Amazon Marketing Services
Search Engine Advertising (SEA) on Amazon = Amazon Marketing Services. Amazon offers the AMS, a powerful advertising platform that works similarly to Google Adwords. The different advertising models on Amazon are based on click rate bidding and relevance evaluation. You want to raise your sales or establish a brand awareness? This is possible with AMS, but you should know how it works.
An advertising instrument: AMS
With Amazon Marketing Services, you can adopt three different advertising models. Every single advertising form offers different possibilities for the sales approach and adopted strategies.
Sponsored Brands (SB)
The Sponsored Brands are based on keywords and are shown directly above Amazon’s search results.
Sponsored Products (SPA)
The Sponsored Products are based on keywords and are shown either at the top or at the bottom within the search results.
Sponsored Display (SD)
The Sponsored Display are based on a special targeting, either focused on interests or products and shown in the product detail page on Amazon.
Headline Search Ads
Die Sponsored Brands (SB) appear above the Sponsored Products articles and the organic search results. Both vendors and sellers can generate their own Sponsored Brand Ads. Here, you can use your own picture and advertising slogan. These advertisement contents will be examined by Amazon, in order to avoid misspellings and statements such as “this is the best product at the market”: in case of policy violations, they will be refused. You should take into account that this test can last up to 72 hours.
Sponsored Brands: how to use them
The Sponsored Brands are particularly suitable for creating a brand awareness and excel, thanks to a targeted designation through advertising slogans. In addition to the free selectable picture on the left side and the slogan, you have to choose at least three further products that will be shown on the right side next to the slogan. When a potential buyer clicks on the Ad, he will be transferred either to an individual search result page, to a kind of product landing page or to the relative Amazon shop.
Headline Search Ads: its peculiarities
The keyword selection for the HAS campaign is particularly important. Thanks to the prominent position on the top of Amazon’s search result page, attention and clicks will result. If less relevant keywords are employed, the campaign becomes quickly unprofitable.
Sponsored Display Ads
Sponsored Ads (SD) are shown under or next to the buy box. You can add to this kind of Ad a logo and an advertising text. The SD are manually examined by Amazon staff (up to 72 hours could be needed for the processing time). For this reason, you should consider this before when you create a campaign.
Sponsored Display Ads: how to use them
This kind of advertising will be shown considerably afterward in the customer journey, since it has a different position on the product detail page than the Sponsored Brands. The potential client is already interested for a specific product and becomes amongst other things under the buy box a SD. If the shown product seems to the potential buyer better or more pertinent, he/she will click on it.
Sponsored Display Ads – peculiarities
With the SD it is possible to create advertisements according to the interest group, independently from the ongoing search or from the product detail page. For this purpose, Amazon monitors the purchase history and the search behavior of customers. This precise procedure is not known yet.
Sponsored Products
Sponsored Products (SPA / SPO) are probably more commonly used than the other two marketing actions mentioned above. Also this method is available for normal sellers. An access to the AMS enables the management of the Sponsored Products campaigns together with the other two marketing methods in a single place. PPC campaigns that have been already created, cannot be taken from the seller central: they have to be newly generated.
Sponsored Products – how to use them
Amazon products will be shown either above or under the organic search results, according to their relevance or performance. The SPO are the most effective forms of advertising on Amazon, since you can purposeful offer definite keywords and key sentences. With this AMS advertising mean, through the activation of automatic campaign and explicit elimination of keywords (negative keywords), there are many possibilities to drive the product search traffic based on clicks to our own products.
Sponsored Products – peculiarities
Sponsored Products are not exclusively obtainable through the Amazon Advertising. The PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising mean is available, as well as the SB, for the Amazon sellers via Seller Central. The SPOs are almost identic and can be created for every product. On the one hand, with SDs also products of other vendors can be presented; on the other hand, sellers with Sponsored Products can exclusively present their own article.
Amazon Pages
If you want to generate Amazon landing pages, the process is similar to the one of A+ Content: pages can be created very quickly and easily through klick building blocks.
With Amazon Pages (AP) you can create a landing page with building block elements. Here, you can create an individual page in line with the Amazon Marketing Services and integrate its purposeful texts, pictures or videos too. Moreover, you can add push-buttons with links to social media like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest & Twitter.
