Product and category targeting on Amazon

Amazon sponsored ads give you lots of targeting options so you can reach searchers and convert them into customers. Choosing the right targeting option will help you achieve your campaign goals.  So here are the few things you should know about product and category targeting on Amazon. 

PPC advertising is evolving every day so are the possibilities for manual targeting. Amazon offers two ways of product targeting: ASIN (Product) and Category targeting. Both strategies can be applied to any kind of product.

ASIN (Product) targeting

The goal of ASIN targeting option is to allow you to target specific ASINs for which you want your ad to show. You can target competitors, and also your products, with different ASINs.

Targeting your products 

By targeting your products you will allow other similar products to appear next to the one that customers clicked on. These selected products will appear on the product page where searchers will eventually make a purchase. This option doesn’t give your competitors any space on your product pages, so they can’t ,,steal” your sales. 

You can choose to target similar products or products that are often bought together. Find information about similar products and often bought together items in Portfolios and in Search Term report.

There is an option to exclude some ASINs which you don’t want to advertise for different reasons: not enough budget, not relevant products which appeared in auto campaigns, products that weren’t sold or simply you don’t want to advertise your items on the pages of bigger brands.  

If you have a sale going on, you can choose to target products on promotion so you can sell them faster.

Targeting competitors products 

If you decide to target the competition, you will find the ASINs for targeting in the Search Term report of auto campaigns because they are mainly in charge of collecting competing ASINs. In this report you will get ASINs which have achieved a larger number of sales with profitable ACoS.  

You can find these ASINs through Excel, when you download the report or through an auto campaign in Seller Central. Just go to the Search Term column and find competitors products which you want to target. When creating these campaigns, just choose option ASIN (product) targeting and add desired ASINs. 

Also, you can download the information about competitors products through the Purchased report and search for them on your own product pages. There is an option to filter the best ranked competitors for desired keywords, to segment them by prices and also to filter them by reviews of their products.  

Category targeting

This type of campaign gives you the possibility to choose a certain category, rating, brand and prices. By downloading the report of these campaigns you can single out ASINs that work well and then use them for ASIN targeting. 

With this option, you can target categories and even subcategories of products. In case your desired category is too expensive and budgets are limited, you can try targeting related categories.  When creating campaigns, choose category targeting, where you already have suggested categories or you can search for them and find one that is similar. 

Category targeting campaigns can also be combined with manual campaigns in order to get more traffic to your product pages and get more orders. 

To sum it up

Try to find the best targeting strategy that works for your brand. Remember, not all brands have the same customers and that’s why it is really important to know your buyer persona. By knowing who are the people that would buy your products, you will also improve your targeting strategy. 

So test your campaigns, do some research on how competitors are doing and it will all pay off eventually. You will boost your sales, get to know your customers better and outrun competitors in the end.

To improve your ad performance, also be sure to check out the Top Ten Amazon Sponsored Mistakes to Avoid.