7 Tips to Optimize Your Amazon PPC Ads

There are a lot of suggestions on optimizing Amazon PPC ads , and the content is similar. This article will introduce you to 7 optimization techniques that even your competitors don’t know. Let’s take a look.

1. Adjust the targeting of automatic ads

Amazon's automatic campaigns target both keywords and ASINs. So if you want to download a search term report for Auto Campaigns, you’ll notice that some of the results in the report start with B0, like this:

All those starting with B0 are ASINs. This type of search term is not a search term entered by the user. In reality they are competitors’ products. This means your ad was placed on relevant product pages.

So how do you know whether keywords or ASINs are more effective?

First, let’s understand a fact: for any automatic campaign created after November 15, 2018, there are 4 types of ad targeting for sellers to choose from, including:

• Close match
• Loose match
• Substitutes
• Complements

The first two are keyword positioning, and the last two are product positioning. For example, if you sell combs and hair spray, they may be complementary products. If you choose complementary product ad positioning, your product ad will appear below the hair spray.

Among these positionings, the advertising effects of exact matches and substitute products are better than those of fuzzy matches and complementary products. Sellers can test which positioning is more suitable for your products and pause those ads that are not performing well.

2. Scientific Computing Bidding

Some sellers bid quite casually. They increase the bid if the keyword is effective, and lower the bid if the effect is poor. The bidding height is entirely based on guesswork, and they suspend keyword advertising if they see that the ACOS is too high.

Sellers need to use a more scientific method to calculate keyword bids. You can find the perfect bid for your keyword using this formula:

• Total sales/total clicks*target ACOS

This formula first calculates how much revenue each click of a keyword can bring, and then sets the target ACOS as the percentage between the cost per click and the revenue per click. It is best to calculate the bid for each keyword.

For example, if your cost per click is 20% of your revenue per click, then your target ACOS is 20%.

If a keyword has not yet received sales and the revenue per click has not been calculated, the following formula can be used:

• Expected conversion rate * sales price * target ACOS

3. Diversified advertising targeting

It’s not enough to run just one campaign per product. You should run multiple campaigns per product to take advantage of the multiple ad targeting options Amazon offers.

The first campaign you run should be automatic campaigns, which can find search keywords that you wouldn’t find on your own. Automatic advertising is one of the ways many sellers collect keywords that can generate sales.

In addition, sellers also need to create manual ads and optimize the bid for each keyword based on the performance of the ads. In addition to keyword advertising, sellers need to create product targeting ads and use a single ASIN or category as the ad targeting.

Headline search ads and display ads are also types that sellers should try.

4. The structure of the advertising account must be clear

A mistake many sellers make is not having a clear campaign structure. Not only is it inconvenient for sellers to view advertisements, it can also easily reduce the overall advertising effectiveness.

• Group by price

Sellers can classify ads based on product attributes, such as grouping ads for products with similar prices.

Even if the products are the same (e.g. 7 oz and 120 oz), grouping the ads for these two products together will make it difficult to calculate the bid within this group because the product prices are different, as the revenue per click depends on the sales price and the product conversion rate. Ad bids for high-priced products are generally higher than those for low-priced products.

So you can group ads by product price.

Or, create an ad group for each product.

5. Avoid keyword duplication

When two of your different campaigns or ad groups are bidding on the same keyword, your automatic campaign may win the impression with a higher bid, especially if your manual campaign has an exact match keyword and the bid is more in line with your budget.

To prevent this from happening, you must add the exact match keywords in your manual ads as negative keywords for your automatic ads to prevent your automatic ads from appearing in search results for exact match keywords.

Perform the above operation for both broad match and phrase match in manual ads. It is also recommended to set up an ad group for each different type of match.

6. Optimize category positioning

When using product targeting ads, you can optimize your product targeting ads based on these three options:

• brand
• score
• price

Suppose, a yoga mat costs $35 and has an average rating of 2 stars. The buyer scrolls down and finds an ad for the same yoga mat that costs only $30 and has a rating of 4 stars. Do you think the user will click on the ad?

So target your ads to products that have a rating of 1-3 stars, and your click-through and conversion rates will go up. If you target products with 4-5 stars, users will not be interested in clicking on your product, especially if your rating is lower than theirs.

The same principle applies to brand and price positioning. In short, position yourself on listings that have no advantages over your products.

7. Use tools

In any industry today, tools are the weapons that people cannot do without. Amazon PPC also has many optimization tools, such as studying how to quote, setting negative keywords, etc.

If you have more than 10 campaigns and your monthly ad spend exceeds $1,000, you may want to consider using tools to help you with your marketing efforts and lighten your load.

By mastering the above 7 skills, you will be able to run Amazon ads easily and improve your conversion rate.

The above are seven tips for optimizing Amazon PPC ads that I have compiled for you today. The effectiveness still needs to be verified and improved in practice.

Author: AMZ123 Cross-border E-commerce

Source: AMZ123 Cross-border E-commerce