Sponsored Product Ads occupy some of the most prominent positions on the Amazon search result pages, so knowing how to get your products showing there as effectively as possible is key to long term success in the world’s biggest marketplace. Here are six ways you can improve your efforts on Amazon Advertising’s Sponsored Product Ads.
#1 – Account Structure
Too often have we seen accounts with a random assortment of campaigns with no discernible segmentation. If you’re just getting started or if that sounds like an apt description of your Amazon Advertising account, take the time to get organised.
Every account is different and, as such, different structures are required. You might choose to organise campaigns by product type, targeting method, performance or when it was added to the catalogue. In any case, you must have some form of organisation to your campaigns.
It helps to avoid including products across multiple campaigns using the same targeting methods as well as making reporting much faster and more insightful.
#2 – Get Granular with Single ASIN Campaigns
On the topic of account structure, single ASIN campaigns bring a lot of advantages to the table.
- First, there is no confusion about how a product is performing, it’s the only one in the campaign.
- Second, search term reports are a breeze as you know exactly which search terms are triggering ads for which product and how they perform.
- Third, you gain a lot of control over how you scale the marketing per product.
You can easily add new targets for your top performers, as well as negative keywords at the product level that won’t impinge upon the exposure of other products that may yet prove effective on said keywords. You will of course always be bidding at the product level by default, rather than for a group of products.
The caveat to the single ASIN campaign method is that if you don’t have a system for automating your bidding or at least managing bids with rules, it can get away from you quickly should you have a large catalogue, so consider your capabilities in that respect before implementing.
#3 – Naming Conventions
Naming conventions for your campaigns and ad groups are important for the same reason as expiry dates on bottles on milk, they give you a clear indication as to what you’ll find inside.
We would suggest a naming convention syntax that clearly shows the product/product type and targeting method, and potentially intent of the campaign if relevant. They should of course fit into your account structure, if you run single ASIN campaigns then names should include the ASIN, or if split by product type should include the nature of the products. For example,
B01234567 | Manual | Keyword | Brand | Exact
Or
Rain Jackets | Manual | Category Target
First, it’s a lot easier to gauge performance at a glance. You know that campaigns targeting brand keywords should perform very well, as opposed to competitor keywords. This makes irregular performance much more apparent when reviewing your account.
It also makes reporting far simpler, as you could, for example, perform a small amount of excel wizardry to produce pivot tables aggregating data for performance per targeting method/product category to highlight which areas have opportunities to exploit or conversely where too much budget is being spent.
Appropriately named campaigns also allow you to easily search the ASIN or product type in the interface to review performance, as well as check before campaign creation that you aren’t duplicating a campaign that already exists, which can easily happen when managing thousands of products across many categories.
#4 – Isolate The Best & Worst Performers
Use the search term report to find the queries that are bringing in the sales and target them manually. This gives you much more control of how you bid for these keywords in order to maximise returns, especially during high traffic periods like Black Friday when you’ll want to bid aggressively on your best keywords.
Also, take the opportunity to isolate your worst performing queries. If performance is truly awful then add it as a negative, however it may still be worth targeting. In the event the query has returned an appreciable amount of sales but at a poor ACoS (ad spend divided by revenue, reverse it for ROAS), it may be possible to target it manually on a much lower bid to allow it to generate sales more profitably.
#5 – Ensure Targeted Keywords Are Included In Your Content
One of the factors considered in the ad ranking process is keyword relevance, not only of the targeted phrase to the search query entered, but also to the product advertised. While it may not be possible to include absolutely every keyword targeted for a product if you have an extensive list, you should definitely ensure your top performing keywords are present in your content.
This also helps ensure congruence in the user’s journey, as they can quickly match what they searched for to your product title, rather than having to interpret your title to determine if it’s a product worth considering. You won’t be able to do this for every keyword, but consider which terms generate the most traffic and sales for you and prioritise these for your titles.
#6 – Make Use Of Category & ASIN Targeting
In late 2018 product categories and individual ASINs became available as targets for Sponsored Product Ads. The possibilities for these targets is easily deserving of an entire article of its own. They allow you to target your ads to the detail pages of the products across an entire category, of specific competitors and even products within specific price ranges, among other possibilities. If these targeting methods are yet unexplored for you, they likely present a new opportunity for growth.
How Are Your Sponsored Product Ads Performing?
Sponsored Product Ads have fast become a necessity in the ever-evolving Amazon ecosystem. CPC’s are steadily rising over time as competition increases and brands are becoming savvier with their employment of Amazon Advertising. Long term success on the platform will soon (if not already) depend on how effectively you can employ these tools whilst running profitably.
To find out more about your advertising strategy, get in touch here.