Amazon pay-per-click advertising (PPC) has established itself as a crucial tool for sellers wanting to gain visibility and grow their business on Amazon. But, it requires a solid Amazon PPC strategy to build a profitable business on Amazon. You can have the best product and the highest rating on Amazon SEO. Still, if you’re not advertising on Amazon, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable for competitors to swoop in and claim your market share.

In this guide, we’ll explore Amazon PPC advertising in-depth to uncover how to create PPC ads, analyze data, and advanced Amazon PPC advertising strategies for scaling your business.

What is Amazon PPC Advertising?

Amazon PPC advertising is Amazon’s ad platform that lets sellers promote their products within the Amazon marketplace. And what is PPC in Amazon, you ask? PPC stands for pay-per-click, which means advertisers only pay when a shopper clicks on the ad instead of when a shopper sees the ad. This pay-per-click system makes Amazon PPC a cost-effective way for sellers to promote their products and scale their business on Amazon.

An Overview of How Amazon PPC Advertising Works

Here’s the gist of how Amazon PPC works:

Auction System

Let’s say you sell grain-free dog food. When a shopper searches for “dog food.” Amazon compiles all the relevant ads targeting that keyword, and an auction happens behind the scenes. The Amazon PPC ad with the highest bid wins the auction and is displayed to the shopper.

Ad Placement

Winning bids get your product displayed in prominent locations like sponsored product ads (top of search results) or sponsored brand ads (banners featuring your brand).

Pay-Per-Click

Even after winning the auction and displaying your PPC Amazon ad, you only pay when a shopper clicks on your ad and not for the amount you bid for. Instead, Amazon charges you the amount of the second-highest bid.

For example, let’s say you bid $3 for the keyword “dog food,” and it’s the highest bid. The second-highest bid is $2, and the third-highest is $1.80. You’ll win the auction because your $3 bid is the highest. But once a shopper clicks on the ad, Amazon will charge you $2.01 for the click instead of your original $3 bid amount.

Types of Amazon PPC Ads

Amazon has developed an intricate advertising ecosystem, with different ad formats to fit the different needs of sellers on the platform. There are three Amazon paid search ad types:

Sponsored Product Ads
Sponsored Brand Ads
Sponsored Display Ads

Let’s break down each of these ad types:

Why is Amazon PPC Advertising Important to Sellers?

Amazon is a cutthroat platform, and you need all the tools you can get to give you a competitive edge. Amazon PPC advertising offers that much-needed edge and gives you a shot at outselling your competition. Here are the benefits of advertising your products with Amazon PPC.

Increased Visibility

The first page of Amazon search results is one of Amazon’s most valuable real estate. Amazon PPC advertising puts your product right above the top organic search results. It allows your product to jump the line and pop up among the top search results for the keywords you bid on. This helps you score massive visibility for your product even when you don’t have a high Amazon SEO organic ranking.

Better Targeting

Amazon paid search ads utilize keywords to show products to shoppers. When you advertise with Amazon PPC, you target specific keywords and demographics, increasing the chances of your ads being seen by potential customers who are more likely to buy your products.

Cost-Effective Model

Unlike conventional advertising models that charge for impressions, Amazon only charges you when a shopper clicks on your ads. This allows sellers to spend their ad budget only on shoppers who click the ad and are likelier to buy. Moreover, you do not need a credit card to pay for your PPC ads because Amazon can deduct the advertisement charges from your sales proceeds. This makes Amazon PPC advertising a cost-effective, performance-oriented advertising model.

Full Control Over Ads

Amazon’s PPC ads system offers you control over several key advertising aspects. You have control over the keywords you promote, ad placement, and target audience. Moreover, Amazon lets you choose your ad budget and the cost per click you’re willing to pay for each keyword. This makes the Amazon PPC advertising system flexible enough to accommodate sellers on every level with different goals.

Quantifiable Results

Amazon PPC provides detailed performance data and analytics on your profit, views, clicks, and visits. This performance data is instrumental in helping you optimize your advertising strategy and make informed decisions to increase the effectiveness of your ads and boost profitability.

Increased Sales

Well-optimized Amazon PPC ads are the only way sellers can immediately increase their sales. By increasing visibility and targeting shoppers at the end of their purchasing journey, Amazon PPC advertising places your product at the perfect place for maximum conversions and increased sales.

