Amazon Advertising with Premiere Creative

As Amazon Advertising consultants, Premiere Creative advises many clients on how to minimize ACoS with Amazon Advertising products. You can read more about our ACoS driven approach by reading this blog post, but generally we find that Amazon’s Sponsored Products ads are central to any Amazon Advertising strategy. There’s no doubt that Sponsored Products ads are extremely powerful tools for driving discoverability and incremental sales. But what does running one of these campaigns actually involve?

Amazon Sponsored Products ads appear in search results and on product detail pages. They are pay-per-click display ads that populate based on the keywords used in searches. Sellers using Sponsored Product ads on Amazon target their key customers by bidding against keywords. To simplify the discussion, think of bidding against keywords as a form of targeting that is either don manually (through “manual targeting) or programmatically (through automatic targeting). Manually targeting in Sponsored Product campaigns gives advertisers an increased level of control. They select the keywords, the CPC’s (cost per click), and the budgets they’re willing to allocate to each keyword (or cluster of keywords). Amazon’s automatic targeting feature bids against all keywords relevant to an advertiser’s product detail page and sets the CPC’s itself. Both manual and automatic targeting have their pros and cons, but Premiere Creative’s approach to Amazon Sponsored Product ads involves using both. We find this tactic leaves no stone unturned in the process of keyword bidding.

Keyword match types are another important consideration when it comes Amazon Sponsored Product ad campaigns. The three-keyword match types are:

1) Broad Match Keywords:

Broad match keywords allow Amazon Advertising’s technology to display your ad whenever a specific keyword is searched. If you place a broad match bid against the term “red shoes,”  your ad will appear whenever someone includes the phrase “red shoes” in their search. A person could write “I hate red shoes” into the search bar, and your ad will still be triggered. This match type also accounts for misspellings, and does not account for word order. I.e. if someone searches for “read shoes” or “shoes that are red,” your ad will still trigger.

2) Phrase Match:

Phrase match keywords allow your ad to show up when people include a specific phrase in a search. Word order is an important consideration here. If you run digital marketing for the New York Yankees and you’re trying to bid on the phrase “Yankees Cap,” your ad will show up when someone searches “Snapback Yankees Cap,” Fitted Yankees Cap,” or “Yankees Cap for kids.” However, your ad will not be triggered if someone searches “Yankees hat” or “baseball hat new york yankies.”

3) Exact Match:

This one is a bit self-explanatory. Exact match is the most restrictive keyword type in that it only allows Amazon Advertising to populate your Amazon Sponsored Product ad when someone searches the phrase on which you’ve bid exactly. Going back to the Yankees example, if did an exact match bid on the phrase “Yankees Hat,” your  ad would only populate for those users who searched “Yankees Hat” verbatim.

Now that you understand the differences between automatic targeting, manual targeting, and keyword match types, where do you start with planning? You can go to 10 different digital marketing agencies and get 10 different answers. At Premiere Creative, our team of Amazon Advertising consultants begins by running automatically targeted Sponsored Product campaigns, especially if the client is selling multiple products online. Amazon’s algorithms for automatic targeting make optimizations on the fly. They scan product detail pages, determine the best keywords to bid against, and continuously monitor live campaign results to make adjustments. Running an automatically targeted buy first allows you to see which keywords perform best. It will show you what works, what doesn’t work, and  provide you with ideas for expanding your keyword lists. Automatically targeted campaigns can show you a path forward. You can then use manually targeted campaigns to explore and find your own path.

Additionally, if you’re running Sponsored Product ads for multiple products at once, automatically targeting your first ad buys will show you which ones are your top performers. Once you have those insights, it will be easier to allocate budget effectively once you implement manual targeting.

To sum up, Amazon Sponsored Product ads are incredible for driving incremental sales, increasing the discoverability of your Buy Box offers, and driving up ROAS while decreasing ACoS. It offers both automatic and manual keyword bidding that Premiere uses in tandem to produce optimal media outcomes. The key for manual bidding is doing thorough keyword research and bidding on a combination of high and low volume keywords. The key for automatic bidding is ensuring your product detail pages are as thoroughly filled out as possible. Premiere Creative’s team of digital marketing experts has up-to-the-minute experience running efficient, high ROI Amazon Sponsored Product campaigns for many eCommerce clients.

If you think your business will benefit from an Amazon Sponsored Product campaign, contact Premiere Creative today.