In connection to the Headline Search Ad, you can use this page in order to lead purposeful the interested people to this landing page and highlight your products and their advantages in an incisive way. Moreover, the potential buyer remains on Amazon and won’t be transferred anywhere else, therefore an uncomplicated purchase experience is guaranteed.
Purposes of Amazon Marketing Services campaigns
The several advertisement categories of the AMS let you pursue different strategies. For example, the following marketing strategies are adoptable:
How to increase the market share
with Amazon Marketing Services
- Keywords selection: possess the competitor’s keywords
- Bidding: aggressive bid strategies
- Indicator of success: growing rate of the advertisement impressions to the reference period
- Suitable types of advertisement: SP, PDA, HSA
How to increase sales
with Amazon Marketing Services
- Keywords selection: automatic + manual campaigns
- Bidding: aggressive bid strategy
- Indicator of success: sales increase
- Suitable types of advertisement: SP, HSA
How to launch a product
with Amazon Marketing Services
- Keywords selection: automatic + manual campaigns
- Bidding: aggressive bid strategy
- Indicator of success: keyword ranking, Amazon bestseller rank
- Suitable types of advertisement: SP, HSA
How to increase the brand awareness
with Amazon Marketing Services
- Keywords selection: niche relevant keywords + competitor
- Bidding: low / increasing bid strategy
- Indicator of success: impressions and clicks
- Suitable types of advertisement: PDA, HSA
Aims of Amazon Marketing Services campaigns
A crucial factor for successful and profitable AMS campaigns, are the products: that is, the optimization rate of their own listings. The motto “the more, the better” here does not count, since without a purposeful product optimization, in the last resort a precious advertising budget will be simply wasted. The following steps should be always carried out before starting an AMS campaign:
Product optimization: the conversion rate
In order to increase considerably the conversion rate (CR or CVR) of the AMS campaigns, only optimized products should be advertised. Product listings should be optimized not exclusively for the search engine, but for the real buyer too, since he decides at the end if actually wants to buy the product. For this purpose, it is essential to choose the sale argument according to the target group and the right “language”.
Product optimization: its relevance for the algorithm
Amazon misses, because of its complex algorithms, if a product is actually relevant for the provided advertisement and for the search query. For this reason, the most important keywords should be contained in the listing. Use for it the “back-end keywords” in order to cover a higher number of relevant keywords for your products. Consider too, that search queries could be definitely complex and long.
Product optimization: title, bullet points, description, backend keywords
Therefore, before you begin with the Amazon Marketing Services, you should, first of all, optimize the product title, bullet points, description and back-end Keywords. Here, you have to find a perfect balance between keywords optimization and contents that stimulate sales. Crucial qualities, unique features and an effective “call to action” should mostly be contained in the title and in the bullet points.
Product optimization: sales-boosting photos
As the saying goes: “a picture infuses more than thousands words” and this counts for your Amazon products. The first picture is particularly important since it will be shown as main gallery picture in the search results, in the Sponsored Products and in the HSAs and PDAs as a preview. Also other detail screens that show how your product in the reality and in action should be added.
Product optimization: customer reviews
Buyers rely on other customers´ opinions. It has been shown, that customers buy more frequently products that have at least 4-star ratings than products without or with negative ratings. There are not only the little yellow stars: there are many Bestsellers on Amazon, that did not even receive one customer review. However, it is proved that positive reviews make the product more appealing and provide a higher trust.
Product optimization: monitoring the success
In spite of an accurate analysis is carried out by means of different tools and customer data, a product optimization should be repeatedly controlled and readjusted. By means of AMS, you have in your hand a powerful instrument with which you can validate the keywords used for the conversion: that is if a keyword can concretely lead to a sales increase. An extensive and detailed reporting is the basis for monitoring the success.
Amazon Stores
how to build up Amazon brand shops with AMS
With Amazon Stores, you have the chance to create within the Amazon Marketing Services an individual landing page or a brand shop on Amazon. This store can have up to three levels and every sub-page has an individual URL. Here, the different templates adapt to the desktop´s or mobile device´s display.
