Advertising on Amazon is key to launching products and getting viisibility on competitive search terms. Crucially, paid advertising is only as good as the product listing itself, which many amazon ad agencies do not cover. We are full service, for us Advertising is an integral part of our service.

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With Facebook updating its algorithm (yet again), even more brands are now leveraging the power of PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, for instance, to find their target audience. Google and PPC on social media have been around for years as they are an affordable and measurable way of getting your product in front of thousands to millions.

However, as of late, PPC Amazon marketing has really taken the online selling world by storm, giving both Google and Facebook a run for its money. If you’re not leveraging Amazon advertising in the UK in some way or the other, then you are seriously, seriously behind the curve!

Amazon marketing and Amazon advertising is absolutely the key to launching new products and gaining maximum visibility, based on the competitive search terms you’re using. Essentially, paid advertising or PPC Amazon advertising is only as good as the product you’re selling – this is something most Amazon ad agencies, in fact, do not cover.

Chris and his team, on the other hand, are a ‘full service’ Amazon marketing agency, helping you with each and every aspect of the Amazon ad platform to make you a rock star in the eyes and minds of your customers.    

We help optimise over 40+ brands across seller and vendor central

Case Study

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Here’s Where It All Starts

How to devise the best Amazon PPC Strategy in 2022

Before discussing PPC strategies for Amazon, it helps to understand what Amazon PPC is and why it’s super-important for anyone looking to be successful as an Amazon seller.

Amazon PPC is the main advertising platform the eCommerce giant has made accessible to its 3^rd party sellers, allowing them to create unique product ad campaigns where the latter are charged every time a prospect clicks through the ad to view it.

Let’s understand some of the key PPC metrics that come into play:

Advertising Cost of Sales: If you’ve ever wondered “what is ACoS” or “what is a good ACoS on Amazon”, then here’s your answer – ACoS is the percent of attributed sales spend on advertising. That’s precisely how Amazon describes it, and it couldn’t be more accurate.

The ACoS is calculated by dividing total ad spend by attributed sales. Let’s say you spend £1.5 on advertising which results in an attributed sales figure of £15; your ACoS is going to be 15% (1.5 / 15 = 0.10).

Attributed sales: This is the total product sales you generate in one week of ad clicks. Your sales data may take as much as 48 hours to populate, so it’s usually not available in the current date range, and can, in fact, be delayed to yesterday’s date range. If you go into your Campaign performance report, you can see the individual sales totals for both advertised products and other products.

Impressions: This is the total number of times your ads are displayed. After you identify impressions, it can take up to 3 days to remove any invalid impressions from the reports you generate.

Clicks: As the term implies, this is the total number of times visitors click your ad. Once you identify this metric, again, it can take up to 3 days to remove any invalid clicks from the generated reports.

Latest Amazon PPC strategies to power through 2022

Advertising on Amazon UK is proving to be a tough proposition for most sellers. But with the right Amazon advertising strategies in place, you can still make your mark in 2022:

Always work your way up with keywords

Whether you are just starting as an Amazon seller or getting ready for the next big product launch, you should launch your PPC strategy with long-tail keywords. With that said, the key thing to remember is that only after you have established success with those long-tail keywords, should you move up and target more generic and frequently-searched keywords. 

This advertising Amazon UK strategy always works – particularly for new sellers who find it challenging to compete with well-established ones in the marketplace. The problem with targeting highly searched and common keywords right from the start is that you will end up spending way too much money without getting any real exposure for your listings or the desired traffic and conversions – because these keywords come with a lot of competition and CPC.

Even if you manage to get a lot of ad impressions for your listings, the chances of making sales will be relatively low – more established sellers are strategically in a better position in the marketplace, so they will have better success with those generic keywords.

Rank optimisation through an Amazon advertising strategy for PPC

For any given keyword, this PPC strategy will help to improve both the ranking and position of your product listing with Amazon’s search engine results pages (SERPs). The general idea here is to have three unique ad campaign sets, with significantly varying bids and budgets across each set.

Start by tracking all the top keywords for your product listing and see how they are ranking on Amazon. Once you have analysed the page rank and position of the listing, implement this strategy:

Keywords that are ranking beyond page 5-6

Focus on a small handful of keywords that are converting well. This way, you can make the most of your budget by focusing on search terms that are ranking well in terms of sales but lagging behind in search results. Your bids here should be somewhat conservative.

Keywords that are ranking beyond pages 2-5

For keywords ranking on the third, fourth or fifth pages, follow a moderate PPC strategy which focuses on the best-performing keywords. Keep bidding consistently over time and look for keywords which are getting you the most sales – optimise your advertising campaigns accordingly using those keywords. As queries begin to generate more conversions, Amazon will enhance your listing’s organic ranking automatically.

