Beginners PPC Guide for Amateurs & Expert PPC Tips for Pro Sellers

Amazon PPC Ads are without any doubt the most efficient way to promote your listing on Amazon. Since 2012, it has helped many sellers boost their product visibility and traffic on the detail page. If executed the right way, you too can skyrocket your conversion rates and sales. We have outlined all the basic information as well as the pro tips that can help you juice profits from your private label products on FBA.

Here’s a quick walkthrough of what we have covered in this article:

• Types of PPC Ads And Eligibility Criteria

• How Does Amazon PPC Work?

• Common PPC Terminologies

• Factors Affecting PPC Ad Placement

• Preparation To Make Before Starting PPC Campaigns

• How To Calculate Your Ideal ACOS?

• Types Of Campaigns Sellers Should Have – Suggested By Our PPC Expert

• Campaign Optimization

• Amazon PPC FAQs

PPC Ad Types & Its Eligibility Criteria:

PPC Ads can be classified into two types:

1) Sponsored Product Ads (Available to Sellers & Vendors):

This keyword-based ad type is typically displayed amongst organic search results. They work best when you have done your homework with keyword research. The only eligibility criteria required is the buy box. If you have a buy box, you can start making the campaigns right away.

There are various types of campaigns in Sponsored Product Ads:

• Automatic Campaign: Here Amazon does all the work. All sellers have to do is enter a campaign name, select a product, add start date and the budget. Amazon will browse through your product title, bullet points, description and backend search terms to find relevant keywords. Automatic campaigns are an excellent way to start PPC ads and to discover new long tail keywords.• Manual Campaign: In manual campaigns, sellers can have more control over the working of the campaign. To get started with manual campaigns, select a product, add your keywords or target a product, set bids and allocate a budget. Sellers can fine-tune their campaign settings to target keywords, categories or individual products.

o Keyword targeting: You can add all the keywords for which you want your product to be displayed.o Product Display Ads A.K.A Product Targeting: They are designed to be a self-service option where sellers can choose the ASIN they want their ad to be displayed on. Advertisers can target product detail pages, categories, complimentary listing and related interests:1) Category: You choose a category as a whole. Amazon will display your ad on the products that match with your chosen category. Category targeting is a great way to boost visibility and build brand awareness, especially while launching a new product. However, as your ad will be eligible for a broad reach, your ACOS will be high and conversion low, unless you have a very desirable product.2) Individual Product: You can target a competitor’s ASINs that are similar to your products as well as other products from your catalog. This much narrow and quite mature compared to former because here you can choose a product. So there are more chances of winning a sale.

Tip: Do not target any product that has more reviews or low price than your product.

3) Sponsored Brands (Available to Sellers & Vendors):

Previously known as Headline Search Ads, Sponsored Brand Ads are keyword driven PPC ads that stretch across the top of the product detail page because of which they are more visible than any other paid advertisements. They have vast possibilities for customization. Sellers can add a small tagline and target minimum three or more than three products. The landing page of this ad can be your product detail page or brand page (storefront). The eligibility criteria required for Sponsored Brands is Brand Registry 2.0.

How Does Amazon PPC Work?

People don’t visit Amazon to window shop; they are more than willing to make a purchase. So it is apparent that it gets millions of serious searches every day. When they type a search query, Amazon will fetch hundreds of product. Obviously, not all the results are organic, some of the sellers are “paying” to get amongst the organic results and sometimes even above the organic results. They are called sponsored ads or paid results.

The concept of Amazon sponsored product ads is pretty simple and quite similar to Google’s advertisement system. It is based on keywords and auctions. The seller bids a certain amount on a keyword for which they want their ad to be displayed. The one who has bid the highest amount will be on the top of the search results; the second highest position will appear in the second position and so on. As the name suggests, sellers will pay only when a customer clicks on their ad.

