Background
Path Interactive is a performance-driven digital marketing agency with offices in New York City and Nashville. The team provides deep expertise in a full suite of results-oriented marketing services including PPC management, SEO, social media and display/digital media advertising. Clients include well-known brands such as the WWE, Jackson Hewitt, and Scholastic.
We’ve saved an enormous amount of time by trusting Marin to do the daily optimization of bid assignments for our Sponsored Product campaigns. Finding the right amount of volume while keeping a consistent KPI can be a challenge, but the algorithm accomplishes this quite clearly. Marin bidding has allowed us to focus on strategic testing and growth initiatives, which makes us really excited heading into 2019.
Challenge
The Path Interactive team began managing their client’s Amazon Advertising campaigns in the spring of 2018. By this time, Amazon had emerged as an ideal marketplace to showcase their superstar apparel and memorabilia merchandise, and the client wanted dedicated, knowledgeable management of its Amazon account. Path found Sponsored Products to be particularly successful and sought a way to automate management and thus generate incremental returns with minute, algorithmic bidding.
As the busy shopping season approached, Path looked for a way to drive better results with less of a daily hands-on workload for the team. More specifically, the challenge was to tighten up the efficiency of manual campaigns so they could reinvest into expansion and growth leveraging automatic campaigns.
Solution
To get started, the team assessed the historical performance of the branded Sponsored Product keywords and set a target to improve efficiency. Path enlisted the support of Marin Software to apply machine learning to the bidding initiative. Marin Software provides enterprise marketing software for advertisers and agencies to integrate, align, and amplify their digital advertising spend across the web and mobile devices. Marin Software offers a unified SaaS ad management platform for search, social, and eCommerce advertising.
Marin’s algorithm quickly identified areas to rightsize spend across the portfolio, achieving this with thousands of bid changes each day to zero in on the right bids, yet still critically maintain a share of voice.
Path additionally leveraged boost functionality to account for seasonal volatility and budget pacing challenges across the entire folder of keywords. This proved to be an easy and beneficial way to layer human control on top of machine learning and proactively control the algorithm.
Results
Marin bidding on Sponsored Products launched and proved immediately impactful. Looking at a period over the period comparison, revenue was 63% higher in the three week period after bidding activation compared to the three week period prior.
Positive and negative boosts were applied towards the end of the month to adjust for spend pacing. These inputs allowed the algorithm to focus on the overall ACoS target, yet still guide volume to make sure performance KPIs were attained.
Amazon is a colossal marketplace where brands fight to capture the attention of millions of potential customers. To beat fierce competition, brands must go beyond the basics.
But first, lets make sure all the basics are covered. Then, read on to learn advanced tips and tactics that will help your Amazon Ads and Listings stand out.
Understanding Amazon Ad formats
There are three main Amazon ad formats - Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display. Let’s review each ad type’s traits and use cases.
Sponsored Products
Sponsored Product is the most widely used advertising format on Amazon. These ads drive targeted traffic to your product listings by showcasing your product on the results page for specific search terms that you select as keywords. The sponsored ads appear alongside the organic search results, making this ad type feel very native to the user’s shopping experience. Shoppers may not even notice they’re clicking on an ad.
Sponsored Brands
Sponsored Brand Ads allow you to showcase your brand and multiple products in a single ad. These are ideal for top-of-the-funnel advertising and are a great way to increase brand awareness. The downside is that these ads feel less organic to users and more like traditional ads, which may lead them to be biased against clicking on them. When running sponsored brand campaigns, it’s important to include eye-catching images or videos that will draw attention immediately.
Sponsored Display
The unique thing about Sponsored Display Ads is that you can use them to target shoppers regardless of where they decide to shop — on or off Amazon. Through machine-learning and multi-format creatives, you can reach your audience on Amazon and across thousands of other websites and apps.
Instead of focusing on keywords, these ads target users based on their shopping habits. Amazon claims that sellers who use these types of ads see an average of 33.9% more impressions, 3.6% more detail page views, and 2.6% more new-to-brand customers. Note those stats are for customers who run sponsored display campaigns alongside Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand campaigns. So don’t rely just on one ad format, try all three and watch them work together!
