Amazon has not stopped enticing both customers and sellers to its marketplace since its inception because of the convenience and low pricing it offers. It is why it held a whopping 37.2% of the US eCommerce market share in June 2022, the largest share by a long stretch.
If you’re an entrepreneur looking to take your brand to new heights, then you cannot go wrong with choosing Amazon marketplace as your eCommerce selling platform of choice.
But you should be aware of the competition that exists there as well. You’ll need to market your business using means that include both SEO (for organic results) and paid methods like Amazon PPC marketing.
The latter gives a wide visibility net as it helps your product ads appear in organic searches along with other ad spots on the platform, further enhancing brand reach.
But conducting PPC without an effective strategy that includes a good cost-benefit ratio will make you struggle with ROI.
This guide is intended to help you avoid the trap of poor Amazon PPC action by informing you of the top strategies for it in 2023.
You’ll also learn about the role external Amazon PPC management service providers can play in making your PPC campaign on the platform a rewarding one.
The Best 2023 Amazon PPC Strategies to Save Costs
Listed below are the best ways you can lower your Amazon PPC costs.
1. Start with Long-tail Keywords and Move Up the Order
All searches give results based on the terms customers use while looking for their favorite products on Amazon. So, your product page titles and descriptions should contain these terms, called Keywords, if you want them to appear in those searches.
Furthermore, Amazon also allows you to bid on certain keywords, especially those used most frequently by searchers and sellers.
These frequently-used keywords entail high cost-per-click, along with high competition, opening the door for you to lose money on respective PPC campaigns. Hence, you should use long-tail or lower-value keywords when starting on the platform, or if you’ve launched a new product.
You won’t have to spend much to use them as they don’t have much demand. It also means that your product pages will get ranked easily.
The high intent of purchase leads to more sales instead of prospective customers browsing through many options with the same keywords as would be the case with high-value keywords. You can move up the keyword hierarchy once your brand gets the needed recognition and sales flow to justify its use.
2. Use Alternative Keywords
Amazon search doesn’t just attract people looking for a particular product. It also brings in people who are searching for a solution to their problems.
Think of it as Google search, wherein when looking for solutions to one’s problems, the user receives product suggestions from Amazon that can solve the problem. This feature has given sellers a novel Amazon PPC marketing paradigm that can be used to gain more customers without having to spend extra PPC money.
With the use of alternate keywords, you can ensure that you get your products featured in PPC ads when searches for solutions occur instead of product-related ones.
All you need to do is recognize the solutions your products can provide and tailor your bids for keywords that emphasize those solutions. When used in conjunction with the product-based keyword strategy, you effectively double the ad appearance chances and the click-through rates of those ads.
3. Combine Variations into Groups
Products tend to come in variations as customers want different versions of a product according to their tastes. You may have listed these variations as child ASINs, effectively isolating them into separate products even though they fall under a single-parent product.
Approaching advertising for them in a similar, isolated fashion is bound to run up your ACoS because the variations may end up competing against each other for ad slots and overshoot your budget limitlessly.
You could instead group these child ASINs into a single package and sell it on the platform using a single ASIN. Since in this case, you’ll be leveling the PPC costs for all included variants, you won’t have to worry about ad cost overruns. It also improves brand visibility in the market because customers will find a good deal for all of those variants instead of having to purchase each individually.
4. Target Ads for Your Top Child ASIN
Not all variants will perform equally well, and you will know which of the lot for a parent ASIN is doing well. If you cannot combine multiple variants into a single group and run a campaign for it, then you can choose to run a PPC ad campaign for the most performing child ASIN.
If you struggle with handling this task yourself, opting for an external Amazon PPC management agency will help to recognize and tailor your most-performing child ASIN ad campaign easily.
They will analyze the ad performance for variants using KPIs like click-through rates and absolute sales figures. They’ll then single out the required variant from it and construct a custom ad campaign that focuses on highlighting the best features about that child ASIN that are making it sell well. This has a snowball effect where the sales for other child ASINs of the parent product increase as well without the need for spending money on separate ad campaigns for them.
5. Automate Your Bids
Automation is everywhere in 2023, and it should also be in your Amazon PPC bid placement process.
There are automation tools for this that you can use, or you can ask your Amazon PPC services provider to set it up for you.
Automation should be pursued here because of the many conveniences it offers along with cost reductions.