Common PPC Terminologies Sellers Should Know:

• ACOS: ACOS stands for an average cost of sales. It is the percentage of how much you spend on ads in comparison with total advertised sales achieved. For example, if your total spend was $4 and it resulted in $20 attributed sales then ACOS would be 20%.• Keyword Bid: Maximum cost you are willing to pay when someone clicks on your ad. Manual campaigns allow you to change the bid on every keyword. While in an automatic campaign you will have to specify the bid for the whole ad group. The default bid will be the cost-per-click for every ad from the ad group.• Adjust Bids By Placement: Amazon allows advertisers to set placement bid adjustment for top of search page and product page placements. Bid adjustment can range up to zero to 900%.•Impressions: It stands for the number of times your ad was displayed when a customer enters a search query that matches the keyword you have added in the campaign. Sellers will have to just pay for a click; there is no cost for impressions.•Clicks: The number of times shoppers have clicked on your ad to view the complete detail page.• CTR: Expanded as Click-through Rate, it is the ratio of impressions versus the clicks. In simple words, it determines the number of times your advertisement was clicked by a shopper when your ad was displayed.•CPC: CPC or Cost-per-click means the average amount you paid for each click on an ad.•Conversion Rates: The percentage of sales you get in comparison to the number of clicks. So it means the number of shoppers who visited your product detail page versus the number of shoppers who actually purchased your product.• Budget: Amount of dollars you are willing to spend on a campaign. This amount will be the maximum amount you are willing to spend, not the amount you will actually spend on your campaigns.• Dynamic Bidding: Sellers can choose from any of the below three options while setting a bid:o Dynamic Bids – Down Only: Amazon will automatically reduce the bid if the search query entered by the customer is not very relevant or not likely to perform well.o Dynamic Bids – Up & Down: Amazon will automatically increase or decrease the bid on the basis of convertibility.o Fixed Bids: Amazon will use the exact click price for any click opportunity.• Keyword Match Type:o Broad: Your ad will be reflected when a shopper searches for your keyword in any order. This is the least restrictive match type as it matches to a larger number of search terms and reaches a large audience.o Phrase: Your ad will be reflected when a shopper searches for exact search terms in the same order.o Exact: Your ad will be reflected when a customer searches for the exact keyword without any word repeating in the search query.Match TypeKeywordAd will be displayed forAd will not be displayed forBroadRunning ShoesRunning shoes, men’s running shoes, shoes for running, buy running shoesSandals, loafers, walking shoes, sports shoesPhraseRunning ShoesBlack running shoes, running shoes on discount, best running shoesShoes for men, shoes for running, running waterproof shoesExactRunning ShoesRunning shoe, running shoes

Running shoes for men, blue running shoes

Factors Affecting PPC Ad Placement:

Your ad will compete with hundreds of other ads. Amazon will decide the relevancy of ads on the below-mentioned metrics:

• Bid: The higher you bid, the more are the possibilities of your ad being displayed on the top of the first page.• Quality Factor: Ad quality also plays a key role here. The higher quality of ad you have the lesser you set a bid. Amazon mostly takes ad’s click history into account.

Before starting PPC campaigns, make sure your product has:

• Buy box

• Competitive price

• Accurate product descriptions

• Plenty of images

• Good reviews

Just think of your product description page as a landing page for your brand. You want to make sure it is very informative and at the same time attractive. So don’t forget to optimize it properly before you start to bring traffic to it.

How To Calculate Your Ideal ACOS?

You will need the following data:

• Selling price: $30

• Cost of goods sold (COGS): $5

• All FBA fees: $12

• Miscellaneous costs: $4

To calculate your ideal ACOS, subtract COGS, FBA fees and miscellaneous costs from selling price.

$30 – ($5 + $12 + $4) = $9

So, you can spend up to $9 to advertise. You can calculate your ACOS threshold by dividing the total income from the selling price.

$9 / $30 = $0.30

Your ideal ACOS threshold for your PPC campaign is 30%.

Types Of Campaigns Sellers Should Have – Suggested By Our PPC Expert:

Now that you know the basics of PPC, it is time to start making campaigns. Apart from the normal product and category related campaigns, there are a few other campaign sellers should make:

• ACOS Scraping Campaign:

There are some keywords whose ACOS is very high, but we cannot remove them from the campaign because they are root keywords. What happens is that because of those keywords other keywords do not get impressions and clicks. Sellers can create a separate campaign from those keywords.

• Keyword Ranking Campaign:

Sometimes your product does not rank on the root keyword. For that, sellers can create a campaign containing only the root keyword. Increase the bid for those keywords. As they will get more impression, clicks and sale, their organic ranking will automatically increase.