Brand Awareness

Promoting your product with Amazon paid search ads makes it easily discoverable to your target audience. When your audience keeps seeing your ad on top of search results, it creates brand awareness, and with time, they can recognize your product even if they saw it elsewhere outside Amazon.

Device-Friendly Layout

Amazon utilizes adaptive layouts that change to fit any device so shoppers can see your ad no matter the device they’re using. You also get to enjoy access across devices as the advertiser. With the Amazon mobile app, you can access your Amazon ad campaign manager on a computer, tablet, and even on the go. This Amazon PPC cross-device compatibility makes it convenient for both the seller and the shopper.

Complements Amazon SEO

If your product isn’t ranking well, you must optimize and wait for the Amazon SEO algorithm to rank you organically. That would take time, and you wouldn’t be making sales, further delaying your organic ranking. With Amazon PPC advertising, your product automatically appears at the top of search results. This increases your click-through rates and conversions, which are vital metrics for SEO ranking on Amazon. The increased sales bring more reviews, which also helps you rank organically. This creates a snowball effect of more sales, more reviews, and better organic ranking, eventually seeing you ranking organically on the first page of Amazon search results.

What is Amazon advertising analytics?

My Real Profit Amazon advertising metrics

Advertising analytics is a comprehensive toolset that combines Amazon paid search ads and Seller Central data to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your Amazon PPC advertising. They also enable you to keep optimizing your campaigns for maximum ROI. Of course, you need to monitor several data points to make sense of your PPC analytics. Which means you need a reliable Amazon PPC analytics tool. My Real Profit is a third-party Amazon PPC analytics service that helps you process your advertising data and identify high-performing areas in your campaigns and areas that need improvement. But before we dive into these analytics, let’s first break down Amazon PPC advertising.

The Crucial Amazon PPC Analytics to Monitor

Let’s briefly review the critical analytics of Amazon ads you should monitor. Our blog post explains Amazon PPC advertising tools and analytics in greater detail. Read all about it here.

Campaign Performance Metrics

Sessions: The total of paid and organic sessions.
Clicks: Number of times shoppers click on your ad.
Spend: Total amount spent on your campaign.
ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale): Ratio of advertising spend to sales generated, calculated as (ad spend ÷ sales) x 100.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated as (sales ÷ ad spend).

Keyword Performance Metrics

Click-Through Rate (CTR): Percentage of impressions that resulted in a click.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of clicks that resulted in a sale.
Cost-per-click (CPC): Average amount you pay for each click on your ad.
Search Term Match Type Performance: Analyze how different keyword match types (broad, phrase, exact) are performing to optimize targeting.

What Information Can I Extract from Amazon PPC Advertising Analytics?

Amazon analytics are essential in helping you understand your ad performance and customer journey. Let’s look at the information you can extract from Amazon PPC analytics.

Campaign Performance

Amazon PPC advertising analytics give you insight into your campaign performance. Let’s examine the metrics you need to monitor to evaluate every aspect.

Visibility and Reach

Impressions are the metric you want to monitor to evaluate your Amazon PPC campaign’s visibility and reach. The more impressions you have, the broader your campaign’s visibility and reach.

Engagement

Beyond visibility and reach, is your audience engaging with your Amazon paid search ads? You can find out more about this by monitoring your campaign click-through rate. The click-through rate shows how many shoppers clicked on your ad in relation to how many times they viewed it. The higher the click-through rate, the higher the engagement. If your click-through rate is low, shoppers aren’t clicking on your ad, which could signify an ineffective ad creative, like the image or copy.

Sales and Conversions

Conversion rates measure your campaign’s overall capability to drive sales. However, remember that your campaigns can drive sales but still run at a loss. That’s why evaluating your overall Amazon PPC advertising ROI is essential.

Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI is a measure of your Amazon PPC advertising campaign’s profitability. Two metrics help you evaluate your campaign ROI: ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). ACOS measures the cost-efficiency of your Sponsored Products PPC campaigns by comparing your ad spend to the revenue generated. Although having a high sales volume and low ACOS might seem ideal, there are some variables you should consider before lowering your ACOS, such as profit margins and breakeven ACOS.