Amazon Ads for non-retail brands
Amazon sellers are considered ‘endemic’ advertisers - meaning they run ads on Amazon to sell products on Amazon. But Amazon advertising isn’t just for retailers anymore! Non-endemic brands like banks, insurance companies, and streaming services now have the opportunity to advertise to Amazon’s massive audience. While endemic ads target customers who are actively shopping on the platform, non-endemic ads are focused on driving traffic to a website rather than an Amazon store.
This means that even if you don't sell on Amazon, you can still run display ads through Amazon's Demand-Side Platform (DSP), which we'll talk more about later.
Which ad type should I choose?
According to Junglescout, Sponsored brand campaigns see the highest average ROAS, followed by Sponsored Products, then Sponsored Display. It’s best to run all three ad types alongside one another, but if you’re just getting started, we recommend starting with Sponsored Brand campaigns if your goal is to improve brand awareness or starting with Sponsored Product campaigns if your goal is to drive sales.
The basics of optimizing Amazon Ads
Make sure that you have all of these basic optimizations covered before you move on to more advanced tactics. We’ll discuss those in the next section.
1. Strategically select keywords
Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant search terms that potential customers are using to find products similar to yours. Marketing automation tools like Marin can automate keyword research for you by crawling the search terms that past purchasers have used to get to you product page and suggesting terms that drive a high volume of clicks to be added as keywords. The ‘DIY’ method is to use the Amazon search bar for keyword research. Simply type your core keywords into the search bar and review the queries it autocompletes. Add all relevant query variations as target keywords. You can do the same thing with the Google search bar too.
It's also important to understand the different types of Amazon Keywords:
Frontend Keywords: Keywords that are included in the copy for the product listing, i.e. any key terms in your product title and description. Frontend keyword optimization is the reason that products on Amazon aren’t called simple names like “Almay Lip Gloss”, but rather “Almay Hydrating Lip Gloss, Soft Natural Colors, Prebiotic Complex, Hyaluronic Filling-Sphere Technology, 200 Rose Glow, 0.1 fl oz.” Including all those keywords in your product name may not look cute, but it helps Amazon’s algorithm understand which search queries to return your products for.
Backend Keywords: These are the keywords that you add to your campaign in Amazon Ads Manager. They won’t be visible to customers but will guide the algorithm on which search queries to serve your ads on.
Be sure to incorporate as many frontend keywords as possible in your product listing, and feature the most important ones first. Your list of backend keywords should be more robust and contain all target keywords you’ve gathered through your research.
2. Fine-tune your product listings
Make sure your copy is optimized for both search engines and potential customers. To showcase your product's features and benefits, write compelling product titles, detailed and informative descriptions, and provide high-quality images. A well-optimized listing not only improves your organic search ranking but also increases the likelihood of converting clicks into sales.
Make sure you’re adhering to Amazon’s product title requirements, listed here. Key takeaways are:
- Titles should be up to 80 characters
- Avoid using all-caps
- Avoid promotional phrases like ‘half-off’ or ‘free shipping’
- Use numerals, for example use 4 instead of four
- Avoid listing size and color variations
Failing to follow these guidelines may lead Amazon to suppress your listing.
When it comes to descriptions, Amazon highly recommends using bullet points to highlight your product’s top 5 features. Amazon Sellers can add 5 bullet points, while Amazon Vendors are able to add up to 10. Start by listing the most important feature as your first bullet point, then move on to the second most important, and so on. Unlike titles, you should prioritize clarity over including lots of keywords when writing your bullet points. We recommend reviewing Amazon’s guide to writing good bullet points.
3. Monitor performance metrics
Track key performance metrics such as conversion rate, click-through rate (CTR), and advertising cost of sales (ACoS) regularly to gauge the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. Use this data to identify areas for improvement and optimize your ad performance over time. Check out our detailed overview of key metrics and tools for measuring the ROI of e-commerce campaigns for more info.
4. Utilize audience targeting
Amazon Audiences are ready-made targeting groups that you can serve ads to with just a few clicks. Apply audience targets in addition to your target keywords for precise targeting. You can target four types of audiences:
In-market: Users who have recently been shopping for products similar to yours.
Lifestyle: Audiences built based on an aggregate of shopping and viewing behaviors across Amazon, Prime Video, Twitch and more. Amazon aggregates this data and sorts users into groups like “makeup enthusiasts” or “foodies”.
Interest: Interest audiences are built based on browsing and buying behavior, similar to Lifestyle segments, but are more specific, like “interested in Asian food” or “interested in wedding makeup.”
