Today, Amazon’s grown to become the largest online retailer in the world. On Amazon’s platform you can find almost anything you can imagine, from food, to toothbrushes, to books, and anything in between. This has made the online platform the go-to choice for a lot of people to buy their necessities.
With millions and millions of users, Amazon has tons of potential customers for anyone looking to sell their products. The best part is, you can advertise and sell your products as well!
But simply listing your products and waiting for sales is not enough. In order to succeed on Amazon, you need to do the proper marketing.
How does Amazon’s marketing system work? What are the ad formats to choose from? How do you rank your ads to get more exposure to your products?
First we need to understand how Amazon PPC works:
PPC stands for Pay Per Click and refers to how the ad system functions. Pay Per click means that you only pay when someone clicks on your listing/ad. PPC works like a bidding system where advertisers bid for specific keywords, and whoever has the highest bid for a certain keyword, and also the best ad quality, will win the top position for that keyword. This means that when someone searches for the keyword that you are paying for, your product will appear on the search results page for that specific keyword, thus increasing your exposure and visibility.
Is marketing on Amazon worth it?
Yes, marketing on Amazon is definitely worth it. As a matter of fact, it is considered one of the best ways to drive traffic to your product on Amazon. Amazon has millions and millions of users which makes it a great way to boost the exposure for your products. But if your product are only visible on page 5 or even 10 on the search results, not a lot of people will find your products. This is why using Amazon marketing helps you get the full benefits of Amazon’s huge audience.
What makes Amazon so great for sellers is that people on Amazon are ready to buy. After all, that’s why they visit Amazon in the first place.
In 2018, Emarketer reported that 46.7% of Internet users in the US begin their search on Amazon when searching for a product. This is opposed to only 34.6% who chose to Google instead. In the US alone, Amazon gets 197 million unique searchers per month according to Statista. The challenge is just to get their attention. If you’re unsure about how to get started with Amazon marketing, or just don’t have the time, it is worth getting help from an Amazon Ads agency.
Organic Sales Vs. sales through ads on Amazon
It’s important to remember that Amazon is basically just like any other search engine, only that it is specifically designed for products. And like most other search engines, they have both organic search results and paid ads. The organic results on Amazon are decided based on a number of different ranking factors (just like Google’s many organic ranking factors). Some of these ranking factors include the product description, total sales, conversion rate, positive reviews and optimized product description for your search terms/keywords. All of these things will ultimately help you rank higher in the organic search results.
The first way to get your products seen on Amazon is through organic search. The second is PPC ads. With PPC ads, you don’t have to think about the ranking factors for organic, you just pay for ads to be shown to customers and in this way get them to visit your product description. At the same time, one should not exclude the other. You should focus on both paid ads and organic reach.
Vendor Central vs Seller Central
Amazon has two marketing platforms that sellers can use. Vendor Central and seller central. The vendor central is made specifically for larger companies where the companies act as a wholesaler and have a direct relationship with Amazon.
The seller central on the other hand is for anyone else who wishes to sell their products on Amazon. A benefit of vendor central is that it gives you greater options for advertising than what seller central does. It also gives access to Amazon Marketing Services and enhanced brand content.
First-party sellers: These are large distributors who sell their products directly to Amazon.
Third-party sellers: These are individual sellers who sell directly to customers through Amazon Marketplace
Pros and cons of the different marketing platforms
SELLER CENTRAL:
- Anyone can get started and sell their products.
- Third-party sellers can choose Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to leave the logistics to Amazon
- You have the potential for higher margins because you have more control over your product.
- Third-party can sellers create ads in Seller Central.
- Ad types: Sponsored products, classified ads, and product-targeted advertising
- Ad Direction: Keywords, Product Level
VENDOR CENTRAL:
- To use vendor central, you must be invited or submit an application
- As a first-party seller, you sell goods in bulk to Amazon and Amazon sells these products under its own brand.
- If it says “Shipped and sold by Amazon” in the product description, the product is provided by Vendor Central.
- Amazon sets the price terms for the seller. This makes the margin for each individual sale less profitable. In other words, you have less control.
- You will be able to sell a larger quantity of products in Vendor Central.
- Vendor Central has the ability to create ads in Amazon Marketing Services (AMS)
- Ad Types include classified Ads, Sponsored Products, Display Ads
- Ad Targeting include keyword Level, Interest Level, Product Level
Amazon ad types
Headline Search Ads
As its name suggests, headline search ads appear at the top of the search results page (SERP. The benefit of this format is that it allows your product to get people’s attention before they know exactly what they want.
