The Beginners Guide to Launching and Optimizing Amazon PPC Ad Campaigns

If you are an Amazon seller, the onus falls on you to make your products as visible as possible. One of the best ways to do this is via Amazon PPC Ad Campaign.

A proper setup of this campaign will help you to win sales. Amazon PPC will help highlight the items and push them to the faces of the prospective buyers.

PPC Ad stands for Pay Per Click Advertising. It gives you a unique opportunity to promote various items on Amazon.

It does so by directing prospective buyers to those products. You will pay based on the number of clicks on the ad, which is why it is pay-per-click advertising. The strategy can increase the awareness for your product.

Studies show that Amazon PPC doubled globally. PPC clicks also increases sales by more than 150%.

In this write-up, you will learn how to create your first campaign. This way, you can start making some cool cash off Amazon. This comprehensive guide will lead you by the hands.

You will never take a wrong step or make a wrong move that may jeopardize your entire advertising effort. The method in this write-up is low-maintenance. It is a straightforward method for setting up and optimizing your Amazon ads.

The guide will teach you how to make the most of your Amazon ad budget. It will open your eyes to effective keyword selection. This will culminate in greater profit.

Introduction to PPC

Amazon PPC advertising started in 2012. Amazon has taken time to simplify the program.

As a result Amazon sellers can generate more sales. The sellers can get their products advertised on the Amazon marketplace.

Amazon PPC ads come up in two different places on the Amazon marketplace, which are:

• On the product page
• On the search results page

PPC allows you to bid on keywords that relate to your products so that it can rank higher on the search engines. The beautiful thing about PPC is that it can push the products to the eyes of the shopper.

It pushes the products to the first page of search engines. This is where up to 70% of prospective buyers look for the products they want to buy on Amazon and elsewhere.

Next, we will talk about how to set up your Amazon PPC ad campaign

Step 1

What do you want to spend?

You need to decide how much you want to spend or bid on the ads. You need three metrics to calculate your "default bid"

• The conversion rate of the product
• The price of the product
• Your target Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS)

It should not be difficult to identify any of these items. You can find them through the Seller Central page on Amazon.

How to calculate your target ACoS

The ACoS determines the performance of your PPC campaign. It is the ratio of the ad spent to sales.

If you spend $1000, for example, and generated to $3,000 in sales, it means the ACoS is 30%. You can check the ACoS metric for all your products. Check the Campaign Manager section of your Seller Central on Amazon for this.

Step 2

Start the campaign

It is time to get started after deciding the amount you want to spend on the Amazon ads campaign. Follow the steps below:

• Log in to Seller Central
• Click on Campaign Manager, which is under Advertising.

The steps above will lead you to the Campaign Settings. When on this page, you can set up the following:

• Your Daily Budget
• Ad Campaign
• Target type, which can be manual or automatic
• Campaign Time Frame

The automatic setting will save you a lot of time. The manual setting will give you more control.

You can then enter the particular keywords you want the ad to match with. Amazon will target your ads using the information about your product. It will not based on keywords.

Your resources and marketing strategy can determine which to choose between the two. None is better than the other.

How to set up manual PPC campaign

You will need to dedicate some time to set up the manual PPC campaigning. This is unlike the automatic one that does not need much time at all.

Despite this seeming limitation, the manual setting will add precision to your ad. It will give you the liberty to choose the keywords by yourself. Follow the steps below to set up your manual PPC campaign.

1. Select Manual as your targeting option
2. Click on Continue to next page
3. Enter the name of the ads group
4. Select the product you want to advertise
5. Choose your preferred default bid

When selecting keywords, you can either provide the keywords by yourself. You can also use Amazon's suggestions. If you prefer to add the keywords by yourself, you can use any of the three match types:

• Broad: The ads will show up when a buyer searches your specific keywords. It will also show the variants of your keywords.
• Phrase: The ads show up when the buyer searches for your specific keywords. The keywords before and after it also comes up as part of the search result.
• Exact: The ads come up when the prospective buyer searches for your keywords. It does not show any other keyword also appearing in the search result.

Experts are of the opinion that it is better to go for only the Exact and Broad match types. Studies have also shown that the keywords in the Phrase type will usually come up in the board type also.

How to set up automatic PPC campaign

You need only a few minutes to set up an automatic campaign. Bear in mind that there is no need for keyword research in this case. Amazon will be responsible for matching the ads by scanning your products detail.

• Select Automatic on the Campaign Settings page
• Click on Continue to the next step
• Then provide a name for your ad group
• Select the product to advertise
• Next, provide the bid amount

Step 4

Track your PPC Ads

Performance of the ads campaign will help you to make the most of your budget for advertising. You should visit the All Sponsored Products Campaign page for information.

This is on the Advertising section of the Seller Central page. You can use this to track the cost-effectiveness of the ads using any of ACoS, Sales or Spend metrics.

Also, you can adjust the daily budget, end date and the start date of the campaign even long after launch.

You can review your ads keywords performance to find out how each of them is performing.

It will help you to find out which of them is generating most clicks and sales. You should include this top performer in your future advertising campaigns.

This is available on the All Sponsored Products Campaign page.

How to set up Exact keyword Group

The ads Exact will only rank if there is an Exact match of the keywords without any other word. The keyword selection must follow proper procedure. Make sure you bid on relevant keywords alone. This way, you can get the desired conversion for your products. You can follow the tips below:

• Use Sonar, which is a free keyword tool on Amazon. It can pick the top 20 to 50 keywords for the Exact keyword group.
• Avoid skimping on your default bid

How to set up a broad keyword group

Amazon matches your ad with the keyword you have selected, as well as, the variants of keywords.

Broad ad keywords can connect your ads to searches that do not show in Exact because they are less obvious. Despite the advantages of Broad ad keyword group, it comes with certain risks that you must take note of.

In Broad ad, you may end up bidding on less relevant keywords that will end up driving fewer conversions.

The tips below can balance the pros and cons:

• Let your budget be less on Broad keywords. Experts say it is better to deduct about 30% from the default bid calculation for Broad keyword. This small decrease gives you a higher chance of winning Broad keyword auctions
• Make sure you add the Exact keywords to Broad keywords to match with the inexact, general keyword.

Conclusion

The competition on Amazon is huge. You need more than the good quality of your products to generate a sale.

You must make the product as visible as possible. You can attract buyers despite the crowded nature of the Amazon marketplace. You will not have a problem making sales if your items are visible.

This is where Amazon PPC advertising comes in. It will give your products the desired exposure so that you can sell them without a delay.

The keywords gives you a complete control over your ranking on Amazon search engine. It also involves other popular search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Yes, PPC will cost you some money, but it will pay off over time. Studies show that it is among the most cost-effective methods to advertise on Amazon.