7 Lessons I Learned Spending nearly a Million Dollars On Amazon PPC Ads Last Year
All those working in the domain of Amazon know the importance of Amazon Pay-per-Click ads. It is no new fact that all of us advertisers and sellers spend millions on Amazon PPC. However, after spending a million dollars on Amazon PPC last year, I have learned a lot many things that were not quite obvious at first.
Amazon PPC is very much a new platform. Even now if you research it, you will definitely get new strategies and new tools to enhance your profitability. Hence, it is evolving day by day. Since new things are coming up each day, this platform is still unknown from various aspects. It is not like Facebook ads.
Penning down the lessons I learned is a great way for others to know how much they should spend and how much is actually worth it. This is one of the reasons why I want to share my findings over the years.
There are 7 lessons I learned and these can be termed as strategies for making more sales on Amazon and increasing your profitability.
1. Running Ad Campaigns at a Loss
Well this can come as a huge shocker for you!
I know ad campaigns are for making a profit, but this criteria is not always simple. Hear me out!
In Amazon, if you want your products to rank high, you need to have sales of your product first. Though most of my ads were viewed several times, my sales came from the free organic placements on Amazon. Now you need to understand that Amazon uses the conversion rate and sales rate to determine which product to rank according to the given keywords. There are a host of other factors as well that determines the ranking of your product, but the sales velocity is an important factor.
Hence, in order to rank your product on the first page, you will have to run Amazon PPC ads at a loss. Just to have more visibility of your product. Now in some instances, even after turning off your advertising, your product page can convert well enough. This will help in maintaining it’s position. However, mostly advertising does help if you want to keep your product listing on the first page.
In the end, these organic sales will be good enough to make up for the losses in running the ads.
2. Automation, Automation
I have to stress on the importance of the automation of some of the tasks while campaigning on Amazon. This is extremely imperative for people who are involved in running numerous ad campaigns.
Take my words, use automation!
Don’t think that these automations will be complex in nature. You may automate some of your bidding strategies or keyword biddings. If you see that a keyword is working very well for you, you can automatically increase it’s bid.
Automation will basically help you, assist you and there would be no chance of any human error.
Advertising cost of sales or ACoS changes quickly here as there are a lot of advertisers these days. ACoS can be affected if there’s a new competitor or if someone leaves the market. Hence, automation is a good thing for keeping a check on everything.
There are numerous other tools for automation. You can always choose the tool that serves all your requirements.
3. Conversion of Amazon PPC
No doubt, Amazon PPC is one of the best things for advertising products on Amaon. It is also one of the least expensive ways to gain exposure and make your way into the Amazon product selling. These days, the ACos has risen due to an increase in the number of sellers, it is still profitable.
Amazon PPC converts very well in that case. Keywords help a lot. It is quite profitable to use specific and long tailed keywords. And using specific keywords that target the right audience helps a lot in the profitability and visibility of your product.
4. The Truth about Automatic Campaigns
In the past, I have experienced automatic campaigns a lot many times. My results have been mixed though. Let me explain.
Automatic campaigns are effective when the search volume of your product is high. Amazon targets those keywords that are more relevant. If your products are from particular niches, automatic campaigns might bid on terms that are not relevant enough for converting well.
It’s very important to actively monitor and inspect the keywords regularly if you run an automatic campaign. If this is not done, it is possible that you will not get desired results from the budget.
5. Importance of Optimizing your Listing
Optimizing your listing is as important as finding keywords that convert well. Some of the ways to optimize your listing includes
- Adding better images of your product
- Adding bullets
- Split testing titles and prices of your products
6. Benefits of PPC Listing
Amazon PPC is a great tool for advertisers but optimizing the listing is equally important. This is because by optimizing the listing, your product can be placed higher at a lower cost-per-click. This will also help in bidding higher than your competitors.
If your listing converts better, your cost of advertising lowers leading to better ACoS. Infact, Amazon will rank your product on the first page that will automatically increase your sales and profitability. You can even use numerous tools for optimizing your Amazon listing.
7. Creativity
Another strategy to always keep in mind is to do research, planning along with being creative. I know Amazon PPC is a very vital tool for advertisers but your creativity matters as well. A creative ad will always lead to more clicks. You can find tons of inspiration online, you can analyze them and then add your creative touch to it. Innovation always leads to better results.
Final Thoughts
Amazon PPC is an effective way to generate profits as using it correctly leads to an increase in visibility of your product and more sales. It's always good to experiment and tweak your way ahead in this process but at the same time, it is good to take help from the suggestions of fellow advertisers. It is also good to utilise the softwares and the tools out there as it can save your time and help you in focussing on other parts of profit maximization.
