing the sales of product pages will ultimately contribute to the improvement of your organic rankings. Increasing the visibility of your products within the search engines will contribute to the increase in conversions, clicks, and impressions on your site. This will create a flywheel effect where your PPC sales will reinforce your organic product ranking, which will boost your product sales.

 

Setting Up a Sponsored Products Ad Campaign

To set up the campaign, go to your Seller Central account, tap on the Advertising tab, then on Campaign Manager.

Amazon seller central campaign manager

 

Choose Create campaign, then tap on Sponsored Products.

Create Sponsored Product Campaign

 

Now, you are able to give your campaign a name, set duration, budget, targeting options, bids, and targets.

 

Amazon Sponsored Brands

One way brands can expand their reach is by leveraging Amazon’s Sponsored Brands tool, which offers brands the opportunity to have their products appear as a banner ad on the Amazon search result page (top, left, or bottom).

Searching on Amazon is a time-consuming process that can sometimes be challenging, as shoppers find themselves inundated with options and distractions. By leveraging the power of Sponsored Brands, you can tailor the shopping experience in a way that minimizes the noise. This way, you can make your ads stand out and build a valuable community around your company.

 

Where Do Sponsored Brands Appear?

If you’ve been shopping on Amazon, you’ve definitely seen an Amazon PPC Sponsored Brand ad. They are displayed at the top of Amazon’s search results page and usually represent three products from the same brand.

Amazon Sponsored Brands

 

To stand out from the competition and get more clicks, you can add your own custom logo and tagline to your Sponsored Brands ad campaign. If a shopper clicks “Shop Dr. Squatch”, they will be redirected to the brand’s Amazon Store page.

 

Advantages of Sponsored Brands 

As a promotional tool, Sponsored Brands allows for more creativity in your ad campaigns. It is possible to promote three products at a time to give your customers more of a chance to find what they are looking for. 

Other benefits of the Amazon PPC campaign with Sponsored Brands are as follows:

  • One of the distinctive benefits of employing Amazon brand advertising is that you gain more control over your ads display.
  • Add videos ads to increase your conversion, viewer interactions, and brand awareness.
  • Create recognition, authority within existing customers, and ingrain trust with prospective ones.
  • Offer a unique shopping experience to make the difference in attracting more consumers to your business.
  • Use the search engines to potentially target the loyal customer base of your competitor’s brand name in the search results.

 

Setting Up a Sponsored Brands Ad Campaign

To set up a Sponsored Brand ads campaign, go to your Seller Central account, click on Amazon’s Advertising tab, then the Campaign Manager, then tap on Sponsored Brands tab.

Now, you are able to give your campaign a name, set duration, budget, and the brand you are willing to advertise.

Sponsored Brands Ad Campaign

 

Now, pick the ad format from three options available:

Create Sponsored Brand Campaign

 

When you enter your logo, brand’s name, and tagline, pick your targeted option – keywords or products. 

Pick your Targeted Option

 

Amazon Sponsored Display

Sponsored Display ads are one of the most powerful Amazon advertising tools. It lets you promote your business to shoppers both on and off Amazon. Advertisements that are displayed on a variety of web pages have the potential to raise brand awareness and boost conversions, but they can also help to increase brand influence and achieve visibility. 

Sponsored Display takes Amazon FBA advertising further, giving you the power to retarget shoppers on Amazon and beyond. This way, your ads will both show up on Amazon like other types of ads and appear in front of visitors off-Amazon. With Amazon PPC Sponsored Display ads, you won’t be targeting keywords. You will be targeting particular audiences’ interests and shopping behaviors.

 

Where Do Sponsored Display Appear?

When you set up a Sponsored Display ad campaign, you can pick placement for the ad display yourself. They may appear on Amazon product detail pages or search results on desktop, mobile, and app, or third-party websites and apps (in the U.S. only).

Amazon Sponsored Display

 

Advantages of Sponsored Display 

Display advertising is a great method to re-engage possible shoppers that might still be interested in buying your product. Their other advantages include:

  • Promotion of products with the help of automatically generated campaigns for maximizing conversion rates.
  • Easier and faster set up of retargeting campaigns (much easier than with Amazon DSP).
  • Easier access to your display stock in comparison with Amazon DSP.

 

Setting Up a Sponsored Display Ad Campaign

To set up an Amazon pay-per-click Sponsored Display campaign, go to the Seller Central, click on the Advertising tab, then pick Campaign Manager – Create Campaign – Sponsored Display.

Now, you are able to give your campaign a name, set duration, budget. 

Amazon Sponsored Display Ad Campaign

 

Also, set targeting, bidding, pick items to promote, and items to target.

Ad Group Creation

 

How Much Does It Cost to Run an Amazon PPC Campaign?

Now, let’s talk about Amazon’s advertising costs. The amount of funds you will have to spend on the Amazon PPC campaign to make a profit depends on several factors. Those are the type of ad campaign you pick, the budget you’ll set, the type of ad targeting, and bidding per keyword. All this of course depends on your decisions.

There isn’t a universal recipe for Amazon’s advertising structure. But there are metrics you can use to calculate the result of your efforts. 

Amazon PPC Campaign cost metrics

 

Amazon DSP

If you’ve got the grasp of Amazon pay-per-click ads, it’s time to consider using Amazon’s data intelligence to reach new audiences. Amazon is constantly discovering new ways to offer a personalized shopping experience. Through analyzing data and behavior across multiple channels, the marketplace is providing the types of product recommendations that leverage their algorithms and make finding the right product easier than ever.

