Optimizing your Amazon PPC is crucial if you want to be successful and have a profitable business. Without good visibility, you are unlikely to get many sales, and therefore, you will lose money.
We have written a number of articles that mention optimizing sales, creating Amazon Ads, and looking into profits already. However, today we are going to focus specifically on the things you can do to improve and optimize your Amazon PPC (if you want to see more about structuring your Amazon campaign, read here).
This includes things like using high-quality images, product descriptions and using the right keywords. To learn how to get better visibility and sales with your Amazon PPC, just keep reading.
What Is Needed For Optimized Amazon Sales?
There are four important things that are necessary for Amazon Ads to be successful. These are as follows:
- A good click-through-rate (CTR)
- Low cost-per-click (CPC)
- A good conversion rate (CVR)
- Realistic advertising cost of sales (ACOS) targets
How To Optimize Amazon PPC
We will go through seven of the most important factors to consider when optimizing ads for better sales and visibility. Each one of these is crucial to your success, so take notes and get learning!
- Structure Your Ad Campaigns
The first thing you need to do in order to improve visibility and increase sales is to structure your ad campaign properly. Ideally, you should have an ad campaign for every major product category, with smaller campaigns beneath those for specific products.
For example, if you are selling self-care products, and you want to create an ad campaign. You may have some categories that do particularly well in sales, like hair care. You can create distinct ads focusing on products like the following:
- Heat protectant
- Heatless curls headbands
- Hair oils
Just use the correct keywords for every category and create an ad campaign for each one. By having ads that are related, you can not only save money but also increase the ROI significantly, which is good for everyone!
- Create Convincing Ads
Anyone can make an ad, but that doesn’t mean it will be a good one. You need to be creative and step it up a notch in order to stand out. There is some very specific information that should be included in ads, which is as follows:
- A clear and short product description
- Accurate information
No spelling mistakes. No bad grammar. Nothing that will confuse a potential buyer. On top of that, your ad should be unique, not a carbon copy of every other boring ad you see nowadays.
The text should be clear, without any clutter to distract it. Use appropriate language, especially if you are having a sale. Words like “hurry up”, “sale”, and “urgent” tend to get people’s attention, so take advantage of that when applicable. However, you have to be mindful of Amazon’s restrictions surrounding sales copy to ensure your ad creative will be approved.
- Make Your Ads Precise
No one is going to spend minutes trying to figure out exactly what you are trying to advertise. Instead, they will go to the next product and find one that is more straightforward. You shouldn’t have to make a potential customer think too much, and you definitely should not be misleading them.
Use specific key terms in the product description. The best way to do this is via bullet points, rather than long paragraphs.
You should be including information about the main features of the product, materials, model, and everything else that applies to your specific product. Highlight all the important stuff that you would want to know before buying something.
- Match Types and Keywords Are Crucial
Don’t underestimate the power of keywords in Amazon PPC. You could be doing everything else right, but if your keywords are incorrect, you will lose money. There are four types of keywords to be aware of for Amazon PPC:
- Broad keywords
- Phrase keywords
- Exact keywords
- Negative keywords
You will need to know which types of keywords are the ones that you need to target in order for your campaign to work. This is something that will need to be done on an individual basis, as every campaign will be different.
In many cases, long-tailed keywords will be beneficial because of how specific they are. Pay attention to the keywords other sellers are using to describe their products for inspiration. They are not broad terms that you may find floating around but speak to a particular product.
Some examples of long-tail keywords include the following:
- Blue cotton women trousers
- Bamboo knife holder for kitchen
- Men’s gray hoodie
These are all specific. This means that your item is less likely to get lost in the sea of generic descriptions like “blue trousers” or “gray hoodies”. Potential customers are more likely to come across your item.
Match types also can’t be forgotten. You will need to review the match types for your Amazon Ads to optimize them for visibility and sales:
- Exact Match – these are the search terms that will match the exact keywords you have added, as well as the plural version of it.
- Phrase Match – these are search terms that are similar to the term being searched for. It’s more of an umbrella term that will encompass a whole category – for example, cutlery!
- Use High-Quality Images
Have you ever gone on Amazon and seen an ad with low-quality images or images that are clearly fake or Photoshopped? That’s exactly what you want to avoid with your own ad campaign.
Only use high-quality images of your products. If you want to go a step further, you should also include an image or two showing how your product is used (if applicable).
Aim to have between seven and nine high-quality images of your products. Every image should look realistic, be shot professionally with a high resolution, and be appealing. When people say “a picture is worth a thousand words”, they mean it.
- Create Enhanced Bids for Ad Groups
A group bid gives you the opportunity to create a default bid that covers all the keywords within an ad group. You need to ensure that you set up a strong bid for your chosen ad group and modify it as you need to.
Doing this will allow you to make bids on these groups even if you are not actively monitoring or maintaining individual bids, so it saves time!
- Continuously Optimize and Alter Your Ads
You should consistently be checking on how well your ads are doing, and making necessary changes if there is room for improvement. In many cases, this will simply be making minor adjustments to the ad to see if it improves it in any way.
When doing this, you should only change one thing at a time. This will ensure that you can isolate the exact issue you are dealing with, as well as the solution. If you change lots of things at once, you won’t have a clue which changes actually improved your ad!
Allow your campaign to run for two weeks so that you can get a good idea of whether the change has made any difference to visibility and sales.
To Summarize
Each of the aforementioned points is critical if you want to get more sales and improve the visibility of your Amazon Ads. While Amazon PPC is not an easy thing to master, it is possible, even if it takes some time.
To recap, you can optimize your Amazon PPC campaigns by doing the following:
- Structure your ad campaigns
- Create convincing ads
- Make your ads precise
- Focus on match types and keywords
- Use high-quality images
- Create enhanced bids for ad groups
- Continuously optimize and alter ads