5 Steps to Optimize Amazon PPC for Better Results and Higher ROI

By  //  May 24, 2022

Amazon PPC advertising is a core component of a successful Amazon marketing strategy. Alongside a thorough SEO approach, PPC can boost product sales for new offers, clearance items and seasonal goods. Moreover, utilising Sponsored Products ads increases your product search rankings to fight competition, while Stores and Sponsored Brands increase brand awareness.

As the competition is fierce, it’s crucial to optimise your Amazon advertising campaigns to get the best results. There are several methods to improve how your ads work, but the best way to get significant results is by outsourcing the work to an Amazon advertising agency.

Such a company represents a growth agency known for growing successful Amazon brands by managing PPC, SEO and more. This article highlights how to upgrade PPC ads to improve results and how an Amazon agency, like Nuoptima, can aid your Amazon growth journey.

The Basics of Setting Up an Amazon Advertising Campaign

Before optimising your advertising efforts, you must ensure you’re using the correct type of ad for your business objectives and that you’re setting up the campaign properly.

Promotion Types:

■ Sponsored Products: Using a PPC model, these ads promote a product on search pages and product detail pages by targeting keywords or similar products.

■ Sponsored Display: These PPC ads promote a product on product detail pages, customer review pages, and merchandising emails. They target buyer interests or similar products.

■ Sponsored Brands: A PPC advertising model that promotes your brand and up to 3 products. These ads appear on search results pages. 

■ Stores: Although these don’t use the PPC advertising model, stores are a great way to promote your brand using a landing page. All your products are in one place, and buyers learn about your brand.

6 Steps to Setting Up Your First Amazon PPC Campaign: 

Set Appropriate Budgets to Control Ad Spend

To avoid overspending on advertising, ensure you’ve set a monthly budget first, then a daily one. Costs can quickly add up; if you place a daily limit of £25 a day, your ad spend will soon increase to £350 in 2 weeks.

Set an End Date

Avoid leaving a campaign open without a set date for it to end. It’s easy to forget about an ad when you have multiple running and other Amazon marketing strategies to manage. You can always extend an ad by editing the end date, but setting an initial date during set-up will prevent you from burning through your advertising budget.

Choose a Targeting Option

For people new to Amazon PPC and keyword research, experts recommend choosing automatic targeting to allow Amazon to choose keywords for you. However, if you outsource Amazon management or have in-house expertise, manual targeting is better.

Promote One Product Per Campaign

It’s better to have a clear focus on each campaign to improve data analysis down the line. Within one campaign, users can create ad groups to list product variations.

Select Keywords Within Your Budget

Higher demand search terms will be more expensive to bid on and harder to gain clicks. Make sure you’re choosing keywords with an appropriate traffic volume so they fit your budget and still get results.

Understand Different Bidding Strategies

Amazon has 3 bidding options to choose from when it comes to Sponsored Product campaigns. Ensure you pick the right option for your business goals. The first strategy is ‘down only’ dynamic bids, which means Amazon lowers your bid in real-time if there’s a low chance of the click converting to a sale. Next, ‘up and down’ dynamic bids offer a similar option; however, it also increases a bid in real-time if the chance of a conversion is higher. Finally, fixed bids will not change in real-time. Instead, Amazon uses the exact bid and any manual adjustments you have made.

How to Optimise Amazon PPC Ads for Better Results

Amazon’s competition is aggressive, and you need to know how to optimise your ads to get the most from them. You can take a couple of steps to improve the effectiveness of a campaign to get better product visibility, a higher conversion rate, and increased ROIs.

Negative Keywords Can Reduce Spending in Sponsored Product Campaigns 

When setting up a Sponsored Product ad, negative keywords are an excellent way to focus your campaign and improve which search result pages your ad appears on. Negative keywords represent the search terms you do not want Amazon to target.

These can remove similar keywords with different meanings. For example, if you sell drinking glasses, you may add negative keywords related to eyeglasses. In this way, you tell Amazon not to show your product on search results for eyewear and make sure it displays to the right shoppers. 

During keyword research, you may even decide to look for keywords with low conversion rates (even if they have a high click-through rate) and flag them as negative to improve sales. In all, selecting negative keywords helps reduce waste spending and improve ROI.

