Amazon PPC Advertising: Diversifying your Campaigns for Maximum Reach

We’ve learned about creating a shopper-centric experience on Amazon by optimising our product listing pages, titles and keywords. Now, how can we optimise our Amazon PPC advertising campaigns to bring the shoppers to us? It’s important to distinguish between the different advertising campaigns, their objectives, and methods for optimising efficiency.

This article is part 2 (of 3) of a series based on our blog post (Navigating the Amazon PPC Advertising Journey). It explains how diversifying PPC campaigns can help maximise opportunities for product and brand visibility to shoppers at all stages of the marketing funnel. Read part 1 about using Automatic SP campaigns to maximise the reach of your brand and part 3 about optimising your campaigns for long term success.

Article Summary:

• Introduction: The marketing funnel and strategy
• Sponsored Products
• Sponsored Brands
• Sponsored Display
• Recap

Applying the marketing funnel to our marketing strategy

The concept of the marketing funnel (based on the AIDA marketing model) helps to create a structured marketing strategy. This allows us to build brand awareness, put and keep the product(s) in the mind of our shoppers, and convince them to make a purchase. The final step in the funnel is to instil customer loyalty in the brand, which in turn increases conversions over time. Once we decide how much focus we want to place on branding and how much to focus on conversions, we can determine which PPC campaigns suit our purposes.

Diversifying our campaigns ensures visibility of our products and brand to shoppers at all stages of the marketing funnel.

Sponsored Products

Sponsored Products (SP) campaigns are cost-per-click (CPC) ads that show individual product listings on Amazon and Amazon-affiliated apps and websites. SP campaigns target certain keywords, products (ASINs), categories and brands to show the product ad. In the previous article in this series, we used automatic SP campaigns to see how a product performs in its new Amazon marketplace, from visibility to conversions. Armed with data, we then created manual SP campaigns using the data from the automatic SP campaigns. 77% of sellers advertise via SP campaigns.

When setting up SP campaigns, we have the option to target either keywords or products. The ads will show up on search pages (Top of Search or Rest of Search) as well as on product listing pages. They will look similar to organic search results (look for "Sponsored" at the top of the listing result).

Keyword Targeting

In keyword targeted campaigns, ads are matched with customer shopping queries. When setting up a manual keyword targeted campaign (see our previous article in this series about automatic SP campaigns), there are three options:

1. Broad match - this will reach the widest audience of all three options listed here. It will contain most of the keyword terms and can include synonyms, variations, singular/plural, and any related terms (based on the meaning of the keyword and context of advertised products). For example, if the keyword is "tea", it may match search queries like "green tea", "caffeinated beverage", "beverage", and even "drink".
2. Phrase match - the search term must contain the exact phrase or sequence of words. Phrase match can also include the plural form of the keyword.
3. Exact match - this targeting group is the most restrictive of the three targeting groups described here. For the ad to show, the search term must match exactly the keyword or sequence of words, but can also match close variations of the exact term, and plural forms as well.

We may also target branded keywords or category keywords:

• Branded keywords - directly associated with the brand of our product. By bidding on the branded keyword, we defend our brand from competitors bidding on our branded keywords as well.
• Category keywords - these can be short-tail (1-3 words long) or long-tail (3+ word combinations such as a product's full name). When applying the marketing funnel to category keyword targeting campaigns, short-tail category keywords help drive brand awareness. Product consideration and conversions can be influenced by more specific long-tail category keywords.

Product Targeting

In product targeted campaigns, advertised product(s)/brand are matched with similar or complementary products on Amazon. When setting up a product targeting SP campaign, there's the choice to target product categories, or specific products:

1. Category - grouped by similarities, such as brand, price range, ratings, or Prime shopping eligibility, for example. We might set our own category preferences, and also look at the recommended categories when creating the campaign. [note: The search terms report will also show individual ASINs that generated clicks and conversions, which can then be used for product targeting campaigns.]
2. Products - similar to the products in our ad. Based on the competitor analysis that was done before starting the campaigns, we will target the top competing products; we also can target "suggested" ASINs when creating the campaign, which is based on shopper interactions (frequently viewed, clicked and purchased together with the advertised product).

Note about applying the marketing funnel to product targeting campaigns: if the goal is to increase brand awareness, we will want to target a broad range of categories and ASINs. However, if the goal is to get the product in the mind of consumers, we will need to narrow down the category and ASIN targeting to similar categories/ASINs. If we want to maximise conversions, focus on ASIN targeting for items with high star ratings.