ROAS measures the impact of a specific Amazon PPC campaign on the revenue. This metric is the inverse of ACOS. While both ROAS and ACOS measure the profitability of a PPC campaign, ROAS measures the trajectory of an individual PPC campaign and shows the expected earnings. It’s a crucial KPI to set expectations and guide campaign efficiency.

Customer Insights

Customer insights metrics help you better understand your target audience and highlight areas that need improvements to make your Amazon PPC campaigns resonate more with the target audience. Let’s break down the customer insights metrics.

Keywords

Keywords are one of the most crucial aspects of Amazon traffic analytics. You need to check two reports to evaluate your Amazon PPC campaign keyword performance: Keyword Report and Keyword Placement Report.

Keyword Report contains metrics showing how Amazon matches your keywords to customer searches. It’s a useful Amazon PPC advertising analytics tool that measures overall campaign keywords and match types’ performance over time. The Keyword Report lets you view data as a daily performance summary or in a 90-day look-back window. You can use this data for Amazon PPC optimization by adding more keywords, increasing bids for well-performing keywords, and reducing bids on poorly performing keywords.

My Real Profit keyword placement analytics

Keyword Placement Report dives deeper to break down keyword performance by their placements such as top of search, rest of search, and product page. This report breaks down the performance of a keyword and related targeting options (such as brands, products, and categories) in relation to the ad placement. You can use this report to optimize your targeting to reach a wider audience and improve Amazon PPC campaign performance. The time units for the Keyword Replacement Report are a daily summary and a 90-day look-back window.

Search Behavior

Amazon ads analytics on the Search Query Report can help you better understand customer search behavior. These insights give you a bird’s eye view of the entire search funnel — from the moment a customer sees your Amazon PPC ad, clicks, adds items to cart, and makes the purchase. You can then discover how often shoppers used a particular keyword to find your products, and how many listings they clicked on, and the ASINs they purchased. These insights can help with Amazon PPC optimization to match customer search intent.

Targeting Effectiveness

Amazon analytics can give you insight into the effectiveness of your campaign targeting. Amazon PPC analytics offer sufficient data to help you compare the effectiveness of manual and automatic targeting. You can then choose the targeting strategy that converts better.

Customer Journey

Customer journey is the series of actions a customer makes from product discovery to purchase. In the context of Amazon PPC advertising, it’s from when a shopper sees your ad to when they buy your product. Customer journey Amazon PPC analytics help you connect the chronological sequence of customer interactions with your ad and the outcome. This can reveal touchpoints where you might need to improve the ad experience or product listing to optimize conversions.

Product Performance

Product performance Amazon PPC advertising analytics help you identify the products that are getting the most attention in your ads. We can split these analytics into two.

Product Popularity

Looking at your Amazon PPC analytics, you may notice that some products are more popular than others. These Detail Page Views (DPV) metric helps you identify the products that generate the most clicks and sales through ads. This metric measures how many clicks on a product details page are attributed to your campaigns. You can use these insights to focus your advertising efforts on high-performing products.

Conversion Rates by Product

CVR by product breaks down conversions by individual products. These Amazon PPC advertising analytics let you analyze how well each advertised product converts clicks into sales. Monitoring these analytics can reveal opportunities for listing optimization and creative adjustments to improve conversion rates for specific products.

How to Set up Your Amazon PPC Campaign

Now that you know the power of Amazon paid search ads, let’s walk through setting up your first PPC ad campaign.

Step 1: Choose the Products to Promote

Before we get into product selection, you need to know that Amazon requires sellers to have an active professional seller account to be eligible for Amazon advertising. With that out of the way, let’s proceed with the Amazon PPC campaign setup.

The products you promote will primarily depend on the type of Amazon PPC ad you’re planning to run. But whatever products you’re advertising, you must ensure they have a synergetic relationship to drive clicks and sales.

Some of the factors that can help you pick the right products are:

Product popularity
Ranking
Seasonal trends
Product life cycle
Search volume

For example, you can promote a high-selling product via Sponsored Brands ad campaigns to create brand awareness. Conversely, a Sponsored Products ad would be perfect for a low search volume and low-sales product since it’d bring more attention to that product and help with organic ranking.