Thorough Keyword Research to Improve Targeting 

Keyword research forms the foundations of any effective Amazon marketing plan. During this process, you discover the exact phrases and words your ideal customer uses to search for your product. There are a multitude of reasons why it’s crucial to target the right keywords with appropriate demand for your objectives.

Firstly, high volume search terms may be more expensive and harder to bid on. Competitors, such as named brands, may have a larger budget, and therefore your ads are unlikely to bring in much revenue. On the other hand, targeting terms with a low volume is a good way to save money, but if it’s too low, it may not produce significant traffic or enough sales and thus reduces your ROI.

As we highlighted above, automatic targeting is the easiest way to set up a campaign and a good option for beginners. But, for this to work, you must have your product listing optimised for Amazon’s algorithm.

During automatic targeting, Amazon generates keywords and product matches based on the product in your campaign. So, if your listing isn’t optimised, your selection of automatic keywords won’t provide the best results.

Manual targeting provides the most control over the campaign, and it makes it easier to tailor it to your business objectives. Specialist SEO tools are the best way to identify relevant keywords with an appropriate search volume. In this way, you can find search terms that fit your budget, have a good volume and target customers with an intent to buy your product.

Run Product Display Ads Continuously 

Knowing how long to run each campaign is an important factor in its success. Earlier, we insisted that you set an end date on campaigns. While this is best for most ad types, it may be better to take a different approach with Product Display ads.

According to Radial research, More than half of Amazon shoppers from the US make multiple purchases in one month, while 80% shop at least once per month. For this reason, Amazon suggests running Product Display ads continuously so you can capture more conversions in real-time.

Include the Top Benefit in Sponsored Brands Ads 

There are many ways to optimise your written content, from integrating keywords naturally, using compelling words and ensuring your content follows Amazon’s rules. It’s vital to grab shoppers’ attention by standing out from the other ads and listings. A critical step in curating copy that converts is to use your product’s primary benefit in the headline. For instance, for Sponsored Brands ads, mobile users can only see your ad’s main image and headline.

Furthermore, mobile shoppers are increasing substantially, with more people using handheld devices to shop compared to desktops. Therefore, Amazon sellers must ensure they optimise their ads for mobile devices.

Consider Hiring an Amazon Agency

Put simply, an Amazon agency can increase the performance of your advertisements because the team has the experience, expertise and resources to optimise your Amazon marketing efforts.

An Amazon advertising agency can improve PPC ads by managing the budget, conducting keyword research, and implementing best practices to reach your advertising goals. Nuoptima, for instance, is a growth agency with specialist Amazon growth consultants. When working with Amazon brands, they help choose an appropriate budget that gets results but doesn’t waste valuable investment.

Moreover, they have access to specialist SEO software to do in-depth keyword research and identify relevant words with a suitable demand. They strive to find a happy medium with your budget and keyword choice to ensure it converts but isn’t drowned out by the competition.

Outsourcing Amazon management can give you unique insight into how to establish an Amazon brand. If you don’t have the expertise in-house, hiring a team of experts gives you access to their vast experience and previous success growing brands like yours.

For example, a PPC expert understands technicalities, such as deciding if ‘broad match’, ‘phrase match’ or ‘exact match’ will produce the best results for your business. Moreover, they know what works and what doesn’t, how to optimise copy and ensure your store is compliant with Amazon’s rules.

Alternatively, you may consider hiring a full-service Amazon management agency to improve your Amazon marketing strategy as a whole.

The professionals at Nuoptima take a holistic approach by combining key SEO and PPC techniques to grow your store from multiple angles. They work together to optimise your listings, increase organic search rankings, and improve brand awareness, conversion rates and sales. Outsourcing has proven beneficial for many brands trying to grow in Amazon’s competitive marketplace.

Key Takeaways

Optimising an Amazon advertising campaign takes time to understand, but it’s paramount to increasing ad performance and ROI. This article has outlined the importance of keyword research, supporting SEO efforts, optimising copy for mobile users and figuring out an appropriate campaign length. 

We also discussed the benefits of hiring an Amazon agency to manage your PPC campaigns or even your entire Amazon marketing strategy. In short, they have the resources and expertise to research the most profitable, relevant keywords for your advertising goals and increase the overall performance of your store.