Both vendors and sellers can use Amazon PPC ads. The difference is that Sellers (sometimes referred to as third-party sellers) sell their products directly to Amazon customers. Vendors (sometimes referred to as first-party sellers) sell their products directly to Amazon in bulk, then Amazon sells them to its customers.
In order to run successful Amazon PPC ads, you need to familiarize yourself with the basic building blocks of Amazon PPC. Below we’ve summarized the key concepts and terminology sellers should know when starting out with Amazon Sponsored Ads:
To understand the areas in which you can improve your Amazon PPC profile, first you need to understand how your KPIs compare with your competitors. You need country-, category-, and ad-format-level data to make meaningful comparisons between you and your competition. There are online platforms that can help you to do this, such as Benchmarker [Beta].
In order to evaluate the performance of your Amazon PPC campaigns, you need to be clear about your goals for running Amazon ads from the outset.
Typically you can go for:
A) maximizing sales (e.g. for a product launch) or maximizing impressions (e.g. for a brand awareness campaign). In this case, the costs are typically kept at a break-even level which is reflected by the so-called target KPI ‘break even ACoS’;
B) generating incremental sales while achieving a certain profit margin which is reflected by the so-called target KPI ‘target ACoS’
Before you start with Amazon PPC, it’s important to ensure your Amazon product listings are optimazed for Amazon SEO. Amazon SEO is a prerequisite for keyword targeting and optimizing the click-through-rate & conversion rate of your Amazon PPC ads.
Amazon SEO is a two-step process:
- Keyword Optimization: Include all relevant keywords for which the product should be found in the product listing text. Having a keyword in your listing ensures your ad is shown for this particular keyword and can generate impressions (ad views). The goal, of course, is to have as many winning keywords that drive sales for you as possible. There’s a lot of tools out there for generating keywords, like Helium 10’s Magnet tool, that can help you find relevant keyboards for your products.
- Listing / Content Optimization: Include high quality and relevant pictures, engaging copy, etc., to improve both your organic and PPC click-through-rate and conversion rate.
Amazon PPC is complex, and there’s so much talk about it that it can feel intimidating to get started. This article is just meant to help you dip your toes in the Amazon PPC ecosystem!
If you want to increase your reach on Amazon and drive sales, PPC is a must.
- Amazon PPC provides brands on Amazon with a unique opportunity to increase revenue and profit, and to build brand awareness.
- With Amazon CPC ads, you’ll always be in control of your Amazon ad fees. You set your daily ad budget, and you can decide how much to bid for keywords, ASINs, and ad placements.
- Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads offer you many different ways to target customers at all stages of the purchasing process.
