Have you ever started an Amazon ad campaign and found only a trickle of orders? Any e-commerce company finds this to be a very annoying experience, but sadly it is not unusual.
Usually, your advertising approach is the issue, not your product. Too often, businesses spend a lot of money on ads without a planned strategy to maximize and scale them, therefore producing unsatisfactory results and wasted ad expenditure.
How therefore can you improve and broaden your Amazon marketing plan to guarantee that every dollar you spend is an investment rather than a gamble? We’ll explain it within this article in three parts:
Part 1: Why Your Amazon Ads Are Underperforming
Part 2: How to Optimize Your Ad Campaign
Part 3: How to Scale Your Amazon Ads
If your Amazon ads aren’t working, identifying the root cause is your first step. Then, you can use those learnings to craft a strategic Amazon PPC campaign. Once you gain some traction with your new Amazon advertising efforts, you can dive into how to scale ads for greater success.
Are you ready to invest?
Long-term effort requiring your time and money is Amazon PPC advertising. Ignoring the time to understand how to effectively maximize your adverts runs the danger of damaging your company. Under this scenario, working with an Amazon PPC Services firm could be a superior choice.
Amazon PPC agencies live and breathe Amazon selling strategies. An Amazon ad partner can manage your store and advertising campaigns for you, so you can skip the learning curve and simply watch the sales come through.
Rather learn the tools and tricks of the trade to manage your own Amazon ad strategy? Let’s get to it.
▶ Part 1: Why Your Amazon Ads Are Underperforming
You must first determine what requires fixing before you start to address a problem. Your Amazon advertising can be failing expectations for numerous reasons, but here are the five most often occurring ones:
Problem #1: insufficient keyword research
Not spending enough time on keyword research and omitting long-tail phrases are among the most frequent mistakes with Amazon Advertising. Though some believe keywords are solely relevant for product listings, your advertising campaign also depends on them. Find what’s unique about your product and target the longer more specific terms to get an initial sales foothold.
Problem #2: Poorly optimized listings
Perhaps your advertising is not converting rather than not working. Your product pages could be the issue if you find that although your adverts are generating visitors, sales are not rising. Not only should your listings be highly optimized with keywords, but also with premium images, thorough descriptions, and reasonable prices.
Problem #3: Bad ad placements
If your ads aren’t showing up in front of the people searching for your product, they won’t lead to sales. You may need to adjust your settings to better optimize your Amazon advertising campaigns for maximum visibility. Ideally, your ads should pop up on the first page of search results and any relevant product detail pages.
Problem #4: Neglecting negative keywords
Negative keywords are words or phrases you wish your advertising never show. Negative keywords help you to filter your advertising campaigns, so you run the danger of squandering money on ad placements in front of the incorrect audience.
Back to the sandals as an example: If you sell casual beach sandals meant for everyday use, you might want to choose “dressy sandals” or “formal sandals” as negative keywords. If you don’t, your casual sandals might pop up for someone searching for high-end sandals to wear for a wedding—a waste of ad spend.
Problem #5: Lack of A/B testing
Another common mistake with Amazon Advertising is not conducting A/B testing.
Running two versions of an ad with varying elements—such as graphics, copy, or call-to-action—then comparing their performance to find which one generates more clicks and conversions is known as A/B testing. A/B testing can enable you to optimize your adverts and raise their general impact.
▶ Part 2: Improve Your Amazon Ad Campaign in Five Steps
In the realm of e-commerce, optimization—keyword, search, ad, etc.—is a term you probably hear a lot. Campaign optimization in your advertising plan refers to clever changes to your procedure intended to get the greatest possible outcomes.
This five-step plan will help you maximize your Amazon ad campaign and raise performance:
Step 1: Review your campaign objectives first.
Reviewing your campaign goals can help you return to the drawing board should your Amazon advertising fail.
