These often-overlooked strategies are simple steps that any seller can follow on a weekly or monthly basis. Following these four tips will help to assess various important aspects of your Amazon advertising to make sure you are getting the best results from it.
Tip #1 - Identify the high cost-per-click keywords.
Look for keywords that are quickly eating away your Ad Spend, without delivering sales. Consider your profit margins. Not all your products have the same profit margins. Also, take into consideration, your click to order ratio (number of clicks it takes to actually get a sale).
By knowing which keywords have a high cost-per-click, or a poor click to order ratio, sellers can minimize the risk of losing money on products that provide low profits.
Tip #2 - Review your campaign bidding strategy.
It's important to review your campaign bidding strategies because each type of strategy allows Amazon to adjust your bids in real-time according to the probability of conversion.
- Dynamic Bids, Down Only – if a click is unlikely to result in a sale, Amazon will reduce your bid by up to 100%.
- Dynamic Bids, Up and Down – if a click is likely to result in a sale, Amazon will increase your bid by up to 100%. If a click is less likely to convert, Amazon will reduce your bid by up to 100%.
- Fixed Bid – Your default bid remains the same, regardless of the likelihood of conversion.
Remember, if your campaigns are new, you’ll need to set higher bids to gain search history. Without it, Amazon will give preference to more senior competitor ad campaigns that have proven to generate sales.
Many sellers start with Fixed Bid, especially for product launch campaigns.
As more data is collected over time, you can switch to Dynamic Bids, Down only, and Dynamic Bids, Up and Down, strategies where Amazon will change your bid based upon the likelihood of a conversion.
When using Dynamic Bids, Up and Down, make sure that the campaign that you are applying this strategy to is performing well. Keep in mind that Amazon can increase your bid by up to 100%, making a poorly performing campaign that's getting few conversions very expensive.
Tip #3 - Review your Negatives.
Negative Keywords are the keywords that help improve the performance of PPC campaigns by refining targeting to a more relevant audience by preventing certain keywords from driving irrelevant traffic to the listing. If used properly, Negative keywords can help save money and increase conversions by showing your ads to more qualified users.
When using a software tool that automatically eliminates a search term based upon the criteria you have outlined (i.e. number of clicks without a sale), it's important to go back and look at what your automation tool has done.
Has it removed a search term that is relevant?
As a listing matures, it has more sales, reviews, and velocity, causing keywords that weren't initially working to now improve in performance. Automation, if left unchecked, may sometimes remove relevant keywords and search terms because advertising results suffered from a listing that was too new.
Also examine your Negative Phrase Match items. Have they been over-utilized? Are relevant search terms and keywords being dropped?
Reviewing your Negatives permits you to retest to confirm what's currently working best.
Tip #4 - examine your Search Term Report to identify those search terms that have resulted in a sale, for SEO purposes.
Download your Search Term Report to identify which keyword searches were responsible for retrieving your ads. Newer campaigns may require more frequent analysis to build a solid foundation and drive results.
As your SKU/listing matures, it will provide new data which can guide you in further optimizing your listings so that they are performing at their peak (better SEO results and more organic sales.)
Find the orders that have multiple sales. Make sure that the related search terms are located in the prominent parts of your listing (headline, bullet-points, and backend).
Using these four tips to improve your Amazon advertising, will help you to identify the most beneficial optimizations for your campaigns. Once they are implemented, be sure to test your changes by changing one variable at a time and waiting several days to analyze results. This A/B split-testing approach will allow you to confirm the changes are indeed successful.
Most sellers start with the basics, learning as they go, adding more advanced tactics to their repertoire as time passes. The good news is that your learning curve and the time it takes to build a consistently profitable business can be significantly reduced.
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