Life events: These are groups of people that are about to experience a life event, like going on vacation or moving.
Test targeting different types of audiences to discover which are most engaged with your brand.
5. Run sales and promotions
To stand out in Amazon search results, offer promotions, discounts, and exclusive deals. Amazon's Coupons and Lightning Deals make it easy to run promotions. Not only are the coupons and deals displayed in your product listing, your product can also be listed on the Amazon Coupons page and deals page giving it visibility to users who weren’t even searching for it.
5 Advanced tips for Amazon Advertising
Once you've got the basics covered, try these advanced tips and tactics to elevate your Amazon advertising game.
Tip #1: Experiment with video ads
Customers are gravitating towards video more than ever. Using product demonstrations, customer testimonials, and lifestyle clips in your ads is a great way to convey your brand message and connect with your target audience. Video is especially important for Sponsored Brand campaigns, which enable you to showcase a video and a few featured products right on the search results page. You can find Amazon’s detailed guide to creating Sponsored Brands video ads here.
Tip #2: Run Ads for Amazon on Search and Social
If you’ve seen success selling on Amazon, consider advertising your Amazon store on other channels, like paid search and paid social. For example, many retailers include a sitelink to their Amazon Store in their paid search ads, with copy like “Buy on Amazon”. That way, the majority paid search traffic is still being driven to their website, but searchers have the option to buy on Amazon too. Having the option to order a product on Amazon may push users over the purchasing threshold since they’re familiar with the Amazon user experience and its quick purchasing process. If the product is available for Prime delivery, that’s another needle-mover.
It’s important to remember that if you do this while using Amazon’s tracking system, none of the conversions driven by your paid search campaigns will be attributed to paid search. Marin has built a cross-channel tracking solution to solve this problem. Click here to learn about Amazon Attribution.
Tip #3: Optimize for mobile
With an increasing number of shoppers browsing and purchasing on mobile devices, you want to be sure your Amazon listings and ads are optimized for mobile. Product titles have a 200 character limit on desktop, but only 70 characters will show on mobile, so be sure that all important info like brand name, product type, and key features are covered in the first 70 characters of your product title.
It’s also important to optimize the images on your product page for mobile. While you’re able to add up to nine images, only the first 7 images will be displayed on mobile, so choose those early images wisely.
Lastly, remember that mobile screens offer less space to describe your product. On mobile, only the product name, brand, and images show ‘above the fold’, meaning users don’t have to scroll to see them. Mobile users may swipe through your images and skim over the details. Therefore, it’s valuable to showcase key selling points in one or two of the images, like in the example from Revlon below:
Tip #4: Explore Amazon DSP
If your goal is to expand your reach and attract new customers, Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform (DSP) may be the answer. It enables you to programmatically buy ads and reach new and existing audiences both on and off Amazon, all the while using Amazon’s first-party data to target users in your demographic. Ads through Amazon DSP will serve on Amazon and on partner sites like Twitch, IMDb, Audible and more. Hitting users with ads on the sites where they spend their time can drive them back to your Amazon store. Amazon DSP offers unique options for ad types and targeting, and you can learn more about them in our Guide to Amazon DSP.
Tip #5: Consider a third-party bidding solution
Leverage advanced optimization techniques not available through Amazon's native advertising platform with a third party bidding tool. Whether you're looking to increase sales or drive brand awareness, bidding solutions like Marin can help you achieve your goals. Of course, Amazon offers it’s own automated bidding strategies, but many marketers struggle to hit their targets with Amazon’s solutions and turn to Marin’s tried and true algorithms. Plus, since Marin houses all your front and backend marketing data, its algorithms often have access to conversion, revenue, and targeting data that Amazon does not. Learn how Marin’s bidding drove a 155% increase in revenue for an Amazon retailer here.
How to Thrive in the Amazon Advertising World
Like all advertising platforms, the keys to success on Amazon are staying on top of the latest trends, continuously optimizing your listings, and testing different copy and placements until you find what works for you.
If you’re finding it all a bit overwhelming, you can manage and optimize your Amazon ads alongside all your other digital marketing channels in Marin’s unified grid. MarinOne even comes with a dedicated digital marketing expert who you can consult with on strategy. If you’re not sure how to get your Amazon campaigns to hit your ROAS goals, Marin can help. Schedule a demo with our team to learn more.