Amazon provides a fascinating exploration of the use of data and analytics to aid marketers in reaching desired audiences.

Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform enabling sellers to programmatically purchase ads to display them in front of new and existing audiences on and off Amazon.

Amazon has a distinct advantage in the market because of its wealth of data about its customers. Its data intelligence, combined with its long history of working with data to rank the highest-rated products on its marketplace, can help shape the market based on what consumers are looking for.

 

Amazon Live

Like YouTube, Amazon Live offers a user-generated platform for individuals to create, share and monetize live broadcast footage of personal content, video, audio, and animated shorts. Users can follow one another, chat, and even turn their broadcasts into discussions. The Amazon Live Creator app lets you create streams and broadcasts with a smart camera and mic. It’s an easy way to collaborate with others to create, share and explore stories together.

 

Amazon Video Ads

When it comes to advertising, using the right channel makes all the difference. Video advertising is growing in popularity, and Amazon is not lagging behind with its adoption.

Amazon Video Ads are one of the best, most affordable places to advertise. They provide substantial benefits while freeing up your budget to focus on other channels.

 

Amazon Audio Ads (Beta)

Did you know that advertisers can now host audio advertisements on Amazon’s Audio Ads Beta version? Brands can now target niche audiences in off-screen moments. 

A medium as powerful as audio is a perfect means to increase your brand awareness and boost your sales. However for now this solution is in the beta test mode and is still being elaborated on to help businesses reach their audience in the most effective way possible.

 

Custom Advertising

Amazon also offers a comprehensive advertising service – Custom Advertising. Amazon Custom Advertising solution is aimed at increasing brand awareness, engagement, and conversions. It can comprise any ad format offered by Amazon. This comprehensive approach can be used as part of a full-funnel strategy in conjunction with other company’s ad campaigns.

 

Amazon Posts (Beta)

Still in Beta, Amazon posts can be a valuable tool for telling your brand story. In addition to featuring your products, you can share customer stories and showcase customer interaction with your products. You might share your brand’s values, plans for the future, competitive advantage, etc.

On a basic level, these posts serve a double purpose as part of your content marketing strategies. They also help you maintain a personality and establish brand identity in the oversaturated market.

If you have a unique brand story, Amazon posts are the perfect way to strengthen your content marketing strategy, build your authority and increase demand for your products.

 

Amazon Attribution

Even though it’s not an advertising solution, we can’t help but mention this tool. See, Analytics is an essential part of today’s marketer’s tool kit. Amazon is a leading provider of these analytics tools, and their Amazon Attribution tool is easy to use. This tool allows marketers to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and understand the impact their campaign has on their product’s sales. This tool is especially relevant for those selling products through retail partnerships.

 

Why is this important?

If you sell on Amazon or on any other platform, the chances are that you are committed to selling more with every customer purchase. In order to do this, you need to measure your success and performance. Amazon’s attribution metrics let you understand just how successful your efforts are, and you can use this data to improve your results.

 

Amazon Attribution is a powerful data point in your Amazon reports that provides personalized insight into how much of your traffic comes from Amazon. As you analyze how much of your traffic comes from Amazon, it might help you identify opportunities to optimize your Amazon campaigns.

 

Benefits of Using Amazon Advertising

Thousands of brands are now using Amazon advertising to grow their business. Amazon FBA advertising is growing rapidly, making it a perfect platform for eCommerce. These companies however should understand how to make the most of Amazon ads, and how to use them to get the best return on their marketing investments.

Amazon Advertising Benefits

 

Besides Google, Facebook, Amazon came third in the ad revenue race in 2021.

Here are the benefits you can get when you advertise on Amazon: 

  • Reach a lot of shoppers: Amazon is the second-largest eCommerce platform in the world, with an estimated 310 million active customers.
  • Target specific audiences: custom ad service that Amazon offers allows you to reach specific segments of shoppers conveniently and easily.
  • Amazon Ads: Amazon provides a wide variety of different tools and strategies to help you reach your goals.

 

Optimize Your Ad Campaigns for Maximum Efficiency

Modern digital advertising is a complicated and significant field — lots of moving parts, lots of deliverables, lots of content, lots of strategies. To manage your ads and make sure they’re delivered on time and given the maximum impact, you need to know how Amazon advertising works. There are at least four key performance indicators to manage: impressions, visits, frequency, and return.

Furthermore, you want to get the most out of your advertising budget, so you’ll want to make sure your ads are running when you need them and are turned off during low-conversion time periods. Also, you only want to pay for ads that make it worth your while. To prevent unnecessary spendings, you’ll need to know how to set goals for your ad campaigns.

Advertising outside Amazon is a huge opportunity to increase your brand awareness and generate leads — which is why you want your ad campaigns to be as efficient as possible. Use Amazon Attribution to test, track, and optimize your advertising across social media and other platforms.

Finally, if you want to convert consumers to buyers, you need to learn how to make them interested in your products and services. And the best way to do that is to focus on customer acquisition.

We hope you find these tips for Amazon advertising helpful.

 

Final Word

The retail industry is changing, and the space sellers are operating in is extremely competitive. There’s always a place for learning new ways of selling on Amazon and business growth. We hope this guide on Amazon PPC basics and Amazon campaign types will help you in your journey, but if any questions arise, contact us, and we’ll gladly help you!

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