Naturally, “to sell more products and make more money” is the easiest target. But you want to be a bit more specific here. Most companies are generally after one (or a mix) of three main advertising goals:
Cost efficiency: To enhance your campaign’s cost efficiency, focus on reducing advertising cost of sales (ACoS). Establish a target ACoS based on past performance and industry standards, then adjust your ad spending to meet or surpass this goal. Monitor which ads and keywords generate the best returns so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
If your main objective is to raise income, concentrate on increasing your return on ad expenditure (ROAS). Improve your target audiences and sharpen advertising creatives to increase involvement and conversions.
Brand visibility: Advertising isn’t always about making the sale (at least, not at first). Establish a target share of voice (SOV) and implement strategies—increasing ad spend, diversifying advertising channels, employing aggressive promotional tactics, etc—to achieve it. Watch what your competitors are doing and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Step 2: Use keyword research tools (or experts)
If you’re simply guessing which keywords are best for your Amazon advertising campaign, you’re likely throwing dollars out the window.
You can use expert research tools like indeedSEO’s Keyword Scout to find high-converting keywords relevant to the products you’re trying to promote. Keyword Scout also helps you discover more unique keywords to give you a leg up on your competition. Be sure to include long-tail keywords (they can be highly lucrative) and negative keywords in your strategy.
It’s not just about finding keywords to optimize for. Here are some other keyword tips to follow:
- Target indirect keywords.
- Use branded keywords and self-targeting tactics.
- Don’t put all your keywords in one campaign.
- Include negative keywords as a filter so your ads will only appear where relevant.
You don’t have to be an optimization expert, but there is a learning curve to effective keyword research. The
IndeedSEO Academy is a great place to learn if you have the time to hone your skills. Or, you can enlist the help of an Amazon advertising strategist who’s already well-versed in all things keyword research and advertising strategy.
Step 3: Create retail-ready product pages
As mentioned, the problem might not be with your ads, but with your product pages. Having a click-worthy ad means nothing if the customer gets to your product page and is turned off from making a purchase. Here are a few things you can do to make an enticing, ad-ready product page
- Relevant and attention-grabbing product title that includes brand name and main keyword.
- Clear and well-optimized product description.
- Aesthetically pleasing, high-quality images and videos.
- Brand-enhanced content (if you are brand registered on Amazon).
- At least 15 customer reviews, ideally rated 3.5 stars or higher.
Step 4: Expand your audience with market basket analysis
Perhaps your Amazon advertising fails because you are aiming for too little of an audience or the incorrect one. By use of keyword research and data analysis of Amazon’s customer behavior, one can identify their target audience and thereby design advertising that appeals to the correct audience.
Amazon’s advertising capabilities allow you to utilize market basket analysis (MBA), a data extraction method that reveals patterns among items. MBA is typically used to reveal products that are frequently bought together, which can lead to a cross-promotion strategy to target more potential customers who may not have been initially looking for your product.
Back to our earlier example, this could look like placing ad targets on customers buying bathing suits or beach totes to increase sales of your beach sandals.
Step 5: Adjust your Amazon bidding strategy
Managing PPC bids is one of the biggest challenges for small and medium Amazon businesses, according to the 2024 State of the Amazon Seller report. There are several Amazon ad bidding strategies out there, and finding what’s best for your company involves some trial and error.
When starting, it’s recommended to use Amazon’s automatic targeting campaigns and choose from one of the three types of bidding strategies:
- Dynamic bidding (down only) is when Amazon automatically lowers your bids when you’re less likely to make a sale.
- Dynamic bidding (up and down) adds a second component on top of the down-only strategy by increasing your bid by 10% during times when you’re more likely to make a sale.
- Fixed bids mean you set your bid and it doesn’t change until you choose to adjust it. We recommend starting with daily budgets and default bids 50-100% higher than what Amazon suggests.
