The digital advertising revolution is well underway, but are you keeping up? Having an engaging, approachable, and trustworthy online presence is a crucial component of any modern marketing strategy. The more you get to know your prospects and their preferences, the brighter your company’s future will be. If you don’t keep pace, there are a dozen competitors waiting to snap up those potential sales.
With today’s paid ads management and scheduling services, you don’t have to face that future alone. There are loads of software tools available that can help you make streamlined, data-driven optimizations. For instance, Amazon’s sponsored ads PPC campaigns benefit enormously from a self-driving, automated keyword bidding solution that mitigates redundancies and negative bids.
This is crucial for reducing your advertising cost of sale (ACoS) – the cost of marketing every unit of a listed product sold – and improving profit potential.
Today, let’s explore what Amazon sponsored ads are, and why they matter. If you sell on the platform, they may be your key to getting more conversions, especially with the right AI-enabled companion software.
Two types of sellers
When you become an Amazon seller, there are two types of accounts available on their Seller Central management system. The first, the Individual Seller plan, is ideal for those who move less than 40 units of product a month as there is a fee of 99 cents per sale. If you sell more than this, then there are Professional Seller plans, where you’ll be paying a flat fee of $29 US every month rather than for every sale. Only the latter type of plan can use Amazon Sponsored ads, among several other features.
The basics
When someone is shopping on Amazon or simply browsing, they’re there with a pre-set intent – they expect to see product listings that align with their interests. Sponsored ads are therefore more effective because they help match products to relevant search terms. That means the customer is more likely to find what they want, purchase the item, and establish some semblance of brand loyalty if they have a positive experience with their order. When there are so many companies selling their wares on Amazon, it’s important to correctly match the right products to the right people. That’s where sponsored ads, optimized with the right keywords and subsequent listing details, can really come in handy.
What a successful sponsored ad needs
Let’s cut to the chase and list the essential steps of setting up your listing and ad campaign:
- Get your seller account set up, create listings with compelling and engaging content, and categorize them correctly (multiple category options may appear to make sense, so go for the most relevant).
- Use Amazon’s keyword bid auction system to secure the most lucrative, worthwhile keywords for your ad (you’ll be paying the second-highest bid rate). Ensure your listing title uses every available character to provide as many useful details as possible in addition to these keywords.
- Set up your sponsored ad and be sure to match your product and its feature set to as specific of an audience as possible. This minimizes the risk of overgeneralizing.
- Determine your profit margin and ACoS to paint a clearer picture of how much income you’ll be taking in. Don’t forget to factor in all seller fees, manufacturing costs, and any other expenses required to sell and ship a single unit of product.
Optimization: the never-ending step
Finally, you need to keep on top of things. Trends and shopper interests change daily, so Amazon sellers need to continually optimize and refine their campaign strategies. It’s impossible to manage multiple campaigns with this much attentiveness as a single person, so look into automated tools such as Trellis that do this work for you in a few clicks. Such software utilizes your available behavioural data in addition to PPC and sales analytics to make smarter optimizations. That way, you’re not guessing or left juggling these tweaks on your own, all while your sponsored ads are fine-tuned to ensure maximum engagement at as low a cost as possible. Want to try it for yourself? Get a free 14-day trial.
We’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg here; selling on Amazon is a complicated but deeply rewarding experience, especially if you can maximize the potential of your sponsored ads strategy. By keeping a close eye on your campaign and making well-informed keyword refinements, you’ll remain a relevant and competitive brand. We highly recommend reading Trellis’ Beginner’s Guide to Amazon PPC for a deeper dive, courtesy of bonafide ad experts.
