From Awareness to Purchase, every phase of the Customer Buying Cycle is an opportunity to convert potential customers into buyers. Sponsored Display Ads have the power to engage online shoppers at multiple stages of their buying journey.
When sellers gain the attention of online shoppers at the right time, they can experience significant changes in the abandonment and conversion rates for their products.
Sponsored Display Ads can be used to generate incremental product and brand awareness, drive middle-of-the-funnel consideration, and ultimately leading to conversions by showcasing a seller’s products to new and relevant audiences, both on and off Amazon.
In Part 2 of How to Use Sponsored Display Ads to Attract Highly-Qualified Buyers, we will be looking at how to use Sponsored Display Ads to scale your Amazon business.
Please read Part 1 of this series if you haven't done so previously. Part 1 explains the basics of how Sponsored Display Ads work, the different customer targeting options available to sellers, and how to leverage the power of this type of Amazon advertising to gain new customers and increase profits.
Using Views Retargeting to Scale
An effective way to scale your Amazon business when using Sponsored Display Ads is to use the Views Retargeting feature. Views Retargeting enables you to reach out to high-intent audiences who have viewed your listings within the last 30 days, but who did not purchase the advertised item or items.
These retargeting ads target those people, focusing on the ones with the highest purchase intent, and entice them back to follow through.
Keep in mind that these retargeting ads are following these highly-qualified buyers both on and off of Amazon. Think of Views Retargeting Ads as a pop-up reminder. A reminder that follows your potential customers everywhere on the internet, keeping your products fresh in their minds. Wherever they navigate to, your products will show up, softly whispering in their ears, “buy me.”
Views Retargeting Ads have prominent placement by Amazon, giving these ads good visibility to high-intent audiences. Also, you will only be charged when a potential customer clicks your ad, and Amazon will adjust your bid up or down depending on the likelihood of a conversion.
For these types of audiences, however, it's a sound strategy to place higher bids because these highly-qualified prospects are already familiar with your products and brand.
Utilizing Converted ASINs to Scale
This scaling strategy is accomplished by taking all of the ASINs that you harvest from your Search Term Reports (Sponsored Products) and identifying those ASINs that have converted well (multiple orders and good ACoS). These will be placed into Sponsored Display Ad campaigns. It's recommended that you should wait until an ASIN has a minimum of two sales before using it in a Sponsored Display campaign.
Product detail pages are prime real estate for sellers. Placing an ad directly on the product page of your competitor is a great way to ethically steal market share and increase your sales in order to scale.
Once created, your ads will appear in premium locations (below the Buy box, across from customer reviews, search results pages, or on the far-right side of product listings). Like any other type of ad campaign, be sure to give it adequate time to optimize. You should start your bids relatively low initially, but if you have a good ACoS, begin to uncap them, in order to secure these placements.
Don’t forget to…
Track Important Analytics (ACoS, ROAS, Conversion Rate)
Leveraging the right analytics allows you to identify and measure the results of each campaign, ad group, or individual ad, so that you can make accurate data-driven decisions about your Amazon advertising.
Use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to evaluate your success at reaching the targets that go hand-in-hand with scaling.
To successfully scale, you should track your...
- ACoS – Advertising Cost of Sales is a metric that guides your Amazon advertising strategy. It is a percentage that determines how you bid. How to calculate ACoS: ACoS = Ad Spend/ Sales
- ROAS – (Return On Ad Spend), helps you determine if an Amazon PPC ad is worth the investment and gives you a measure by which you can fine-tune your PPC strategy so that your campaigns become more profitable. How to calculate ROAS: ROAS = Sales / Ad Spend
- Conversion Rate – conversion rate is the percentage of online shoppers who have clicked on your Ad and moved on to buy your product. How to calculate Conversion rate = Number of Orders / Number of Visits
These analytics show you the amount you spend on PPC ads in relation to the revenue that you generate from those ads, helping you to scale more efficiently.
Sponsored Display Ads and Brand Loyalty
Sponsored Display Ads can be leveraged to protect your brand and to keep customers loyal to it.
Rather than pursuing new and difficult to reach online shoppers, your time may be better served by focusing on the engagement and retention of your existing customer base. You'll spend far less to retain existing customers, than to acquire new ones. Also, returning customers generally spend more than new customers because they are already familiar with your brand and trust the quality of your products.
Sponsored Display Ads can also be used to highlight additional products that can be bundled by online shoppers. Use your Brand Analytic reports (Market Basket Analysis) to identify your popular selling products that complement each other. Target those ASINs so that they show up together, taking up valuable space on your listing, protecting it from competitors with similar products. Doing so will open opportunities for cross-selling or upselling, while increasing the average cart value.
Amazon Sponsored Display Ads are a great way to do something that was not possible until recently…retargeting to capture lost sales. So it seems like a no-brainer to test out and see how it works for your products. Remember, early adapters usually reap the rewards (higher revenues) while others sit on the sidelines watching.
But unlike other types of Amazon advertising campaigns, it requires skill to manage these campaigns. Although Sponsored Display Ads are a great way to spread brand awareness, they can cost you a lot in Ad Spend, if the campaigns are not managed properly.
If you’re looking for help in developing and managing an advanced Amazon advertising strategy, consider working with the experts at Entourage Management Services. The EMS team takes a holistic approach to scaling Amazon businesses and helping brands become household names.
Entourage: Software to Scale Amazon Ads and Results Driven Management.