- There is a widely-used formula to calculate an ideal Amazon advertising bid:
Bid = Maximum Cost per Click = (Ad Sales / Ad Clicks) x (Ad Spend / Ad Sales)
▶ Part 3: How to Successfully Scale Ads on Amazon
We want to clarify something: Scaling your Amazon ads isn’t a beginner-seller strategy. It’s time to scale your ads on Amazon when you’re seeing positive campaign results that you want to turn from good to great.
Switch to manual campaigns
Now that you’ve gotten the hang of the Amazon ad platform and have seen positive results, you can shift your campaign from automatic to manual for greater control of your ad spending and bidding strategy.
You can pinpoint your bidding strategy to take advantage of current trends and market insights, thanks to Amazon’s endless supply of data. You can also leverage AI and machine learning tools, like IndeedSEO to hand-deliver these valuable insights to you.
▶ Choose your method: horizontal vs. vertical ad scaling
There are two ways to scale ads: horizontally or vertically.
Horizontal scaling
When you scale ads horizontally, you spread your ad budget across several ad sets simultaneously, targeting different groups of people with the same ads. To paint a visual, horizontal scaling is like planting a bunch of different seeds in a wide plot of land and waiting to see what grows.
Horizontal ad scaling amplifies your reach, getting your ad in front of more people. The downside is that you may very well start competing with yourself, which is not ideal. Plus, if your ad isn’t great, you may have just wasted money showing an inadequate ad to multiple audiences.
Vertical scaling
On the other hand, vertical scaling involves investing in a single ad set or campaign and slowly increasing the budget based on how it performs. It’s more like planting a single seed and focusing all your efforts on nurturing it. When it shows growth, you intensify your efforts to make it flourish.
Vertical scaling is a beneficial strategy because you can focus on creating a great ad campaign and continuously optimizing it to gain incredible results. The vertical scaling strategy often makes a bigger impact within a more narrow audience, leading to higher conversions overall.
Increase your budget using the 80/20 rule
You can find out which 20% of keywords are producing your sales by downloading a Search Term Report in Seller Central. To do this:
- Under the Reports page, select ‘Create Report.’
- Choose your campaign type (Sponsored Product, Sponsored Brand, or Sponsored Brands Video).
- For the Report Type, select ‘Search term.’
- For the time unit, select ‘Daily.’
- For the reporting period, choose ‘Last 60 days’
- Click ‘Run report’ and then download the data.
When your spreadsheet opens, you can filter the report by 7 Day Total Sales to find the most relevant converting keywords. You’ll want to look for the customer search terms that have multiple sales and a click-through rate (CTR) above 0.4% (that’s the average for Amazon).
Now, you can better focus your Amazon campaign strategy, increasing your ad spend on these winning terms.
Monitor and adjust your ad campaign
Consumer behavior is constantly changing, and so is Amazon. That said, a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach doesn’t work here. You have to constantly monitor your ad data and A/B tests to see what’s working and what isn’t.
You can automate this process using an Amazon PPC manager to gather round-the-clock, data-driven recommendations. The IndeedSEO platform also allows you to gather valuable Amazon customer and advertising data in real-time to better optimize your campaigns. There are a few ad performance metrics to monitor:
- Click-through rates (CTR)
- Conversion rates
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Keep in mind that Amazon ad scaling is a slow process—your campaigns need some time to bake. After you implement scaling strategies, give them a couple of weeks to show results, then analyze your data and make adjustments accordingly.
▶ A Final Word On Ad Scaling
As you have probably found, scaling your Amazon ads is far more strategic than merely raising your ad budget. You must spend money to make money, of course, but the secret is to make sure you are using that money wisely so your sales income will be far more than your ad expenditure.
Still, one component of the plan is to invest in ads. Amazon advertising requires continuous learning, analysis, and implementation, so you must also invest your time into staying sharp. Using Amazon Seller tools like IndeedSEO can help business owners of any size learn the tricks of the trade for incredible advertising results.
There’s little time to waste in the competitive world of Amazon. With this strategy and the right tools in hand, now’s the perfect time to transform your ad dollars into significant sales growth and seller success.