They can supplement your research process for your Amazon ad campaigns since these tools also come with keyword finders that search and provide the most-performing keywords on the platform for a given product or category. This helps you to find the right formula for bidding success, which will include cost optimization.
The experience you gain through automated bidding can be transferred over to manual bidding campaigns as well, along with the best time to review the campaign strategies.
Note that overusing automation will lead to a waste of money; so, it should be used in moderation along with manual campaigns.
6. Go for Placement-based Ad Bidding
There are three places where a PPC ad of yours could appear on the Amazon marketplace: top of a search results page, in between the search results (which includes somewhere in the middle, at the list’s bottom, the SERPs second page, and beyond), and in product details page/other positions beyond search results pages.
Amazon has provided sellers with new bidding features, with which you can choose where in those positions your ads can appear.
As a part of your Amazon PPC management, you can view reports that show in which of the three positions your ads are bringing in the visibility and conversions.
You can adjust the placement bidding multiplier based on that information for every placement, helping you improve the odds of conversion and brand visibility.
7. Try Different Match Types
This strategy is a carry-over from previous years but works just as well in 2023 as it has done thus far. Here, you choose the type of keyword matching you want for your ads.
These vary based on how closely a search term matches the keywords you’ve used in the ads. There are four options to choose from:
- Phrase Match: Your ad will show up whenever a phrase on a set of words in a search query matches with those in your ad. This happens even if the phrase/word set is present as a part of some other terms.
- Broad Match: Your ads will show up for keywords you’ve used and their variations. This includes related terms, different forms of the words, plurals, and abbreviations.
- Exact Match: Your ads are shown only when a search query matches your keywords exactly. No variations of it are accepted.
- Modified Match: If your brand is registered with Amazon, then you are permitted to use this type of matching. This option allows you to designate terms that should be present in searches for your ad campaigns.
Every type has a different cost, with the exact type costing the most since it is the most effective. Broad match type works for some mid-performing keywords, while phrase matching is the least expensive and most performing one of the lot. If you’re new and are using long-tail keywords, then phrase matching is the type to go with for your ad campaign.
8. Routinely Analyze Market Behavior
Market trends change all the time, and can do so at a moment’s notice. It helps your ad ROI to stay with a trend instead of going against it or away from it. For this, you should have good knowledge about the target market’s preferences as it stands during the ad campaign’s period.
Learn about the target audience’s preferred shopping timings, the average purchase expenses, the types of products they typically purchase, and the kind of ads they respond to generally.
Factors like these clue you in on what the target demographic needs, when that product is needed, and for what cost.
You can then tailor your ad campaign accordingly, thereby minimizing excesses. This market analysis must be done routinely to maintain the market relevance of ad campaigns.
If you find that this task is difficult due to the volume of data involved and the time it takes, then you can have an Amazon PPC Virtual Assistant handle it for you. They’ll be familiar with market research and can deliver the required data within set deadlines and budgets.
Conclusion
Selling on Amazon is a riddle for any entrepreneur, with various challenges and rewarding situations. Going with the right PPC ad campaign that brings in good ROI without affecting budgets is one of those challenges that can have good rewards if done right.
By using the tactics mentioned above, along with assistance from a dedicated Amazon PPC services provider, you can run exactly that kind of PPC campaign for all variants of your products. It’ll enable your brand to gain more market visibility, value, trust, and ultimately, a good future.
FAQs
- How to budget for an Amazon PPC campaign?
There are many factors to consider while budgeting for your Amazon PPC campaign. Your industry/niche matters as you’ll have to sell low-cost products in large volumes for profitability, thus needing more ads.
The duration of the campaign matters too, as well as your target sales figures.
Your target ACoS figure, bidding strategy employed, average ROI target, keyword choice, outsourcing costs, and competitor ad activity are the other considerations for budgeting.
- Which is better for managing an Amazon PPC campaign: Automation or Outsourcing?
If you’re running the campaign in-house, then automation is inevitable. It takes a lot of micromanagement off your and your employees’ shoulders.
But it will add to your operational costs due to software subscription/purchase, and hiring of experts to handle the process.
The more common industry option is outsourcing, where you get all of those things at a reasonable price.
You won’t have to manage the necessary tools or personnel for the job. The outsourcing agency will also use automation, so you’re not missing out on that.
