Welcome to the world of E-commerce Marketing!
Let’s break this up for you. Biggest E-commerce players like Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba, Ebay etc. have their own marketing setup. This means you (as a seller) can advertise your products on these websites!
How does this work on Amazon? The highest impact of advertising comes with an algorithm similar to Google’s search network predominantly based on keyword-targeting.
Let’s say, you’re selling scented candles. While you create a campaign on Amazon Marketing Services (AMS – Available to every seller), all you have to do is use keywords that are relevant to what your potential customer is looking for. For example,
‘scented candles’,
‘scented wax candles’
‘fragrance candles’
‘scented candles jasmine’
As you would have understood by now, you could use a 1000 combination of words to enter your keywords but AMS will show you keywords that have a high search volume. It is advisable to enter only those with a great search volume or else you will be wasting ad spends. Let me remind you that you only pay when someone CLICKS on your ad.
Now that you know how this setup works, let’s take you through its features, strategy & prerequisites.
There are certain things that you require before your Amazon PPC Campaigns can really take off.
1. You need to include certain relevant keywords in your product listing
- You need to generate organic reviews and ratings for your products. While a rating can be given by any amazon user, a review can only be submitted by your amazon customer.
- FBA & PRIME Availability. These are not absolutely required but customers do prefer products that are Fulfilled by Amazon and Available for Prime Delivery unless your product is completely unique.
- Account Hygiene. Ensure that, as a seller, your products up for delivery are not defected or returned.
Features:
- Sponsored Product Ads – These ads work on Keyword-basis. They show up when a user searches for certain keywords right at the start
- Headline Search Ads – These ads work on Keyword-basis as well. They show up right at the start but you have the ability to show more than just one product and your brand logo.
- Product Display Ads – These ads work based on competitor targeting. You can enlist brands that are your competitors in the sense that they sell products of the same industry. These ads show up right under the ‘Add to Cart’ option.
Strategy: (Depends on what level of awareness your brand is at) However, if you are starting from scratch, this could be a possible way to go:
Step 1: Create three Automatic Campaigns, one for each type of feature listed above. Let these campaigns run for atleast 20 days, allocate a minimum ad spend as suggested by amazon.
This will enable you to find search terms on which your products are showing up as an ad and gathering traction. Also, this will help you project how many clicks you can expect with a minimum budget.
Step 2: Enlist Keywords for all three Manual Campaigns. Enter all of them as broad match. Set the keyword as suggested by Amazon and let this run for another two weeks. Set the lifetime budget at double the minimum amount suggested by Amazon.
Step 3: This is where concepts like Impressions, Clicks, CTR, CPC & Sales really matter.
Impressions is how many times your ad showed up on a particular keyword which also means that you have won the bid! Clicks is the number of clicks that particular keyword got you. Please note that Impressions > Clicks, always!
Click Through Rate (CTR) is how many times someone clicked on your ad after it showing up. In mathematical terms, CTR = Clicks/Impressions x 100. As it suggests, the higher the CTR, the more relevant audience your keywords are targeted to. If your CTR is low, it means that the users are not finding your ad relevant to their requirement.
Cost Per Click (CPC) is ad spend per click derived by dividing total ad spend by the number of clicks received for a particular keyword. It is an average entity but it helps you estimate and adjust your future bids.
Salesis the number of orders generated by a particular keyword. Amazon’s software will automatically attach a value to the sale. Say a customer converted on your ad appearing for the keyword ‘scented candles’ – then this keyword’s sales value will be retail value of the product appearing on the ad. It works on a 7/14-day click-through attribution model which means that there is a 7 or 14-day window after clicking on an ad for the platform to record a sale.
Here’s what you need to do next:
– For Keywords with High Impressions, Less Clicks or Low CTR, reduce the bid to 10% or 20% below suggested bid.
– For Keywords with High Clicks or Higher CTR, copy and convert them to phrase and exact match keywords and increase the bid to 30% above suggested bid.
– For Keywords with any kind of sales value, follow the same procedure.
– For keywords with 0 impressions or 0 clicks, PAUSE.
– Download the search term report and add negative keywords. [Negative Keywords are those that are absolutely unrelated to your brand/product but your ad is still showing up. For eg – birthday candles]
Repeat this process at the start of every new week. You will see results flowing in within 2 months of ad activity. If not, hit us up, we’ll try to diagnose your issues and come up with creative strategy solutions!
