Top Amazon PPC Strategy: How to grow your sales on Amazon

Last updated on January 9th, 2023

Written by Mark Salvania

There is no doubt that competition is increasing on one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, Amazon. Thus, businesses are implementing innovative and intelligent strategies to put their products in front of the customer to gain sales. One such known and proven approach is Pay-Per-Click Advertising. This article will aim to cover the recommended Amazon PPC strategy, which includes how to set up your Amazon PPC campaign, how to do keyword research, as well as how to optimize your product listings.

What is Amazon PPC?

If you are already familiar with the definition of PPC, then head to the next section. Pay-Per-Click Advertising, or PPC, is an advertising strategy entirely run through Amazon's very own ad platform, Amazon Advertising. The concept is pretty straightforward. Amazon sellers and vendors can pay a certain amount to Amazon to publish ads that focus on your desired product listing. Amazon will then post these ads on relevant search results i.e. whenever a customer searches for a similar product to yours on its platform.

 You will get charged only when a customer clicks on your ad. Hence, the term Pay-Per-Click. PPC Advertising is a proven strategy as it brings your products on the first few pages of a search result, which is the goal of every seller. Being on the first page increases your chances for customers to purchase your product. That is why it is essential to know how to make the right PPC strategy on Amazon as this strategy is paid marketing, unlike organic growth; the latter requires time, investment, and planning. Check out this article to get familiar with PPC related terms. In the following section, let us learn how to build a PPC campaign on Amazon.

Amazon PPC strategy with steps

1. Choose an ad format

There are different ways that your ad can appear on the Amazon website. A few popular ad format options are listed below:

• Sponsored Products: These ads look like regular ads in the Amazon search results page, but the only difference is that there will be a sponsored badge mentioned over the product listing. This is meant for users to know which are ads and which are the organic results. Targeting these ads can be done by keyword or product category. This ad format is the most popular option mainly because it has the highest sales-per-click than the other two; the ads blend in well with other competitor products shown on the search page, increasing the chances for users to click on it. 

• Sponsored Brands: This particular ad format is meant to improve brand awareness. A customized headline, along with your company logo, will appear in the search results if you select this option. You can also feature three of your products with this format. The main objective of Sponsored Brands is to build brand recognition and product portfolio. This advertising format is available for sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry, agencies, vendors, and book vendors.

• Sponsored Display Ads: Currently in the beta phase, selecting this option would enable you to reach relevant customers on Amazon based on their interest in a specific product or category. Therefore, based on your business goals, you can select your targeting strategy (whether your focus is through an audience or product perspective) and set your budget and bids on a regular basis. Amazon provides this intelligent solution where you don’t have to do much work. For instance, Amazon creates audiences based on their shopping activities, which helps you to select ones that suit your business, and even creates your ad automatically after you’ve just inputted a few details.

• Stores: You can create your very own multi-page store on Amazon with the aim of promoting your brand and products. And guess what, it's FREE. You also have the option of adding videos, images, and descriptive text in your pages. With this feature, you will be able to show everyone the story of your brand and even display the functionality of your products. It's not required for you to advertise on Amazon to create a Store. Just like Sponsored Brands, after you submit your Store for review, Amazon will get back to you within 72 hours.

Apart from the above-mentioned options, Amazon has several advertising options such as Video ads, Custom Ads, Display Ads, and Amazon demand-side platform. To know more about these advertising options, click on this link here.

2. Select products

Pick products in your product portfolio that you wish to advertise. If you have a vast portfolio and are unsure of which products to select, you could choose products that are having higher sales and ranking on Amazon. If new users were to click on such product ads and see previous product purchases being made or the product reviews left by customers, they would be more inclined to buy your product, making your ad strategy a success. 

3. Conduct keyword study

Your ads would require the right type of textual language to get the high Click-Through-Rates that you want to achieve. Hence, you must conduct keyword research, and this could be done in two ways:

1. Manual campaign: Using tools available online, you yourself would have to research keywords that suit the ad. Examples of such keyword research tools that you could use are Keywords Everywhere or Sonar.
2. Automatic campaign: Selecting this option allows Amazon to automatically compile keywords related to your product and target the ad to relevant consumers. For Amazon sellers new to this entire Amazon PPC campaign process, we recommend you begin with an automatic campaign until you get more experienced and then select the more advanced manual campaign mode.

Also, remember that each product you wish to advertise will have its own campaign. For example, if you are selling coffee mugs of different sizes, the cups will come under one campaign. However, if you are also selling a coffee maker, then the coffee maker will have a separate campaign altogether. 

4. Optimize product listings

No matter the campaign type or ad format you end up taking, it is important to focus on Amazon PPC optimization. Optimize your product listings using SEO techniques to improve your products’ visibility. This will then improve your rankings on the organic searches of Amazon. Investing in SEO is a wise decision as an SEO expert would not only know how to optimize the ad title, product description, images, etc. but also have access to paid resources and SEO tools that you need not worry about investing in them.

5. Place your bids

While creating your campaign and uploading your keywords (that is if you selected the manual targeting option), you would then be required to bid on said keywords. A list of keywords will be displayed with the respective Cost-Per-Click for each keyword. Based on your budget, you can decide how much you wish to invest on particular keywords for your campaign.

6. Submit your ads

After submitting your ads, Amazon would take a few hours to review and check for errors. You will then be notified that your campaign has been launched. Make sure to monitor the performance of your ads and keywords daily. Amazon has intelligent algorithms on the back end that will suggest which keywords are most effective. Use such analysis to bid on the right keywords to generate better leads. 

If you're interested in reading more on strategies related to Amazon Advertising, check out this article.

Key Take-away

A shift in consumer behavior is occurring lately, where customers are doing most of their shopping online. Hence, it would be wise to use whatever online advertising tactics available to boost your sales. And a good Amazon PPC strategy is one of them.

If you wish to know more about Amazon PPC management or other Amazon-related services, you could have a quick chat with an Amazon PPC specialist at Seller Interactive. Schedule a call with our team by contacting us at [email protected] to get your queries addressed instantly.