Step 2: Conduct Keyword Research

Amazon PPC advertising offers automatic and manual targeting. With automatic targeting, Amazon compiles all the keywords relevant to the product you’re promoting and uses them to target automatically. With manual targeting, you have to do the keyword research and manually add the keywords to your campaign. Manual targeting gives you more control over your targeting and bidding than automatic targeting.

If you choose manual targeting, you can use Amazon’s internal analytics tools, like the Search Query Performance Report (SQPR), to identify the top search terms shoppers use to find your products. My Real Profit automated SQPR analytics software can help you compile the high-performing keywords from your SQPR for Amazon keyword targeting. Additionally, you can use tools like Helium 10 to find keywords that competitors are using and incorporate them into your Amazon PPC campaign. Ensure you use keywords that match the shoppers’ search intent.

Step 3: Optimize Your Product Listings

Listing optimization is crucial to Amazon PPC campaign effectiveness. Whether you’re using automatic or manual targeting, you must optimize your listings for conversions and Amazon’s SEO algorithm. When shoppers click on your ad, they’ll be redirected to your product page, so if your listing isn’t optimized, most of your clicks won’t convert to sales.

Another reason you need an optimized listing is to help you take advantage of the Amazon paid search ads traffic to rank higher organically.

Let’s look at the key areas you should consider when optimizing your listing:

Title

Amazon caps the title length at 200 characters. Exceeding this limit results in Amazon suppressing your listing. So, you need to figure out how to incorporate relevant product information and capture shopper attention through Amazon PPC advertising without exceeding the 200-character limit.

Your listing title should include your product name, primary keyword, two or three features, and the product color/quality/size/material/dimensions.

The ideal Amazon product listing title format looks like this:

Your Brand Name – The Main Keyword – 2-3 Prominent Product Features – Product Quality/Material/Color/Size/Dimensions

The format isn’t the only thing you should consider when writing your Listing title. Here are additional Product listing title guidelines and best practices you should know:

Don’t write in all CAPS
Use title case (Capitalize the first letter of every word)
Don’t exceed 200 characters
Always lead with your brand name
Use numerals instead of words (“3” instead of “three”)
Only include minimal highly relevant product information
You can use necessary punctuation
Spaces and punctuations are counted as characters
You can abbreviate measurements such as “ml” and “cm.”
Don’t use subjective terms like “Best-selling” or “hot item.”

Product Description

Besides being a perfect place to add your high-converting keywords for SEO, the product description also allows you to explain your product in greater detail and convert shoppers who click on your Amazon PPC ad. Amazon has a 1,700-character limit for product descriptions, so don’t be afraid to go all in on selling your product here. Here are the best practices for optimizing your product description section:

Include your brand name in the description
Include your primary keyword and other long-tail and short-tail keywords throughout the description text
Don’t stuff your description with keywords. It should read naturally
Include your product’s size for apparel and dimensions for electronics, furniture, jewelry, and other products where it applies
Include your product material, e.g., wool or cotton for apparel
Include crucial product information such as packaging, color, quantity, ingredients, unique composition, and unique features
Make sure you can back up all your claims about the product
Mention the condition of your product, e.g., new or used
Write in an infomercial style
Use short descriptive paragraphs with a line break separating the paragraphs
Include a guarantee in your product description
Add a call-to-action at the end of your product description

Bullet Points

The bullet point section lets you list your product’s main features and how they benefit the shopper. When done right, it can help improve your Amazon PPC advertising conversions. Unfortunately, some sellers make the mistake of trying to sell the product’s features instead of its benefits.

The best approach to bullet point optimization is to state a product feature and explain how that feature benefits the shopper. Remember also to incorporate keywords without keyword stuffing. Amazon has a 200-250 character limit for the bullet point section, so you want each bullet point to be short, descriptive, and packed with keywords and relevant product information.

