Guest post by Danielle Canstello from Pyramid Analytics
So, you’ve taken the leap into selling a private label product on Amazon. You’ve done the work and found a profitable product, and created a high-converting product listing. Your next step is learning how to advertise your private label product on Amazon. We’re here to help.
Getting Started on Amazon Advertising
We’re assuming that you are well on your way to accomplishing, or have already accomplished, the following:
- Found a profitable product to sell
- Set up an Amazon Seller Account
- Created a high-converting product listing
- Taken photos of your product for the listing
- Established a price
- Written a great product title
- Established effective bullet points
- Chosen and added keywords to your product listing
- And, launched your product
Once you’ve accomplished that, you’re ready to start running Amazon-sponsored advertisements.
Utilising Amazon ads to drive traffic to your product listing is an effective use of your advertising money because people visit Amazon with the intent to purchase.
Using Amazon’s pay-per-click (PPC) ads means you pay Amazon a fee when a user clicks on your ad. The conversion rate is high because people are there to buy. That also means the relative cost-per-click (CPC) is low compared to other advertising formats.
With the Amazon PPC, you bid on advertisements that help your product appear on Page 1 of search results, as well as on remarketing advertisements outside of Amazon. In some instances, the ads will even appear on the pages of your competitors.
You may be asking:
Why would I advertise on Amazon, if people are already there? If I have a great product listing, effective bullet points, awesome pictures… won’t they find my product?
Here’s the kicker:
You should run Amazon ads to bring visibility to your products. After all, your products may not yet be ranking high enough in search to drive customers to your listing. Potential customers may be looking at competitors instead.
Step 1: Automated Sponsored Campaign
You can start out by running an automated campaign. This is when Amazon chooses what keywords to bid on, and then your ads just run on their own.
This is a good first step because you will gain valuable information in the form of keyword data and conversion data. This will help inform future campaigns for your products.
Here’s how you do it:
In Amazon Seller Central, go to:
Advertising > Campaign Manager
Create a new campaign, and give it a name.
Next, set a budget. To make it easy, choose an average daily budget of $20.
Then choose:
Automatic Targeting
Create an advertising group and name it. For instance, your first batch can be AdGroup1.
Then choose all the products for which you want to purchase ads, and set the default bid at $1.
Step 2: Data Analysis
Let your ads run for a few weeks. Then go into Seller Central and run a keyword report.
Advertising Reports > Search Term Report > Request Report
With the report, there are two key points on which you need to act.
First is to look at keywords that aren’t converting. You need to make a list of those for future reference.
Second, look for those keywords that performed the best. This will help inform your next campaign.
How do you know what’s performed best?
You need to analyse your advertising cost of sales (ACoS). This is calculated by dividing the total amount you spent on advertising by the number of attributed sales (sales that can be attributed to those ads).
For instance, if you spent $8 on advertising, and you made $40 in sales, your ACoS would be 20%.
Advertising cost of sales (ACoS) = Amount spent on advertising/Amount of attributed sales
Therefore, you want your ACoS to be 20% or less because that means you have maximised your visibility. You’ve also maximised your sales at a relatively low cost.
You need to monitor ACoS because it’s the most vital metric when it comes to an advertising campaign. The lower the cost, the better it is for you.
Using your analysis of ACoS, you will know your top performing keywords. They are the ones with an ACoS of 20% or lower.
Using this information, you can now move to building a manual campaign using those top keywords.
Step 3: Manual Campaign
This time, you will go to Amazon Seller Central, and once again click:
Advertising > Campaign Manager
You will once again create a new campaign, and give it a name.
This time, however, you will choose:
Manual Targeting
Create an ad group and choose your products. You will see a “Match Type” button where you will select “Exact.”
You then input your best performing keywords. For an ad bid, choose an amount of about 20% higher than what you used for your automated bid.
You’re not done yet.
There’s one final thing to do with your automated campaign.
In Campaign Manager, go into your automated campaign and choose “negative keywords.” Then input those best performing keywords as negative keywords in the automated campaign.
You might be thinking that’s crazy!
But it’s not.
You don’t want the automated campaign to interfere with the new, manual promotion.
Step 4: Let Them Run, Analyse, and Adjust
Now you let both campaigns run and monitor them both.
Keep an eye on the automated campaign, because it’s continually finding new keywords, and you can monitor the performance of those.
You also need to watch your manual campaign. While you know those keywords are converting, you may want to bid higher to help maximise your visibility on Amazon, and in turn, maximise your sales.
By tweaking and adjusting keywords and advertising bids, you will find your Amazon sales doubling and maybe even tripling.
Bonus Step: Questions About Your Product
Here’s one final thing you can do to help boost the visibility of your product.
Get your friends to ask questions on your listing. When that happens, Amazon sends emails to people who have purchased the product in the past, looking for answers.
That could help boost sales.
Final Thoughts
Like any business, selling products on Amazon takes time and requires a strategy. Your strategy should include advertising.
Advertising your private label product on Amazon will help increase your visibility in searches, and in turn, help boost sales of your product.
Our handy four-step guide – with a bonus if you choose to do it – will help you find success, increasing sales and profit for your business.
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