Advertising on eCommerce platforms for best impact

If you sell products online, you are probably using digital platforms like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to promote your products. In case you sell via an eCommerce platform such as Amazon, have you tried advertising on that platform itself? Have you considered how to get maximum impact by spending some marketing money on the eCommerce platform itself? It might be worth considering this option.

While trusted opt-in channels are an excellent way to reach customers who have already manifested their interest in your brand, they also help to build awareness among those who have never heard of you. This is where paid search and eCommerce channels come in. Winning on eCommerce isn’t easy, it has different rules than any other ad channel, online or offline. But eCommerce advertising presents a unique opportunity if you can take full advantage of it.

For now, I will focus on Amazon which has proven to be the colossal giant of eCommerce. In 2018, Amazon launched "Amazon Advertising", (formerly Amazon Marketing Services, or AMS), as a search advertising solution for Amazon vendors. Like pay-per-click ads on Google, sellers only pay when shoppers click on ads. AMS is rapidly growing, its growth is so tremendous that in the financial year 2022, Amazon Marketplace reported the highest revenue of 214.62 billion Indian rupees. Amazon offers 2 types of Ads, sponsored products and sponsored brands.

Sponsored products – Amazon’s sponsored products show up in search results as well as alongside organic search results on product detail pages. These ads appear based on keywords, and businesses can choose which keywords prompt their ads, or alternatively, you can allow Amazon to suggest search terms to target the ad. 

Sponsored brands – Sponsored brands are keyword-targeted ads that feature the brand’s logo, a custom headline, and up to three product listings. These ads appear within search results and are generally at the top of the page.

Our focus is all on CREATING AN EXCITING AND OUTSTANDING PRODUCT LISTING, be it paid ads or organic search results. We discuss some of the ways to enable the same.

Discover more profitable keywords – People are unique, and how they search is also unique. Think about it - how many ways do shoppers search for a “sweater”? It would be many ways. Here’s how you can discover more profitable keywords: 

• Explore Profitable Keyword Opportunities by Targeting All Stages of the Buyer Journey – It can be tempting to focus on specific keywords that you THINK best capture customers and convert. But this isn't always the case. Depending on your category and product, conversions play out differently at every stage in the buyer journey. This is why it's important to cast a wide net of keywords. 
• Harness the power of auto campaigns – We're humans; we miss things and have blind spots! Amazon is a big machine with lots of keyword searches and bid history for products like yours, so tapping into this via auto campaigns is a helpful resource to catch anything you may have missed.
• Smartly target competitors – 81% of shoppers research products online before purchasing them. Customers will use many keyword variations to look through products before deciding, and your product must show up on these keywords and competitor listings throughout the entire customer journey.
  
  
• Use Negative Keywords to Reduce Wasted Ad Spend – As your advertisement matures (i.e., after discovering, say 20-50 profitable keywords and product targets) you want to fine-tune your ads to boost your ROAS. For example, you’ll likely start to see some keywords have a high click-through rate and low conversion rate. This is an indication that either your products may be less relevant for that keyword, or maybe your content needs improvement. In the former case, you may find it useful to utilize the feature of negative keywords and optimize your ad spending. 

Continuously Optimize Bids to Reduce Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) – Market conditions change regularly, and taking a passive approach has a risk that your ACoS could suddenly increase. Here’s what brands must consistently keep doing to stay competitive: 

• Monitor performance – It is impossible to make optimization decisions without understanding what the data is telling you. We recommend monitoring impressions, click-through rates, conversion rates, serving hours for keywords, competitor ASINs, product targets, and campaigns. With these metrics in mind, performance should be monitored at 4 levels: 1) Overall performance across all campaigns 2) Category performance 3) Ad level performance 4) ASIN/SKU level performance. 
  
  
• Analyze performance reports – Looking at long-term performance helps inform you of future trends and predicts consumer behavior. It also removes human bias when understanding bottlenecks in your campaigns, such as budget, bids, impressions, ACoS, and effectiveness of content and pricing. The good news is that Amazon provides you with a rich set of reports that provide insight into your campaigns.
  
  
• Adjust campaign bids accordingly - After keywords, bids play the most important role in your ability to generate profitable sales while helping you stay within your ACoS goals. The reports outlined in the previous steps give you deep insight into what is working in your campaigns.

Manage Budget Dynamically to Maximize Sales Within Target ACoS - The Amazon marketplace never sleeps, and as such, ads must be live when shoppers are shopping. When you dynamically shift the ad budget based on the marketplace, you’re able to optimize ACoS. Here are the core principles: 

• Monitor Ad serving hours - Monitoring and understanding how long your campaigns are running given your budget is the first step towards understanding if you should be increasing or decreasing your daily budgets. It can be tempting to always add more budget but consider short- and long-term trends before making decisions on increasing the budgets. 

• Increase budget when profitable sales trends emerge – Running successful sponsored campaigns on Amazon requires patience and consistent execution of a framework tailored to your product. Structuring your campaigns with the right products, keywords, and ASIN targeting requires some experimenting. You want to identify what keywords and ASIN targets can generate profitable sales for you before scaling your ad spend. 

• Allocate budget across campaigns based on performances – Every category in which you sell products has its own unique constraints including margins, goals, and advertising budgets. Understanding these constraints and goals allows you to make choices that drive high margins and profitable sales. 

Having said all the above, selling on Amazon can be an impactful marketing strategy for eCommerce brands. As consumers continue to lean towards online shopping, Amazon advertising can play a large role in your online sales. 

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com)