Here are additional listing product feature guidelines that’ll help you create high-conversion bullet points:

Always capitalize the first letter of the feature, or use all CAPS for the feature
Stay consistent with your preferred bullet points format (if you use all caps for the product feature, do so in all bullet points)
The total character limit for all bullet points is 1,000 characters
You can list a maximum of five bullet points per listing
Always start with the most prominent product feature
Don’t make exaggerated or false claims about your product
Address your target customer’s pain points
List a guarantee as your last bullet point
Don’t include offers, promotions, or pricing information in your bullet points
Don’t include sentence-ending punctuation after the bullet point

Product Images

You want shoppers to thoroughly understand your product so they can make an informed buying decision. And you can’t do this with text alone. You need high-quality images so shoppers can visualize your product like they’re holding it and be inspired to buy from you. Additionally, your product image is one of the first things shoppers see when your Amazon PPC ad appears in search results.

Amazon allows sellers to add up to 9 images in a product listing. Your product images should be at least (1000×1000 pixels) to activate Amazon’s autozoom feature so shoppers can look closely at your product. You should also include lifestyle pictures showing your product in use so shoppers can visualize themselves using it and be convinced to buy it.

Let’s look at the guidelines and best practices you should follow to make the best out of your product images:

Ensure the image covers the entire product
Use a simple, clean background to avoid distracting shoppers from the product, ideally a white background
Use photographs, not drawings or sketches
Ensure the pictures are well-lit
Take the product’s picture from different flattering angles
Add as many different pictures as allowed (maximum of 9 images)
Ensure the product images match your product’s description in color, size, and material

Backend Keywords

Search terms and subject matter fields are Amazon keyword targeting tools that allow you to incorporate backend keywords in your listing without stuffing your listing with keywords or interfering with your listing’s readability. Shoppers don’t see your backend keywords, making these the ideal sections for those “weird-reading” but valuable keywords. Such keywords include generic keywords with misspelled words, keywords in a different language, and long-tail keyphrases that wouldn’t make sense in the listing.

Additional guidelines and best practices for backend keywords include:

Don’t exceed 250 characters for search terms and 50 characters for subject matter
Include your product’s synonyms, abbreviations, and alternate names
Don’t include any punctuation marks when listing your backend keywords
Don’t repeat keywords
Include alternative spellings, e.g., spellings in American and British English
Use all lowercase
Separate words with a single space

Step 4: Set up Your Amazon PPC Campaign

Log in to your Seller Account, then click on the Advertising tab. This will take you to an Amazon PPC campaign set-up page. Click on Campaign Manager then scroll down and click Create Campaign. The next step is choosing the type of ad you want to create. You can create between Sponsored Products, Brands, or Display. Let’s go with the most common type of ad, Sponsored Products.

Once you choose your preferred ad type, you’ll need to enter the following campaign details:

Campaign name
Start date
End date
Daily campaign budget

One of the critical Amazon Sponsored Product tips is implementing a naming system that will make it easy to identify different campaigns in your Amazon ad campaign manager. While Amazon requires a minimum daily budget of $1, you’ll probably need to set it higher depending on your overall ad budget.

Step 5: Select Your ad Targeting Setting

At this point, you’ll have to select whether you want your Amazon PPC campaign to run under automatic or manual targeting. As I mentioned earlier, Amazon will do all the keyword selection for you in automatic targeting. You can choose auto-targeting if you’re starting with Amazon paid search ads. Amazon recommends it. From there, you’ll add ad groups, select the products to promote, and set a default bid for these products.

Step 6: Add Keywords to the Campaign

This step only applies if you select manual targeting in step 5. Amazon allows you to add up to 1000 keywords, but you don’t need that many keywords for your campaign. You only need 30-45 keywords. You can add the keywords by typing them in the provided space or uploading them as a .csv file. One upside to adding the keywords manually is you can turn it into an Amazon keyword targeting tool that suggests related keywords for you in real time.

At this point, you can also choose the keyword targeting based on these match types:

Exact
Phrase
Broad
Negative phrase
Negative exact match

Let’s explain each of these match types.

Exact

This match type allows your Amazon PPC ad to appear only when the exact keyword or phrase you bid on is typed into the search. It offers the highest level of targeting and control, potentially leading to a higher conversion rate.

Phrase

Ads will show when the search includes the exact phrase or a close variation of the phrase in the order you specify. This match type balances reach and relevance, capturing a broader audience while maintaining focus.

Broad

Broad match keywords offer the widest reach by showing your Amazon paid search ad for searches that include any word in your keyphrase, in any order, along with synonyms and related searches. While this maximizes visibility, it may also lead to less relevant traffic.