• Zero Impression Campaign:

Here you can add all the keywords which are just sitting there in your campaign without any impressions or clicks. Create a separate campaign for those keywords, increase their bid and monitor the performance for a few days.

• Holiday Special Keyword Campaign:Create a separate campaign for every upcoming holiday like Christmas, Easter, Prime Day, Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and many more. Along with your normal keywords, add festival related keywords example: Christmas gift for her. Conduct thorough keyword research for the same. We have listed out the holidays on which you can make individual campaigns:

• Easter

• Mother’s Day

• Memorial Day

• Father’s Day

• Independence Day

• Labor Day

• Columbus Day

• Black Friday

• Cyber Monday

• Prime Day

• Christmas

Campaigns Have Been Created, Now What?

PPC is a living organism. It is not a set-it-and-forget-it sort of thing. You will have to monitor it daily and make changes. What works today might not work tomorrow, so you will have to implement new strategies daily. Your goal should be to spend under the budget to maintain the ACOS while increasing sales.

Campaigns can be optimized manually or via bulk upload. Bulk upload allows you to quickly and efficiently optimize hundreds of campaigns and ad groups at once. You can set filters to identify the non-performing SKUs, keywords and search terms. Bulk upload also makes it easier to change keyword bids, add new keywords or negative keywords. After you have optimized your ad groups and campaigns with bulk upload, you can move to individual optimization.

Consider Below Things While Amazon PPC Management:

• Impression

• Clicks

• Spend

• Sales

• ACOS

• CPC

• Average Suggested Bid

Things to keep in mind:

• Keep monitoring whether your ad is delivering or not

• Amazon Sponsored Products Optimization is a continuous process so keep a check on your campaigns daily or it will result in huge spends.

• Constantly monitor your performance after scaling the bids

• Do not add ASIN as your keyword

• Don’t just rely on sponsored product ads, if you are a vendor or have a brand registry, you should try for Sponsored Brands or Product Display Ad because they will have less competition

• Always keep trying new strategies - look out for opportunities, however small and try to leverage that in your PPC strategies

• Add converting search terms from search term report

• Pause non converting keywords

• Add negative keywords (negative phrase and negative exact) at campaign and ad group level

• Adjust bid by date range

• Don’t wait, be aggressive!

The Results:

Amazon PPC FAQs:

Q: When is the right time to start PPC advertising?

A: As soon as you have optimized your listing and have a two to three positive reviews, you can kick start your PPC campaigns. It is vital that you have an active listing.

Q: How long should we wait before making changes in campaigns?

A: It is recommended to wait until you have a robust statistical data on the basis of which you can make a decision to increase or decrease the bids. If you need an exact answer, then you should make changes in the campaign every second day.

Q: How many keywords should we include in the campaign?

A: You can add up to 1000 keywords in an ad group. You should add as many relevant keywords as you can because it will help Amazon better identify your product.

Q: Can we add brand keywords?

A: You can add yours and competitor’s brand keywords in your campaign, but it is not recommended. This is because customers who search on Amazon know what they want and if they are typing Nike Sports Shoes in the search bar, they won’t buy from any other brand even if your product appears on the top.

Q: Is there a delay in Amazon Ad reporting?

A: A lot of Amazon sellers get frustrated and make changes in a bid when they do not see the results right away. But the whole data is reflected after two days.

Q: Should you use Amazon’s suggested bid and keywords?

A: Amazon’s suggested bid is based on your conversion rates and overall bids set by other advertisers. You can consider Amazon’s suggested bid and even make a campaign which contains Amazon’s suggested keywords and monitor how it performs.

Q: How to name the campaign?

A: Stick to a consistent naming pattern and follow it on all of your campaigns. This will help you stay organized. Make sure it is simple and easy to remember.

Q: Does Amazon PPC influence organic ranking?

Yes. PPC can positively affect the organic ranking of your product. As the sale of your product will increase, Amazon will place it higher in the search results.

Final Word:

Amazon PPC ads are a terrific way to get traffic and sales boost, but at the same time, it is quite tricky to manage and analyze all the aspects. We are here to make things easier for you! Get expert help from Ignite Visibility's and eStore Factory’s Amazon PPC Experts. Just give us your targeted ACOS and sales and leave the rest to us.

Good luck with your PPC campaigns!