Keywords that are ranking beyond pages 1-2

Finally, for all those keywords which are ranking on the first and second page, you must employ an aggressive stance. In fact, be as aggressive as you can with the bidding as you are only a few spots away from the prime positions.

Focus on keywords variations in order to boost sales. Create another campaign solely for this and set your match type phrase to incorporate as many variations as you can.

Group variations together

This will help you improve visibility and brand awareness. If there are variations of your product, they will likely be listed as child ASINs.

In this scenario, running ad campaigns individually for each variation will not be feasible – it will cut heavily into your budget and your variations may even compete among themselves for the ads. Therefore, group all your individual variations into one single package and sell it under a single unique ASIN.

Also target alternative or indirect keywords

One of the less common ways of positioning your product effectively on Amazon has to do with the way it is presented to your target audience.

For example, if you highlight the features and benefits in a vivid way – i.e. in a way that’s creative, engaging and compelling – then you will make significant gains as a result. More importantly, however, it will give you an edge if you target indirect/alternative keywords in your PPC ad strategy – people often turn to Amazon to find solutions rather than specific products. They are not sure themselves about what they need until they come across a product which fulfils their criteria for “the solution”.

Therefore, you’d want to identify specific solutions your product addresses – be sure to target this in your Amazon Sponsored Products as well.

Target your own products

This somewhat advanced Amazon advertising strategy is an ingenious one to help you get more exposure – in fact, many Amazon marketing services are either not aware of it or don’t share it with their clients!

Product Targeting ads, a beta feature within Amazon, allows you to target your audience through specific products and categories. It’s kind of like Product Display ads, but with more control. The idea here is to target specific ASINs so that your ads display on their pages.

Initially, we’d recommend starting with just one or two products for the ads. Run campaigns for a couple of weeks at least and then see your Amazon advertising reports to gain insight into your ROI. If results are positive, then you should definitely run more ads like these for your products                              

Understand your audience’s buying behaviour

One of the key deciding factors of your ad campaigns’ success is understanding where your target audience is coming from. Once you understand what the demographic is all about, you can come up with a PPC strategy that helps you convert.

So, for instance, if your product is designed to attract someone in the 20-35 age group, then you may want to run your ad campaigns during the evening/night hours when your audience is mostly likely to be browsing around on their phones. But if you’re selling to at-home mums and dads, you should run your campaigns in the noon.

We are a PPC management agency that can help you execute all the above and much more. Our Amazon marketing services and tailored ecommerce consultancy are designed to put you ahead of your competitors. A successful Amazon advertising strategy starts with a free initial consultation!

What is a good ACoS on Amazon

Amazon ad costs are governed by multiple factors, such as your product category, the keywords you want to target, and of course, how well-optimised your products are, as well as how well they are able to convert.

We usually advise our clients to start out on a low amount per ad group – £10 per day – which typically consists of a singular product or product variation. My team and I then monitor the data consistently, with the intention of meeting the ROI targets you define and keeping the ACoS as low as possible – any number between 8% and 24% is considered “good”. Want to learn more about how PPC costs work? Check out our blog on the true cost of Amazon ads.

RoAS vs. ACoS – Which one is better? How to calculate?

With the online advertising landscape getting trickier, sellers need to understand how PPC campaigns work on different platforms as the costs can very significantly.

RoAS (Return of Ad Spend) is used by Google and it is needed to evaluate how effective your marketing campaigns are when selling online. Amazon uses ACoS, which many sellers, vendors and advertisers are already familiar with.

While Google uses metrics like ‘All conversions/cost’ or ‘conversions/cost’ to define RoAS, Amazon uses ACoS to measure the performance of Sponsored product ads.

Let’s break it down it terms of calculation:

RoAS

If you generate £100 in sales from an advertising spend of £25, then your return on ad spend is 4X.

So, if you spend £10 and make £100 in sales, your RoAS is going to be 10X. Spend £50 and make £100 in sales, it would be 2X, and so on.

ACoS

Now, let’s say you generate £150 in revenue from advertising with an ad campaign budget of £40, your ACoS would be 26.6% (40 / 150 * 100).

Therefore, if you spend £10 and make £100 in sales, your ACoS will be 10%.

Want to learn more about Amazon advertising management and leverage the power of Amazon PPC? We’re only a phone call away.

Some Of Our Amazon PPC Clients

Some Other Relevant Articles From Our Blog:

• The True Cost of Amazon Ads
• What is Amazon Marketing Stream and how does it improve RoAS?
• How to Increase Sales on Amazon in 2023