Negative Targeting

The extra level of control provided by the use of negative keywords and products help filter out shopping result pages that do not apply to the campaign objectives. An example of this is if we were selling power supply units for DIY computers, we would want to filter out for the tower size, platform, or even the efficiency rating of the PSU. It is recommended to use negative phrase or negative exact keyword for more precise control over the filtering feature.

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands (SB) campaigns are used by 39% of sellers primarily to help brand awareness by displaying ads that feature the logo, custom headline and multiple products. They can be used to showcase product collections, to spotlight stores, and to highlight a particular product in a video.

1. Product Collection - this can be used to promote multiple products in our collection; this can be by colour, or style, or even feature (it is recommended to choose products in the same category or with similar keywords). The ads link to a landing page, such as a storefront or a simple/custom landing page (in the case that we didn't have a storefront). These ads are visible as banners at the top and bottom of search result listing pages.
2. Store Spotlight - drive traffic to an Amazon storefront. The storefront needs to have at least 4 pages with at least 1 unique product on each page. These ads are visible as banners at the top and bottom of search result listing pages.
3. Video - feature a single product with a video. The ads are shown for select keywords, and link to the product listing page. These ads do not compete with other SB ads (product collection and stores spotlight) as they have their own placement, within a search result listing page.

SB campaigns can be set to target keywords and products, much like SP campaigns. SB video campaigns, however, are only able to target keywords.

Negative targeting for SB campaigns uses the same principles as that for SP campaigns.

Sponsored Display

Sponsored Display (SD) campaigns, available to sellers with a registered brand account, provide rich opportunities for driving brand awareness (at the upper/broad end of the marketing funnel) and to support sales on Amazon. Despite this, SD campaigns are grossly underused: only 30% of sellers use SD ads.

SD ads are extremely powerful because they touch on all stages of the marketing funnel via audience and product targeting. On Amazon, for example, SD ads can be found at checkouts showing thumbnail images of products in your browsing history. SD campaigns can also retarget customers who have visited product listing pages, following them on and off Amazon. Off Amazon sites include Google, Facebook, Netflix, and some mobile apps. By showing ads externally, the products are kept on the mind of shoppers even when they are not shopping.

When setting up SD campaigns, it is recommended to focus on the best performing products from SP and SB campaigns. This will be used to draw shoppers to the brand (brand awareness) or to remind them of well-performing products (conversions and loyalty). There are two targeting groups:

1. Product - the SD ads target shoppers actively considering similar or complementary products and categories on Amazon. The ads appear on product listing pages, shopping results pages and next to customer reviews. The ads help promote product discovery.
2. Audience - these ads are aimed at shoppers who have already visited our product listing pages, the listing pages of similar products, or any relevant category on Amazon. SD audience ads can appear on the homepage and product listing pages. They may also appear on Twitch or other third-party apps and websites where customers spend their time. The ads help engage and reengage new and existing shoppers.

Sponsored Display ads are either priced as CPC (cost-per-click) or vCPM (cost-per-1,000 viewable impressions. vCPM is used to focus on brand awareness, since it is used in campaigns aimed at increasing exposure to the brand rather than getting shoppers to click on the ads ("viewable" is measured in at least one second of visibility on a shopper's screen). The bid optimisation strategies for SD ads are:

1. Viewable impressions - ads are shown to audiences and bids are priced on a vCPM model, with the goal of expanding the reach of the brand. Bids help increase ad views. With this strategy, there will be higher viewable impressions but lower click-through-rate (CTR).
2. Page visits - ads are shown to shoppers more likely to click on an ad, therefore this strategy is aimed at driving product consideration. The bids are optimised for higher CTR.
3. Conversions - ads are shown to shoppers more likely to purchase the product. With this strategy, there will be a lower CTR than for the strategy aimed at increasing page visits. This strategy helps drive sales and create customer loyalty.

Recap

This article showed how the different manual PPC campaigns on Amazon can be used to apply to different levels of the marketing funnel. By maintaining campaign diversification, our brand reaches shoppers at all levels of the marketing funnel, and makes it harder for competitors to suppress the reach of ads.

Once we have our campaigns running, the data available via Amazon’s backend analytical tools (particularly the allows us invaluable insights into customer behaviour in our chosen marketplaces. This information helps us make data-driven decisions as we continue to refine our marketing strategy and optimise our advertising campaigns, which we cover in the last section of this article.

If you would like to know more about how we can help your brand succeed on Amazon, get in touch with us today!

Background image by Growtika for Unsplash.