It’s impossible to ignore the impact of Amazon on commerce. The platform is now well-established as an integral media partner for many brands and agencies, and it’s important to integrate it carefully into your approach.
With our deep knowledge of SEO and PPC, we’ve been able to combine understanding of the Amazon ecosystem with specialist skills to develop a holistic Amazon proposition.
Based on this development, here are five tips to maximize your approach to Amazon Sponsored Ads.
1. A great campaign structure goes a long way
Having a best-in-class structure for Amazon Sponsored Ads campaigns is key. Whether you are running Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Products, it’s fundamental to nail the basics. Splitting campaigns effectively based on themes is vital and typically there are three core elements:
- Brand
- Category
- Competitor
Having this division in place will ensure your campaigns have clear goals, paving the way for tighter measurement and optimization. Furthermore, it allows for better understanding of where in the consumer decision journey a user might be; i.e. Brand is driven by conversion, whilst Category and Competitor drive awareness and consideration.
2. Avoid mixing Match Types
Match Types are a basic element of a typical paid search campaign – a well-known fact to the PPC community. Best practice, however, is to only use a single Match Type per campaign. If you have complex campaigns with a large range of products, this may need great consideration to generate efficiency and effectiveness.
3. Utilise the best available ASINs
ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) are specific codes unique to Amazon that identify a product. If you are familiar with Amazon, you are aware that there are elements of an ASIN which will impact a consumer's shopping habits. Users tend to avoid products that don’t:
- Have lots of high-quality reviews – We recommend having as many reviews as possible. Twenty-five reviews is a good milestone to exceed and the review rating should be above four stars.
- Have stock – Being in stock is key. When you are out of stock, you either lose the buy box to a reseller (making you unable to control the customer experience) or the user may simply go to a competitor.
- Allow free next-day delivery – An expectation on Amazon is to have next-day delivery for free! Vendors will have a relationship with Amazon to enable Amazon Prime, but a third-party seller can also do a great job when it comes to logistics. Both work with Amazon to store inventory at a fulfilment centre, offering a great service by enabling Amazon Prime.
4. Optimise product titles
Titles are one of the first opportunities to convince users that a product is right for them. When they perform a search on Amazon, a product may seem irrelevant if the title doesn’t match the search query in some way. Hence, it’s important to make the title as descriptive as possible whilst staying on brand and include the right keywords to resonate well with both the user and the Amazon A10 algorithm.
5. Use great imagery
Optimizing product images is the key to success on Amazon and for your Sponsored Product campaigns (especially when you have a higher-funnel focus). Without quality images, brand perception can be highly affected and hinder the chance of a user clicking through to the product detail page. We recommend using at least six product images and testing the use of lifestyle images to express the brand’s tone of voice.
Summary
Include these five things in your Amazon approach to bring your strategy closer to best-in-class retail readiness and maximum efficiency through Sponsored Ads. By keeping them front of mind, you’ll achieve better results for your brand when it comes to product visibility and Return on Advertising Spend.
Joe Farley, Paid Search Director, iProspect UK, is the original author of this article.
