You’ve taken the first steps to start growing your business on Amazon, but you know there’s room to improve: not just selling through Amazon, but advertising and becoming a real player on the platform. It’s a good idea—proper use of Amazon Advertising is an incredibly effective way of driving sales through the site. Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads are one of the advertising campaign types offered through AMS that showcase your brand and products at the top of search results pages. Those that take the time to optimize Sponsored Brand Ads see more sales and higher returns on their investments.
Sponsored Brand Ads use to only be available to first-party vendors, but in 2017, Amazon opened it up to 3P sellers through Seller Central. This means there is more competition for keywords and the need to optimize your campaigns is even more important. Here are 5 tips for optimizing your Sponsored Brand Ad campaigns:
The effectiveness of Sponsored Brand Ads stems from their placement above search results for a keyword or set of keywords. Of course, for your ad to show up, you have to target the keywords being searched. How do you maximize these searches?
First, don’t limit yourself. Use at least 25 keywords, and up to 50 if there are enough relevant keywords that fit your budget strategy. Expand the list as you figure out more relevant ones. Then, while making this keyword list, remember that it’s easy to forget the more subtle ways keywords can target your ads and get more hits.
Amazon will also suggest keywords as you type them in. Take advantage of this feature to use keywords you may not have considered. However, don’t just take them as they come—each suggested keyword has an indicator of how much traffic it gets. Since AMS ad products use auction-based pricing, the more heavily-searched keywords will cost more for your ad to show up. Balance the cost of the higher traffic keywords versus the impressions and decide what makes sense for your company.
This is a relatively simple idea, but a very effective tip to optimize Sponsored Brand Ads. Instead of an ad that tells customers what your product is, use wording that you would say to them face-to-face.
For example, imagine seeing the ad “We Have The Longest Lasting Fluorescent Light Bulbs” somewhere in the physical world. It sounds like something you’d only see on a sign in a store window, right? On the other hand, if the message is, “Our Fluorescent Bulbs Last Ten Times Longer,” that’s something a salesman would tell a customer face-to-face. It’s even better if your message uses “you” in it—”You’ll Save $100 Per Year With Fluorescent Bulbs” speaks directly to the customer and their probable desire to save money.
Finally, use actionable phrases as often as possible. These are phrases designed to improve click-throughs by giving people a reason to visit your landing page. Some good actionable phrases for HSAs are “Explore”, “Get X% Off”, and almost anything that includes the word “Free”.
There are a plethora of examples of items which have very little in common in the real world, but could very easily wind up on each other’s search results: paper towels, dish towels, and bath towels, or ski gloves and work gloves. You want to make sure that your ad campaign targets people looking for your specific offerings.
The main way to do this is to be specific in your ads. If you sell skiing equipment and have an ad for gloves, make sure it says you’re selling ‘ski gloves’. However, using your brand name is just as important, and sometimes obviates the need to be ultra-specific. North Face, for example, can put their name on an ad (“North Face Gloves”) and know that people will connect their gloves with cold-weather activities. And if you’re still building brand recognition, do both: ‘Get Your Newbie Brand Ski Gloves On Sale’ shows exactly what you’re selling and connects your company with that product type in customers’ minds.
A great deal of old advertising knowledge has been washed away in the online world, but at least one thing remains true: the consistency of your advertising is paramount. Unless you have very solid data to indicate you should only run HSA campaigns at certain times of the year (or, say, you’re a Valentine’s Day-specific company), keep them going year round to increase your visibility. People who see your name on ads in August and September will remember that when it comes time to do Christmas shopping, and there’s always a reason (Prime Day, anyone?) to have ads on the site.
And while you’re running year round…
Play with your advertisements. Once you have baseline metrics for different points in the year, make changes to the ads to see what gets more attention. Alter the ad headline and image, the ASINs in the ad, or what customers see on your landing pages. Do, at minimum, A/B testing—run multiple campaigns simultaneously, changing one variable at a time and letting it run for 2-4 weeks to see if there are any substantive changes in your data. Treat that time frame as a minimum; if, for example, you’ve started seeing better click-through rates in the last two days, you can run the test longer to see if it continues or if it was just a data blip. You can’t run a test forever, but more data is always good.
Using these tips, you can optimize Sponsored Brand Ads and get the most out of each advertising dollar you spend on Amazon.
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