Product Display Ads
Product display ads are showcased on the product description page and on Amazon’s partner websites. Product Display ads are only available in Amazon Marketing Services (AMS)
Sponsored Product Ads
Sponsored products ads have two categories, keyword targeting, and product targeting. Sponsored product ads are the most popular ad type on Amazon.
Keyword targeting ads are presented on the search results page (SERP) as well as the product description page. This is not to be confused with display ads as they are placed in different places on the page.
Amazon PPC Match Types
When you create an ad campaign, you need to choose a match type for your campaigns. Amazon has three matching types to choose from with Amazon ads:
Wide match:
With wide match, you let Amazon find and promote your product on search phrases and keywords that are related to your keyword, but not necessarily identical. This is similar to how Google Ads work. Wide match normally includes primarily long keywords (long tail keywords). This is a keyword type that is less competitive and cheaper as you are more specific and have less search volume.
Phrase matching:
Phrase matching allows Amazon to find and promote your product on search phrases that contain the keywords you have chosen. In addition to your own keywords, Amazon can add new words to make the results more relevant. Phrase matching is more specific than broad matching.
Exact match:
Exact match is exactly what it sounds like, bidding on specific keywords that you define. And your ads will in turn only be presented for those specific keywords.
When you use exact match, Amazon can not change the order of the words or add new ones, but must only use the exact keyword that you enter in that exact order. The benefit of this is that your ads become very specific and targeted. But the downside is that they are more competitive and thus also more expensive.
Amazon also gives you the possibility of adding negative keywords with Amazon Ads. This type works the opposite of what the three types above do. Negative keywords are keywords that you enter that you don’t want to rank for. This can be good to use if your keywords can often be confused with something else, or keywords that you know just aren’t relevant to you.
How to rank your ads on Amazon
Amazon’s ranking algorithm is called A9 and uses a number of different criteria and ranking factors, just like other search engines, to present relevant search results when someone makes a search on the platform. The goal of a search engine is of course to present the most relevant and qualitative results for the searcher.
Some of the most important ranking factors are:
Sales, accurate descriptions and lots of reviews.
Performance Metric: CTR (Clickthrough Rate), Conversion Rate, Total Sales, Review Rate
Relevance metric: Product title, Product description, Keywords, The amount of positive reviews
Marketplace through SEO & Ads
As a third-party seller on Amazon, you can, on the Amazon marketplace sell your products. Amazon and Google have a lot of similarities. For example, Amazon also has a built-in algorithm called A9 and like Google, the ranking of search results is decided based on various ranking factors. And just like Google, Amazon has both organic and paid search results.
The ads that Amazon offers come in the form of Amazon Ads and Amazon display, whereas Google has Google Ads and the Display Network. When using Amazon ads, a combination of working with your Amazon SEO organically and Amazon ads is recommended. No strategy is complete without the other. At the very least, you’re not getting the full potential. This is because paid advertising has a significant impact on your regular ranking on Amazon.
Similar to other search engines, 78% of customers on Amazon do not go to page 2, making it extremely important to rank on the first page on Amazon.
Sell more with Amazon advertising
The reason why you want to advertise on Amazon is simple – to sell more products.
As discussed above there are many different methods and ways to promote your products on Amazon. For example, if you sell shoes and a customer is looking for shoes, your product will then be at the top as a sponsored post if you use Amazon ads. As the statistic above proved, few customers will browse page after page with products. By being far up on the first page, the chances increase drastically that the customer clicks on your company’s page and buys your product.
Once they have found your product, you can further choose to advertise other products that you sell as well as other related products. Customers often continue browsing when they are at a product. This is why you want to ensure that customers click on your page to explore your other products.
Create opportunities
Amazon has a huge amount of ads that come out every day. The number of visitors is even greater, which creates excellent opportunities to sell, if you can get your products to be seen by potential customers. It takes both knowledge and understanding to set up Amazon advertising in the right way, to get the maximum benefit from it. And most importantly, get good value for your money.
One thing that you, therefore, want to about and use in all ads is SEO. If you have a limited budget, SEO on Amazon can help you come a long way without spending any money. Through good SEO and by using the right keywords, you can help them find your products. Through comprehensive keyword analysis, you can understand and learn more about which words are used, which will also generate search results for customers.
