Amazon Sponsored Ads Tips for 2017 Christmas

This is a great time of year for online sellers and I am hoping Amazon will double your overall sales.  10 years ago when I started to learn to work with Amazon, there was hardly any talk about paid ads. It was a very good playing field and now that it has become very crowded, sponsored campaigns are not an option anymore but an essential. Very recently I have worked with this bike manufacturer and we secured some sales within a few days of creating listings. Such is the power of the Amazon sponsored Ads.

“Sponsored ads are becoming just as important on ebay and Amazon as they are with traditional Pay Per Click. Make sure you plan your campaigns properly and you manage your spend properly to make sure you maintain good profit margins.” Darren Ratcliffe, Founder at Digitl.

Here are few tips that you can implement in your Amazon account. They are no secrets but just a reminder.

#1 Start early:  It is better to start early campaigns as they will help you understand what works before anyone else. You can implement your learning for any early results. Another important thing to note is that headline search can take up to 3 days for approval. Don’t plan your campaigns late!

#2 Product content: Amazon product pages are made in a such a way that any part of the content is indexed. Invest time on getting the title, key features and description optimised. You have also got 250 characters search term opportunity which is hidden from buyers. Here’s one experiment on search terms.

Images play a huge role in conversion; get multiple images of your product. Lastly, build your product reviews with your influence. You can always send follow up email to get reviews. Here’s an automated feedback tool that you can use for this.

#3 Promotions: Plan a list of products for promotions – trial % discount and buy one get one free. If you are selling with FBA or Vendor take lighting deals opportunity – this is a fantastic way to reach more buyers in a short time.

#4 Bid Strategically: It is the busiest time of the year and everyone is working hard to get that sale. So, consider bidding higher during Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Prime Day. By this time you have a good idea of search terms that work, so, use them on manually targeted campaigns.

#5 Use Bid +: This increases your chance to win the top position in the search. It will cost you up to 50% higher but it can generate that extra sale. Only use top performing campaigns for Bid + to avoid high ACoS. Here’s a quick introduction about Bid +.

#6 Test: Test your campaigns continuously. Here are few things to test:

Sponsored Ads: Automated Ads, Product Main images

Headline Search: Logo, Tagline, and Choice of 3 products

Product Display: Logo, Tagline, Product main images

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#7 Headline Search: Avoid common mistakes on headline search to ensure your ads approval. A few things to avoid are:

-Price callouts in copy (e.g., pound/Euro value or a % discount)

-Time-sensitive copy (e.g., “Cyber Monday”)

-Unsubstantiated claims (e.g., “World’s best phone case”)

-Superlatives (e.g., “Best Seller,” “Best,” “Highest Quality, “Ultimate”)

-ALL CAPS or no capitalized first letter

-Misspellings and text errors

#8 Keyword Optimisation: Reviewing your campaigns will be an important part of your holiday campaigns. Use broad match keywords, branded terms and closely related products to target wider audience when you start your early manual campaigns.

Then use search term report to harvest most performing keyword and convert them into a phrase or exact match.  You will also have a list of performing keywords from automated campaigns search term report.

#9 Budget: Keep your budget to the level you are comfortable with. Keep a regular check to ensure your budget is not run out and keeping low-level budget can cause a lost sale.

I very much hope these will help you out. Here’s a sales chart from one of our clients. With 30% of sales coming for Amazon Sponsored Campaigns, this client takes it very seriously.