PPC Strategies Boost Sales
Properly designed and executed PPC (Pay Per Click) strategies improve your brand visibility and market performance.
Table of Contents
Long-Tail Keywords
For new Amazon sellers, long-tail keywords are the best place to start with your PPC strategies. This is how you make inroads against more established Amazon sellers with recognizable brands. You can’t compete using the same most-searched keywords they use. You’ll just end up spending a lot of money without getting sufficient conversions. Even if you get ad impressions, your competitors have better market positions and reputations using these generic keywords. With long-tail keywords, you have less competition. Once customers become more aware of your brand and products, then you can start to target the more generic keywords.
There are insurance requirements and some fees to dropship on Amazon, but you pay similar fees on almost any other dropship platform.
Let’s say you just started to sell knife sharpeners. Your PPC strategies here are to start with the long-tail keyword “easy to use electric knife sharpener” or “convenient home electric knife sharpener” or “professional quality stainless steel electric knife sharpener.” After you get some sales as a result of these queries, you can refine it a bit, to something like, “pro electric knife sharpener” or “premium knife sharpener.” At some point as your product gains increased market visibility, Amazon’s algorithms effectively rank your product anytime someone searches for a “knife sharpener.”
It almost goes without saying that any keyword must be relevant to your product. For example, you might think it’s clever to use an “electric knife sharpener” as a way to attract shoppers even if you are actually selling a manual stone knife sharpener. All you’ll do is pay for ads that don’t convert when shoppers read and realize the product isn’t electric. PPC strategies that employ bait-and-switch tactics are arguably not ethical, but more importantly, they don’t work.
Target Alternative Keywords
Another thing to look at is keywords that position your product differently than a description. Sometimes shoppers are looking for product benefits rather than details. For example, tea can come in many flavors, in bags or loose leaves.
The keyword “black tea bags” is probably employed by a host of beverage sellers on Amazon. But perhaps your tea is best described as “healthy sleepytime tea” or perhaps “antioxidant immune builder tea.”
Rank Optimization
shoppers are looking for product benefits rather than details. For example, tea can come in many flavors, in bags or loose leaves.
The keyword “black tea bags” is probably employed by a host of beverage sellers on Amazon. But perhaps your tea is best described as “healthy sleepytime tea” or perhaps “antioxidant immune builder tea.”
Adjust Bids Based on Ad Placements
Amazon PPC ads appear in the top, middle, and bottom of search results on page one, as well as the rest of the search results on the second page and beyond.
PPC ads also appear on the product details page and other positions other than search results, such as the add-to-cart page.
Run a placement report to identify where you get the most impressions, the Click-Through-Rate (CTR), and ultimate sales. Based on that analysis, adjust your bidding strategy to where you think you’ll get the best chance of conversions and extend brand awareness.
PPC Strategies for Bidding
There are three types of PPC strategies for bidding:
1. Dynamic Bids - Down Only.
- Bids are lowered in real-time in accordance with determinations by Amazon algorithms that an ad is less likely to get conversions.
2. Dynamic Bids - Up and Down.
- Similarly, bids are raised or lowered in real-time depending on the likelihood of conversion. The maximum raise for a nid is 100%.
3. Fixed Bids.
- As the name implies, there are no adjustments to these bids.
Group Variations
If your product has multiple variations listed as child ASINs, it’s costly to run separate campaigns for each variation. Advanced PPC strategies, therefore, dictate grouping variations into a single package under one unique ASIN.
For example, group four flavors of dog food in a single pack as a discounted package. Shoppers love package deals, so this helps increase your brand exposure while making the best optimal use of your ad budget.
PPC Strategies When You Can’t Group
But what if creating a package isn’t practical for some reason (sure you’ve got multiple colors and options for a product, but customers are likely to only want one variation)? Look at your top-performing variation to run your PPC campaign. When customers click on these ads, they’ll see your other variations and may opt for a variation other than the original show.
PPC (pay-per-click) ads that you only pay for when someone clicks on them. While there’s no guarantee clicking on an ad always results in a purchase, it does increase the chances.
Base PPC Strategies on Product Performance
This seems a bit obvious, but base your PPC strategies on product performance as opposed to simply keyword research to better control your budget. A profitable PPC campaign depends on knowing your break-even ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales).
This is a metric for determining the amount of money spent on PPC compared to how much revenue the PPC spending generates.
Basing PPC strategies on product performance optimizes your ad spend. Let’s say you have an ad group in which your ACoS for one product is 50% but the others average around 10%; take out the one product that is making the ACoS for the entire ad campaign higher.
So now you’ve just reduced your ad spend for those remaining products and improved the performance of the ad campaign
Product Targeting PPC Strategies
You can target customers by specific products and categories. This is a good way to boost underperforming products. Create product targeting ads for one or two underperforming products to appear on your top ASINs. Run a campaign for a few weeks to determine its effectiveness. If you’re getting results, great, if not, stop. Rinse and repeat for other underperforming products on Amazon.
Similarly, place your product ads on listings that appear on Google Ads, Facebook ads, and other social media influencer sites. Again, evaluate each campaign after a few weeks to determine your ad ROI (Return on Investment).
Study Hourly Data
Review the hourly performance of your PPC ads and make adjustments as needed. Look for:
- Times when you attract the most traffic
- The average time it takes shoppers to convert after clicking on your PPC ad
- Time of day when ACoS lowest
- How shopper behavior changes over certain periods, e.g., weekends, holidays
Coupons
Shoppers love coupons. A green coupon badge visible on different PPC campaign images can dramatically increase CTR.
Sponsored Products
If you register your brand in the Amazon product registry, take advantage of Sponsored Brands ads that you can customize to promote your products and increase brand visibility. They also include a video option, a feature which itself can spur sales.
According to Amazon, Sponsored Brands videos can achieve a 108.1% CTR increase compared to non-video Sponsored Brands ads.
GETIDA Optimizes ROI of PPC Strategies
Successful PPC strategies result in higher sales. For Amazon FBA sellers, higher sales mean
Amazon handles larger volumes of shipments and customer returns. This means the likelihood of errors performing order fulfillment increases as well.
Amazon owes you reimbursement for these errors. But it is mostly up to you to identify these errors and submit the necessary claims.
With all the time spent on developing PPC strategies, you don’t have extra time to continually monitor your accounts for errors, let alone complete and submit claims. GETIDA saves you that time and money. GETIDA software reviews the past 18 months of your Amazon FBA transactions to identify instances that qualify for reimbursement. With your approval, the appropriate claims are then filed.
GETIDA’s only fee to provide this service is a percentage of approved claims. And the first $400 in FBA reimbursement is free.
That’s a strategy that is very easy to execute.
