What is Amazon PPC, and why should you start with it?

Do you know what Amazon PPC is and how it can help you increase profits? If you are an e-commerce business owner looking to place your products on the market, Amazon is one of the best ways to make sales. It’s one of the Big Tech companies, just like Google and Facebook, and as a powerful e-commerce platform, provides an opportunity to advertise, drive fast sales, and build brand awareness. 

There are over 350 million products sold on Amazon by many sellers. Amazon alone has over 12 million items in its catalog! Have you ever wondered how the Amazon search bar placed on top of the Amazon website helps you find desired products quickly and easily? The answer lies in Amazon PPC (pay-per-click)!

Read along to find out what Amazon PPC is, how it works, what campaigns you can create, and more.

What is Amazon PPC?  

Amazon PPC (pay-per-click) is advertising through Amazon’s ad platform called Amazon Seller Central. Unlike other types of advertising where you pay when a potential customer views an ad, on Amazon, advertisers only pay when a user clicks on an ad. Amazon advertising helps raise brand awareness, get more customers, generate sales, etc. 

The difference between searching for products online and searching for products on Amazon is buyer intent. Therefore, positioning your product in front of an audience ready to buy is Amazon’s great benefit for its advertisers, that other platforms lack.

How does Amazon PPC work? 

Advertising on Amazon is based on the auction principle. There is a charge for each click on the ad. The question is, how to determine the price of a click? Each keyword targeted in the campaign has a different value or a different bid. The auction principle is that each advertiser sets the bid value on a specific keyword and how much they are ready to pay per click. All competitors who want to compete for the same keyword put their desired bid values ​​and enter the competition to be better ranked and take first place on Amazon’s search page.  

Of course, the auction winner is the one who sets the highest bid value, but the cost per click is the same as the second-highest bid. If your bid for a particular keyword is $3, the bid of one of your competitors is $2, and the other $1, you will win the auction, but the cost you’ll pay for a click will be the second-highest, in this case, $2. 

 

 

Why should you start with Amazon PPC?

Every seller wants to raise sales to the highest possible level, beat competitors, and achieve the best possible results. An excellent solution for this is good marketing.
When it comes to Amazon, the competition in every niche is enormous. Therefore, to drive traffic to your listings, increase visibility and create brand awareness, advertising is what can make your business stand out. 

With Amazon PPC, you can set up and optimize your campaigns based on your goals and business strategy to get the best possible results. If the goal is to raise brand awareness, different options and types of campaigns can reach a broad audience. Also, if the goal is to scale the business, specific campaigns can significantly boost sales and achieve high profitability with excellent research and optimization.  

Amazon PPC can help improve organic sales. Organic and PPC sales are linked and affect each other, so be careful because poor optimization can negatively affect your organic results. Also, if you choose the wrong Amazon paid advertising approach, you might not get a great return on your investment. Choose wisely between different campaigns and optimize them according to your goals. 

What types of ads can you create on Amazon and start with PPC? 

As on other platforms, it is possible to create different campaign types on Amazon, depending on whether the goal is to raise brand awareness, increase sales, etc.  

There are three types of campaigns that you can create: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display.

Sponsored Products 

Based on targeting type, Sponsored Products campaigns can be Auto and Manual.  

Auto campaigns 

When you have a new product and don’t know which keywords or competitors’ ASINs would have the best performance, you should always start with Auto campaigns. Amazon will target keywords and products similar to the product in your ad. These campaigns target close matches, loose matches, and substitutes. 

Manual Campaigns 

When you have finished your research and identified the best keywords and products to target, start creating Manual campaigns. Here you can target keywords or products (specific products, categories, brands, or other product features).   

Keyword targeting–use this strategy if you know the search terms that customers use to search products similar to yours. 

Product targeting–use it to help shoppers find your product when browsing detail pages and categories or searching products on Amazon. 

Where are Sponsored Products displayed? 

Sponsored Products can appear on desktop and mobile devices in the following ways:

• Top of search results 
• Alongside search results  
• Within search results 
• Product pages 

Sponsored Brands  

  

Sponsored Brands campaigns help shoppers discover your brand and products on Amazon with rich, engaging creatives. Here you can add Headline, Custom image, or Video content to your campaign. This type of campaign allows you to advertise three products at once.  

Here you can choose between 3 types of ad formats: 

• Product collection–promote multiple products from a landing page of your choice 
• Store spotlight–drive traffic to a store, including subpages 
• Video–feature a single product with an autoplay video 

Like with Sponsored Products, advertisers use keywords and products to target shoppers. This type of campaign can generate product sales and increase brand awareness. 

Where are Sponsored Brands displayed? 

• Top of search results 
• Alongside search results 
• Within search results 
• Middle of the search page (Video ads) 

Sponsored Display 

Sponsored Display helps grow your business by reaching relevant audiences on and off Amazon. Advertisers can target potential customers based on their shopping activities, like purchases or products views. With these campaigns, you can promote a single product. Sponsored Display campaigns cannot target keywords. Targeting options for these campaigns are product targeting and audiences.

Sponsored Display allows you to optimize bids for the metric you want to focus on. You can do the following:

• Optimize for viewable impressions–drive product awareness by showing your ad to as many shoppers as possible on Amazon. (Cost type–VCPM–1,000 viewable impressions) 
• Optimize for page visits–drive product consideration by showing your ads to shoppers more likely to click on your ad. (Cost type–CPC–Cost Per Click) 
• Optimize for conversions–drive sales by showing your ad to shoppers more likely to purchase your product. (Cost type – CPC – Cost Per Click)

Advertisers cannot promote products prohibited by Amazon for Sponsored Display campaigns, like: 

• Alcohol 
• Prescription drugs and devices 
• Adult products 
• Weapons like pepper spray, fireworks, airsoft guns 

Where is Sponsored Display campaign displayed? 

• Third-party websites and apps 
• Product detailed pages–under the buy box, under the bullet points, on the top of the product page.  

Conclusion 

As the top-ranked e-commerce and online shopping website globally, Amazon presents products to a broad audience ready and willing to buy. If you are a seller, using Amazon PPC (Pay Per Click) to advertise can help you achieve the best possible results in line with your business goals. Following a set strategy, you have the opportunity to create different campaigns, which can significantly scale your business. By understanding the difference between Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns, you can make wise choices and boost your sales. 

If you want to succeed on Amazon and maximize your business potential, hire an expert in Amazon PPC to achieve excellent results in the best possible way and in less time. 

Sellers Alley has a team of young and talented PPC professionals ready to help you skyrocket your online sales! Best of all, we also offer you a FREE Audit of your Amazon account to get your brand on the direction to success.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Tijana Bogdanović is a PPC Specialist at Sellers Alley and has three years of experience in Amazon PPC. Ever since she joined the team, she has shown excellent leadership skills and willingness to learn and expand her knowledge. These attributes helped her develop further and achieve significant results with Sellers Alley. Her previous work experience with Google Ads enabled her to adapt to the Amazon world with ease.