Negative Phrase

This prevents your Amazon PPC ad from showing in searches that include the exact phrase you have determined as irrelevant to your product. It helps refine targeting by excluding unwanted search queries.

Negative Exact Match

Negative exact match keywords exclude your ad from appearing in searches that exactly match the unwanted keyword or phrase. This match type is used to eliminate traffic from search queries that are not relevant but are similar to your desired keywords.

Step 7: Set up the Keyword Bids

Once you’ve added your keywords, you’ll need to set up bids for each of these keywords. Using a data-driven approach here is imperative to avoid wasting money by guessing. Use your keyword research findings to identify high-value keywords and bid more on them, then set your bids for each keyword based on the volume and competition.

You can adjust your keyword bids whenever you like, so monitor your Amazon PPC campaigns to identify opportunities to increase or decrease the keyword bids to improve campaign performance.

Step 8: Submit Your ad for Review by Amazon

Once you’ve set your keyword bids, you can submit your Amazon PPC campaign for review. If everything checks out, you can proceed to launch your campaign. If there’s an issue with your campaign, Amazon will reach out to point it out and advise you on how to fix it.

Common Amazon PPC Advertising Mistakes You Should Avoid

There are several pitfalls in Amazon PPC advertising that can interfere with your campaign effectiveness. Let’s look at these common mistakes and how they affect your Amazon PPC strategy.

Neglecting Keyword Research

Keyword research is an integral part of an effective PPC campaign on Amazon. Skipping in-depth keyword research can lead to targeting irrelevant keywords, attracting unqualified clicks, and wasting advertising budget. Additionally, failure to utilize a healthy mix of broad, phrase, and exact match types can limit your reach and result in you missing out on high-intent searches.

Poor Campaign Structure and Organization

Throwing all products and keywords into a single Amazon PPC campaign makes it difficult to track performance and optimize effectively. Utilize separate campaigns for distinct product categories and objectives for more focused budgeting and analysis.

Setting and Forgetting Campaigns

Some sellers treat Amazon PPC marketing as a “fire and forget” missile. Launching a campaign and neglecting to monitor performance metrics is a recipe for wasted spend. It also causes you to miss out on opportunities to improve your campaigns for better performance. You must regularly monitor and optimize PPC campaigns on Amazon by adjusting bids, keywords, and ad copy based on data insights for optimal campaign results.

Ignoring Negative Keywords

Incorporating negative keywords in your campaign ensures that your Amazon paid search ad doesn’t appear in irrelevant searches. Ignoring negative keywords allows your Amazon PPC ads to appear for irrelevant searches, draining your budget without generating sales. Continually refining your negative keyword list based on campaign data lets you discover more negative keywords, saves ad spend, and improves overall campaign performance.

Unrealistic Bidding Strategies

If you bid too low, you’ll severely limit your Amazon PPC ad visibility and prevent your ads from reaching your target audience. On the other hand, aggressive bidding on highly competitive keywords will quickly burn through your budget without a guaranteed return. You must find the sweet middle ground where you’re neither lowballing yourself nor overbidding blindly.

Inattention to Detail Page Optimization

A poorly optimized product listing with bad images, sparse descriptions, or negative reviews can lead to low conversion rates, even with a successful Amazon PPC campaign driving traffic. Follow the listing optimization tips I mentioned earlier in this Amazon PPC guide.

Focusing Solely on Automatic Bidding

While automatic bidding strategies can be helpful for beginners, relying solely on them might not maximize results. Manually adjusting bids based on keyword performance and campaign goals can lead to better-optimized Amazon ads.

Limited Campaign Budget

Penny-pinching your Amazon PPC advertising severely handicaps your campaigns. An overly restrictive daily budget can limit your ad’s reach and visibility, potentially hindering its effectiveness. Consider allocating a budget for a healthy number of impressions and clicks to gather valuable data for Amazon PPC optimization.

Short-Term Mentality

Amazon PPC advertising is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time to refine your campaigns and identify optimal strategies. Don’t expect immediate results; be prepared to adjust and experiment based on data over time.

Ignoring A/B Testing

Not testing different ad variations (headlines, descriptions, images) can prevent you from discovering the most compelling combination for clicks and conversions. Utilize A/B testing to identify the ad variations that resonate best with your target audience and improve campaign performance.

