For most online shoppers, Amazon is synonymous with eCommerce. That makes it one of the most lucrative marketplaces for independent sellers, but you have to rise above the competition and get your listings in front of your target buyers. Without a carefully planned Amazon advertising strategy, it’s too easy to make costly mistakes that do more harm than good.
The right strategy can yield highly profitable results. Amazon’s average PPC conversion rate is 9.58%—much higher than the industry average of 2.05%. Not only that, but the average Amazon seller gets $4.50 in revenue for every dollar spent on advertising. If you’ve got a strong ad campaign that hits the correct targets, Amazon is, by far, one of the most rewarding places to invest your advertising budget.
So, what does a winning Amazon advertising strategy look like? We can answer that with ten tested and proven tips for a winning strategy to increase your visibility and drive sales growth.
Why Amazon Advertising Strategy is Critical to Marketplace Success
There are several good reasons why it’s essential to back your ad campaigns with a sound strategy:
The Market Is Always Evolving
Consumer trends and Amazon’s algorithms are constantly in flux, which means that the SEO and PPC tricks that win you the digital shelf one day may be obsolete the next. Developing a strategy that accounts for this ongoing evolution is the best way to accelerate your sales.
It Helps Your Visibility
Consumers love a good bargain but will only spend so much time digging through listings. An advertising strategy will get you seen by the right buyers at the right moment for conversion.
First Impressions Matter
Consumers often start their product search on Amazon, and the first listings that catch their attention will likely end up with a sale. Strategic advertising ensures that your listings will be discoverable during this critical moment in the buyer journey.
It Enhances Your Brand
Effective, engaging ads can strengthen your brand recognition and reputation, whether you’re a small brand new to the market or a big name in the retail world.
You’ve Got to Pay to Play
It’s a sure bet that your competitors are investing in smart advertising. A strategic approach can help you counter their pay-to-play tactics without overspending.
It’s Not Getting Any Cheaper
Increased competition, inflation, and other factors mean the price of PPC ads will keep rising. An effective strategy will help you optimize your spending, making your ads more efficient and reducing costs.
10 Winning Amazon Advertising Strategies
Now that we know the benefits of having the right strategy, here are ten Amazon advertising strategies that will optimize your PPC campaigns, boost your brand’s sales, and help you win in the marketplace.
1. Use eCommerce AI Tools
It’s hard to beat AI for extracting valuable insights from complex systems with many moving parts. Applying an eCommerce AI tool like Noogata to your Amazon advertising strategy can eliminate the guesswork and show you the right action steps for optimizing your PPC campaigns.
Noogata’s AI assistant can constantly monitor the Amazon marketplace to provide you with competitive intelligence and intelligent strategic recommendations, while its Ad Booster tool reveals top-performing keywords and offers predictive advice about which ones to bid on.
2. Optimize Campaigns for Correct ASIN Selection
An ASIN, or Amazon Standard Identification Number, is a unique ten-digit identifier assigned to every product on Amazon. ASINs can be used to narrow the targeting of your PPC ads, which can be highly effective when done correctly.
For example, let’s say you’re selling a flight stick controller designed for use with flight simulator software. You could look up the ASINs of popular flight simulator programs and run a PPC campaign that displays your ads wherever those ASINs appear. You can also use negative ASIN targeting to ensure your ads don’t appear next to certain products.
3. Create Unmissable Product Pages
An ad campaign that drives clicks to your product page is useless if your product page is so unengaging that buyers take one look and smash that “back” button. Optimize your product listings with attention-grabbing content like high-quality photos, videos, polished and relevant descriptive copy, Q & As, and positive reviews.
If you’re a registered brand, you can also use Amazon’s A+ Content to add bullet points, interactive images, and other compelling features that show off a product’s benefits and must-have features. Unmissable product pages with optimized content are the first step to scaling an Amazon brand.
4. Optimize Campaigns for ACOS
ACOS (Average Cost of Sales) is a metric that tells you how much you have to spend on advertising to generate a dollar in sales. Aiming for a lower, more efficient ACOS can be an excellent objective for your Amazon ad strategy.
Use keyword research, market analytics, and careful targeting and scheduling to execute your ad campaign while tracking your ACOS and making adjustments on the fly to see how low you can get it. By keeping ACOS optimization as a guiding principle, you can ensure significant returns on every ad dollar you spend.
5. Leverage Ad Targeting for ROAS
ROAS (return on ad spend) is a similar metric to ACOS, telling you how much sales revenue you make for each dollar you spend on advertising. It helps you quickly determine how well your Amazon ad strategy is performing. One of the best ways to maintain a good ROAS is by working to improve your PPC targeting.
To do this effectively, research your audience to determine the best targeting options and use deep analytics and competitive intelligence to optimize your keyword bidding. Also, employ negative keyword targeting to keep your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches.
6. Build a Buzz Around Your Brand
Brand awareness is a secret sauce that makes your Amazon advertising more effective. Explore the possibilities of social media, customer and employee advocacy, viral marketing, and other organic ways of getting your brand name out there in a positive way.
For a more direct approach, you can use Amazon’s Sponsored Brands ads to prominently feature your listings, massively improving your visibility and building brand recognition among the customers you’re trying to win over.
7. Go International and Off-Amazon
Amazon is a global marketplace, so don’t be afraid to expand your horizons when seeking new customers. Some regions might be very interested in your products and cheaper to advertise in. Thorough market research can help you discover these opportunities and determine how to tailor your ad and listing content to international audiences.
Also consider the possibilities of Amazon arbitrage to grow your business on other marketplaces. With the right software tools, arbitrage is more accessible and profitable than ever before.
8. Change How You Bid for Keywords
Stay away from bidding wars with your competitors over obvious keywords. Research and intelligence-gathering can help you discover underutilized keywords available for lower bids and oversaturated keywords that won’t provide reasonable returns for the high bids they command.
New keywords with no search history can be worth investing in, and you can adjust your bids once you’ve been running ads for long enough to gather data on them.
9. Improve Your CTR
Ads only generate sales when somebody clicks on them, so ensure your click-through rate (CTR) is where you want it to be. The first thing to do is optimize your listings with a clear product image, a descriptive headline, and competitive pricing.
Going deeper, you can eliminate search terms that have abysmally low CTRs (0.3% or less), use negative keyword targeting to keep your ads out of unrelated searches and think carefully about choosing suitable placements. You can also try different ways to hack Amazon Brand analytics to increase your CTR.
10. Be Flexible
Remember, the market is constantly evolving. Yesterday’s winning strategy can become an inefficient waste of ad dollars in a shockingly short timeframe. Always be prepared to adjust, pivot, and update your strategy to account for shifting trends, new information, or better insights.
An agile, flexible strategy that reacts quickly based on what buyers, competitors, and Amazon are doing can lead you to long-term success.
Every Winning Strategy Needs a Secret Weapon
Sellers can make substantial revenue on Amazon’s marketplace, but to compete effectively, you need to be able to navigate the muddy waters of Amazon advertising. A well-planned, comprehensive Amazon advertising strategy can help you rise to this challenge, especially when you get assistance from a powerful AI-powered eCommerce analytics tool like Noogata.
In a marketplace where millions of sellers are vying for buyers’ attention, the competitive intelligence and deep insights provided by Noogata can show you how to stay ahead of the pack and win the digital shelf.
Try a demo of Noogata to see what it can do to help your Amazon advertising strategy thrive—it’s the secret weapon you need to succeed.