Amazon Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an advertising feature that can help you reach buyers, increase sales, raise brand awareness, and track your Amazon success.
This article can serve as your Amazon PPC guide if you’re a new seller on this e-commerce platform or if you’ve just decided to start your PPC campaign, as it will help you navigate your way through your first PPC campaign, from choosing your campaign type and keywords to reviewing your results.
What is Amazon PPC?
Vendors, sellers, agencies, and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors can use Amazon PPC to promote their products at the top of Amazon’s product detail pages and search engine results pages (SERP). You will only pay for your Amazon PPC ads when users click on them, just like any other PPC ad.
Can PPC Help Improve My Amazon Organic Rankings?
The answer is yes. Your Amazon PPC sales can have a direct impact on your product’s organic ranking in Amazon’s search results.
This is especially useful for new products that lack a sales history or have fewer page views. To increase visibility and launch sales, an Amazon PPC campaign can help drive traffic to these new products.
Three types of Amazon PPC Ads
You can create your Amazon PPC campaign in three ways:
1. Sponsored Products
Sponsored Products appear to be organic product listings. When a shopper sees your ad while browsing the search results for his or her product inquiry, he or she will not suspect that your products are sponsored.
This is also why experts estimate that Sponsored Products account for roughly 70% of your advertising sales. When shoppers click on this type of ad campaign, they are usually directed to the product detail page.
Sponsored Products allow you to promote specific products by using keywords. You can set up your campaign in two ways:
Automatic
You let Amazon do the work with an automatic campaign. You don’t have a lot of say over the ad campaign’s settings. Amazon will choose which keywords to include in your ad automatically.
These will be based on specific search terms related to your product. For new PPC advertisers, this type of campaign is recommended. You can also test which keywords will work for you this way.
Manual
You can manually select and upload the keywords and products you want to target with manual campaigns. You can do this using either your keyword research or your automated campaigns.
Essentially, use the keywords that were successful in your previous automatic campaign. You have complete control over where your ads appear in this type of campaign. You can also change the ad placements, keyword bids, and categories you want to target.
This type of targeting is ideal for sellers who are already familiar with the Amazon PPC platform. It also gives you more room to strategize.
Manual campaigns are more complex! To avoid losing a lot of money, be cautious when it comes to keyword research and Amazon ad bidding.
2. Sponsored Brands
This type of advertisement allows you to be more creative with your promotions. It’s fantastic for brand awareness campaigns! It allows you to promote your logo and upload custom images.
You can also use custom headlines and copy, as well as include multiple products on your ad at once. It also allows you to run video advertisements.
You can use Sponsored Brands to direct customers to your store page or a custom Amazon landing page. It allows you to do product and keyword targeting, but you must do so manually.
3. Display Sponsored
This ad has a cost-per-impression (CPM) and a cost-per-click (CPC) model. Proper bid management and product targeting are the best ways to succeed with Sponsored Display ads. This type of ad, formerly known as product display ads, is the most versatile type of Amazon PPC ad because it offers three targeting options:
Views
Customers who haven’t made a purchase yet but have viewed your product detail pages or similar products within the last 30 days will see your ad with this targeting option. The cost will be calculated using a CPM model.
Products
This places ads on product detail pages and other Amazon pages, as well as on the product pages of your competitors and other relevant product categories. It is a manual targeting method for product targeting.
Searches
You can show your ads to shoppers based on their search history or recent purchases in the last 90 days.
Purchases
This option allows you to show your ads to shoppers based on their recent purchases.
Why Is Targeting Necessary for Your Campaign?
Targeting your PPC campaigns can help you generate higher-quality leads, increase conversion rates, and achieve your sales goals.
There are various types of targeting available in Amazon PPC, but the most common and effective so far are:
Keyword Targeting
Sellers bid on keywords, whereas search terms are the exact search queries of shoppers. Keyword targeting is available for both Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brand advertisements.
Keyword targeting in automatic campaigns allows Amazon to select the most searched terms that it believes are relevant to your product. Similarly, manual campaigns, enables you to select, formulate, and collect keywords that you can use in your campaign to match Amazon shoppers’ search queries.
Product Targeting
You can use this targeting type to target specific brands, products (ASIN), categories, and/or product features that are related to the products you want to advertise.
This feature places your products in front of Amazon shoppers as they search for items to buy or browse product detail pages.
What are the various match types?
When you target keywords, Amazon will prompt you to select a “match type” to determine the degree of match between your keywords and the customer search terms.
Amazon offers three types of matches. These three require varying degrees of monitoring and ad targeting precision.
Broad Match
This match type contains search terms related to your keywords. For instance, if your keyword is “modern home furniture,” the broad match would include search terms containing this keyword.
Although this type has the lowest performance of the three, it provides you with a large amount of potential customer search query data based on your keyword.
Phrase Match
This type of match includes search terms that contain the same words as your chosen keyword, but in the exact order.
Exact Match
This match type includes search terms that exactly match the words in your chosen keyword. If your keyword is “modern home furniture,” the exact match keyword is also “modern home furniture.”
What Will Amazon PPC Cost?
The answer to the question of how much Amazon PPC will cost you is that it depends. Amazon allows advertisers to submit bids for their advertisements. These are the highest prices that advertisers are willing to pay for the keyword or overall campaign.
The truth is that Amazon frequently prefers the highest bidder. The average CPC ranges from $0.02 to $3.00, depending on the product category or subcategory you sell, as well as the level of competition in your specific niche because the highest bidders pay the highest CPC.
Author’s Bio:
Arishekar N is the Senior Director of Marketing and Growth at SellerApp, an e-commerce data analytics solution. He is responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of marketing strategies, as well as increasing process efficiency by executing cutting-edge Search Engine Optimization strategies at SellerApp.
Arishekar has over 10 years of experience in marketing analytics and SEO. He has worked as a Digital Specialist for the tech giant IBM and most recently as the Senior Marketing Specialist for ZioTive Technologies where he enhanced their site structure by increasing website and mobile usability. Previously, he worked as a Senior SEO Analyst for Star Group where he was responsible for managing SEO Audits and analytics.