Advanced Strategies for Amazon PPC Success

Although setting up an Amazon PPC campaign needs work, optimizing and maintaining profitable ads makes setting up a campaign look like a cakewalk. You need solid strategies to make the most out of PPC advertising on Amazon. Let’s look at the strategies you can implement to ensure your campaigns are firing on all cylinders.

Start With Long-Tail Keywords

Whether you’re an Amazon PPC beginner or launching a new product, you can’t go straight to targeting the highly-searched keywords unless you want to burn through your ad spend. These keywords have high competition and CPC. Think of these high-volume keywords as the final boss in a video game. You must go up the ranks, defeating other rivals, to finally get your shot at the final boss.

The best Amazon PPC strategy is to target long-tail keywords and move up to more generic ones. This strategy works well because long-tail keywords have less competition, so their CPC is lower. They allow you to rank for them with little resistance without breaking the bank. And, as shoppers become aware of your brand and your product starts ranking higher organically, you can then leverage that to target more generic keywords and work your way up to the high-volume keywords.

Match Your Amazon PPC Keywords to Your Listing Keywords

Aligning your Amazon paid search ad and listing keywords helps create a seamless transition from the ad to the product details page for the shopper. You want the shopper to feel like your listing is an ad extension, not like they’re looking at a completely different product. This cohesion between campaign and product listing keywords helps improve conversions.

Leverage Amazon PPC Advertising to Improve Organic Rank

This strategy helps you get more bang for your buck with Amazon paid search ads by leveraging them to improve organic rank. The goal here is to assign bids for each keyword based on the listing search rank for that keyword. First, you’ll need to track all keywords on your listing to see how you rank for each of them. Then, create three different ad sets based on keyword rankings like this:

Beyond page five: For keywords ranking page five and beyond, you only need to focus on the keywords that convert and bid modestly. This conserves your ad budget and focuses on improving conversion.
Page two to five: Keywords ranking on this page are salvageable, so you can bid higher than the keywords ranking beyond page five. But, you don’t want to bid too high that you have no budget for the high-ranking keywords. Amazon will rank you higher for these keywords when they generate sales, so keep optimizing the bids accordingly.
Page one: Keywords ranking on page one needs an aggressive bidding strategy so you can solidify your rank in these top spots. You also need to focus on variations of these keywords to boost sales and rank for them too.

Target Related Keywords

Target keywords related to your main keyword are a great way to reach a broader audience of shoppers who might want your product but search for it with different search terms. For example, If your primary keyword is “dog food,” a related keyword can be “pet food” or “canine food.” Please note a related keyword might not include the main keyword itself. If a shopper used any of these related terms to search on Amazon, your Amazon PPC ad would appear in their search results.

Defend Your Brand by Targeting Branded Keywords

Branded keywords are keywords or phrases that include your brand name, company name, slogan, and taglines. It’s not against Amazon ToS for competitors to target your branded keywords and redirect your customers. So, it falls on you to defend your branded keywords by self-targeting. Targeting your branded keywords in your Amazon PPC campaign makes it easier for shoppers to find your products and promotes brand awareness.

Group Product Variation Under one ASIN

Variations on one product are typically listed as child ASINs. Running Amazon PPC ads for each of these product variations separately will eat up your ad budget, and your products will compete against each other. A feasible approach to prevent your products from cannibalizing each other is to group them all under one ASIN and sell them as a package.

For example, if you sell different colors of the same shirt. Instead of selling them separately, you can sell them as a pack. This way, you save on ad spend and increase your average order value.

Scale Your Business on Amazon With PPC Ads

Congratulations! You’ve taken a significant step towards mastering the art of Amazon PPC advertising. By following the strategies outlined in this guide, you’ve equipped yourself with the knowledge to launch successful campaigns, optimize for better results, and ultimately achieve your sales goals on Amazon. Remember, PPC advertising is an ongoing process. The key to success is continuous learning, experimentation, and data-driven Amazon PPC optimization. Book a demo to see My Real Profit Amazon PPC advertising analytics tools in action. We’ll be happy to show you what our analytical tools can do.

Book a demo on My Real Profit today!

A Comprehensive Guide to Amazon PPC Advertising for Sellers