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Joe Farley Joe Farley
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Joe Farley

Paid Search Director

About this Author

As a Paid Search Director at iProspect Stafford, Joe is responsible for driving strategy for clients across multiple markets and overseeing delivery of work across the PPC team. 

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How Brands Are Utilising This Year's Amazon Prime Day

How Brands Are Utilising This Year's Amazon Prime Day

This year marks the fourth Amazon Prime Day and since its inception, the online retailer has harnessed all the potential of a key sales day outside of Q4. As a result, this has significantly altered the behaviour as well as the types of items that people are purchasing each July. Through creating this demand, brands can justify additional budget and comprehensive media plans to ensure that discounts are visible, that these deals are beating the competition and that all of this activity leads to Amazon’s continued growth in its ad business. So, are brands increasing spend for Prime Day? Brands continue to see the value in taking part, even though it’s become quite a crowded space. However, due to the level playing field of Amazon’s Marketing Platforms, competitors can easily inflate an auction which leads to an increase in cost to maintain similar levels of visibility. This means that brands have to weigh up the benefits of profitability vs visibility. Prime Day is focused around greater discounts so this can be a good opportunity for brands to penetrate the market. Amazon is maximising Prime Day with brands and agencies Amazon is working closely with brands to plan how Prime Day promotions will be promoted via Amazon’s ad space. In terms of growth, there are quite a few insights to highlight. In 2017, Amazon saw a 60% YoY increase in growth, exceeding the amount of sales by 9pm vs the previous year. That same year, Prime Day was Amazon’s biggest sales day in the UK with impressions on the day increasing by around 130% YoY. These insights, shared by Amazon, highlight the great opportunity for brands and the importance of agency collaboration. Tips to Navigating Amazon's Marketing Platforms  From a paid search perspective, brands have larger budgets to ensure that they are prepared for the increase in volume and competition. It’s therefore important that brands ensure campaigns are set up at least two weeks prior to help maximise visibility. Also, understanding the best ad types to use is crucial. Amazon recommends using a combination of Headline Search, Product Display and Sponsored Products to maximise ad space visibility. However, also aligning this to your KPIs will highlight where more budget should be allocated. Lastly, keyword selection is extremely important as it allows a brand to align selected match types based on budget and KPIs. The exact match type tends to have cheaper CPCs and allow greater control to maximise ROAS (return on ad spend) whereas Phrase and Broad Match can be used to drive greater visibility. Conclusion Advertisers have to rely greatly on Amazon during Prime Day but also try to reduce that need by being agnostic with promotions. This ultimately allows other retailers and direct sites to house the same discounts. Due to the broad reach of Amazon and the marketing carried out to promote Prime Day, it is drawing in not only its own customers but also making general shoppers aware of the discounts over the time period.   Key Takeaways for Advertisers 1. Prime Day is now a key sales day with large volumes that are worth capturing 2. Amazon Marketing Platforms do provide value but consider whether it is worth sacrificing ROI 3. Align KPIs prior and drive efficiencies through the better performing ad types 0 3 min read
Five top tips for maximising Amazon Sponsored Ads

Five top tips for maximising Amazon Sponsored Ads

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 eco-system with specialist skills to develop a holistic Amazon proposition. Based on this development, here are five tips to maximise 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 optimisation. 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 fact well-known to the PPC community. Best practice, however, is only using 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 will be aware that there are elements of an ASIN which will impact your 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 Optimising product images is key to success on Amazon and for your Sponsored Products 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. 0 4 min read

As a Paid Search Director at iProspect Stafford, Joe is responsible for driving strategy for clients across multiple markets and overseeing delivery of work across the PPC team. 

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