Do you focus on brand awareness? Remember that consumers make or break your brand. One of the best marketing strategies for customer engagement and brand awareness is online advertising. No doubt, that Google is the giant advertising platform for small, medium and large firms, but still there are some brilliant opportunities that you might be missing out on. Ever heard of Amazon marketing? Well, you might have heard about Amazon, but are you using Amazon to generate leads? Dig in to know why you should make Amazon part of your advertising strategy.
Why Amazon Marketing?
Amazon is the big brother among e-commerce sites and a trusted platform for consumers worldwide. Millions of customers across the globe are active on Amazon; so, undeniably it is the gold mine to reach global consumers!
What is AMS (Amazon Marketing Services)?
AMS is the advertising platform that allows vendors to advertise and sell their products on the giant platform Amazon. It’s free to open an account and you only pay as per your CPC strategy for each click on your ad. With AMS you have the option to target your consumers based on the search keywords. Its dashboard also allows us to see which keywords performed better with respect to impressions and clicks to optimize Amazon campaigns regularly for high-performing keywords.
The types of Ads available to create on Amazon are :
- Sponsored Ads –You might be familiar with the ads that show up on the top and bottom of SERP labeled as, sponsored ads. Amazon-sponsored product ads appear on mobile SERPs, Desktop SERPs, and also within mobile apps. Sponsored ads also show up on product detail pages. These ad campaigns are easy to create and vendors have to bid smartly to outrank their competitors. Sponsored ads are a great way to reach customers who are in the final stage of the buyer’s journey or those who are most likely to buy your products or services. Campaigns can be measured and tested for different combinations of keywords to find the best-performing ads for your PPC campaigns. The vendors don’t have to pay extra money for the activation of ads and usually, the ads get approved within a short time. Note that you must have an active seller ad to use these campaigns. For sponsored ads, you pay for each click.
- Headline search ads –These are the banner-like ads that appear at the top across SERPs. Say, you are browsing on Amazon, and you reach a product page. Then the ads that appear at the top of product pages are the headline search ads, matching your query or the product you are currently viewing. These ads are best for brand awareness. For more click-through rates remember to match the keywords with the headline and text; use the most relevant keywords for your business. You can try out different combinations of keywords within the headline, description, and URL to find the ads that generate more traffic in other words try out A/B testing. Use engaging phrases in headlines to attract buyers. You can set a daily budget or a campaign budget for headline search ads.
- Product Display Ads –The ads that appear on the right of search results, on product detail pages, offer listings pages, customer review pages and the ones we see in our Amazon emails are the Product Display Ads. The product display ads have two options for targeting; Interest-based targeting and Product based targeting. Interest-based targeting costs less when compared to product-based targeting, but product-based targeting to get to reach out to the most relevant users and have higher conversion rates. Here, you have the same options for budgeting as with the headline search ads.
Vendor vs. Seller account –
To use Amazon Marketing Services you can either open a vendor or a seller account. And then again in have the option for a central or an express account. Let’s see what these different types of accounts are.
- Vendor Central Account –Signing up for Amazon vendor central allows you to be the first party seller who is basically the supplier/ distributor/ manufacturer selling your products in lots to Amazon and Amazon’s retailers then selling your products to customers under its brand name. Using Vendor Central, however, requires an invitation and you can’t directly sign up.
- Seller Central Account –On the other hand, the seller central account makes you the third-party seller selling directly to consumers. Still, you have the option here to ask Amazon to do the shipping of products or do it all yourself.
- Vendor Express Account –Vendor Express makes you a first-party seller like Vendor Central but there are some differences between these two. For example, Vendor Express is available to all sellers to sign up right away without an invitation. With an express account, you first give Amazon a trial product and once your item gets sold you will receive the orders in bulk. Here you have an option for direct fulfillment.
However, each account has its pros and cons. Some accounts may or may not allow access to Display advertising and some may allow AMS, AMG, etc. Sponsored ads are only allowed with seller central and are not available to vendor accounts.
Tips to Spice up your Amazon Ad Campaign –
Running an Ad campaign and optimizing them for the right keywords can be handled by hiring the best digital marketing agency but here are some tips for an effective Amazon campaign to help you
- Try testing your ad campaigns with different combinations of keywords for a period of time. It will allow you to understand which one of the Ads and Keyword Combinations performs better.
- Advertisers often use manual targeting methods and optimize the ads with their focus keywords. But in order to find the best-performing keywords it’s advisable to run the ads with automated targeting for a short span of time. It will automatically match your ads with the searcher’s queries. This way you can get an idea of keywords your consumers search for and use them in your manual targeting.
- You can further filter your targeting using the match types if you wish to reach to a specific set of audiences. Decide on exact match, phrase match, and broad match keywords.
- Sometimes you may need to intentionally exclude the set of keywords for which you don’t want to get found. You can add these words as negative keywords to avoid irrelevant searches and thus reduce the costs of clicks.
- In Adwords, we use bid simulators to gain control over the costs of advertising based on priorities. Similarly set your priorities for different product ads and assign the bids according to the performance.
- Long tail keywords are the low-hanging fruits when targeting with keywords. Generic keywords are highly competitive and have higher bids. So, you can try using long-tail keywords to get found quickly by the consumers specifically searching for your products. It has an added advantage that often these consumers are in the last stage of the buyer’s journey.
At the bottom line, Amazon marketing is a great way to reach out to a global audience. It is the gold mine to find your prospective consumers. So, wake up! Spread your business worldwide!