The Amazon store operates as the pages’ function in the modular system and it offers place for the Rich Media Content. The individually designable sub-pages are ideal to present purposeful special products and product categories. The individual URL for example, can be weaved into the Headline Search Ads. Here, you have the opportunity to execute an A/B testing.
Similarly to Pages, the AMS Stores classify and assemble different products according to the campaigns. In this way, the potential customer after a click on Headline Search Ads, can be driven to the most important products, top-sellers or seasonal articles. This external traffic is therefore guided by Amazon and in this way the conversion increases.
AMS: questions and answers
Amazon Marketing Services: campaign budgets
The price of Sponsored Products depends on the bidding procedure too, even though here there is only the opportunity to determine a daily budget. Here, it is important to forecast the day budget referred to the month. This means, that if you start on the 1st of the month a Sponsored Product campaign with a daily budget of 100€, the system will calculate a sum of 3100€ for the entire month (31 days in a month). According to this calculation, you will not pay out on average more than 100€ a day. However, it may happen that on certain days you will have to pay out more than 100€, as long as the total budget has not been completely consumed.
If your advertisement is pitted against others and a potential buyer clicks on your advertisement, you will be charged with 0,01€ more than the next highest bid. This contribution can range under your maximal bid too.
– the bid is too low
– the keywords or the advertisement are not enough relevant
– a very defined targeting
In order to increase the impressions and to generate clicks, you can elevate your bid, add further relevant keywords or swell your targeting.
Sponsored Products
The term “exact match” in connection with sponsored products means that you must narrow down the customers´ keywords to the keywords you inserted: exclusively in this way, your ad will be repeatedly shown. The advertisement will be displayed only in presence of very similar variables. With the display type “Exact” you can intensely filter the search queries and the advertisements will be displayed only when there are relevant keywords.
Example: for the keyword “baseball caps”
- Keywords with match: baseball cap, basebal caps
- Keywords without match: red baseball caps, caps for baseball, baseball caps girls
In the phrases match, the search query must include the precise phrase, that is the same word group. For this reason, very similar variables of word groups lead to a match. The filtering of search queries is more precise than in the broad match, therefore it normally occurs a more relevant placement of the advertisement.
Example for the keyword “baseball caps”
- Keywords with match: light baseball caps, baseball caps for girls, red basebal caps
- Keywords without match: cool caps for baseball, baseball play caps
Through the selection of an extensively suitable match, your advertisement will be shown specifically in many search queries. The customer search query manifests a match when it contains not necessarily only your keyword but also terms that are related to it (plural forms, acronyms, variables with the same root, abbreviations and accents). The order of the search words does not make any difference.
Example for the keyword “baseball caps”
- Keywords with match: baseball cap; reduced baseball caps; red caps for baseball; baseball shoe
- Keywords without match: sport caps, Nike baseball, Adidas caps
The bid+ increases the competitiveness of your Sponsored Products´ advertisements. This function is useful when you are satisfied with the previous AcoS of your advertisements and you want to sell more. The advantages of bid+ are easy to measure since you can compare the performance by activating and deactivating the bid plus.
Headline Search Ads
Performance metrics of Amazon Marketing Services
The Click Through Rate indicates the connection between the number of clicks and frequency of impressions. According to that, the CTR is an indicator of the relevance and appeal of your advertisement.
AMS Keywords
Amazon tries to show the most relevant advertisements for the search queries. For this reason, the elected keywords have to be relevant for the PPC campaigns. For example, search query is: “sporty men´s shoes” – product / keywords “shoe closet” is not relevant enough to be showed. The research will rather show other “sporty men´s shoes”.
You can use maximum 1.000 keywords for every PPC campaign. The success of your advertisement depends not only on the quantity, but on the quality too.
Professional AMS campaigns with intomarkets support
Do you need support in planning, creating and analyzing your AMS campaigns? Our Amazon Marketing professionals would be glad to assist you in the creation of complex campaign structures for the pan-European zone, in the analysis and optimization of your existing PPC campaigns or in a consulting through workshops and individual coaching.
As one of the leading companies in northern Germany area is intomarkets THE Amazon Marketing Agency. Our marketing professionals can actively assist you in increasing the sales through a keyword research with conversion analysis, a listing optimization and multilingual AMS campaigns.