What is Amazon Marketing Service?
Amazon Marketing Service(AMS) is Amazon’s platform where the sellers can get visibility for their product(s) in front of relevant visitors through pay-per-click (PPC) model based on the keywords, products, and shopper interests. The traffic generated through PPC ads is directly proportional to how relevant you are to the buyer’s desired product.
For most Amazon sellers, advertising will inevitably take up most of the part of their overall strategy. It is quite difficult if you don’t know where and how to start. If you’re selling or planning to sell on Amazon, it’s important to become familiar and know everything that you’re supposed to about Amazon Marketing Service.
Amazon offers the below services through AMS:
- Sponsored Products Ads
- Product Display Ads
- Headline Search Ads
- Amazon Pages
Why is Amazon Marketing Service Important?
The Amazon AMS products make your product(s) visible to as many relevant shoppers. They offer an interesting possibility:
You can target individual product detail pages through Amazon Marketing Services.
Your ad will appear just when customers are about to purchase your competitor’s product, giving you a chance at changing their minds at the last minute. This way, you will have a greater chance at impressing the buyers into purchasing your product.
How to become eligible for Amazon Marketing Services?
Only approved Amazon accounts qualify for Amazon Marketing Service.
You need any one of the six mentioned credentials to access AMS:
- Seller Central Account
- A Vendor Central login
- An Advantage Central login
- A Vendor Express login
- An invitation to represent a vendor
- A Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account
Types of AMS Ads:
There are three types of AMS ad campaigns:
- Sponsored Products Ads
- Product Display Ads
- Headline Search Ads
Sponsored Product Ads
Sponsored Product Ads are a crucial part of Amazon’s Pay-Per-Click Advertising that increase the visibility of your product. They make your products more discoverable to potential buyers.
With Sponsored Product Ads, you can target keywords that are relevant to the search term of the potential buyer. In automatic keyword targeting, Amazon decides the most relevant keywords for your products. Pay-per-click advertising shows up your product’s ad to the visitor and in return, you pay amazon whenever the viewer clicks on it.
When a shopper clicks on your product’s sponsored ad, they will be taken to the ad’s product detail page. These ads are keyword-targeted. They are displayed on the top or bottom of the search results page.
Let’s say you want to purchase a hair straightener. As a buyer, it is apparent that if you find the product you wish to buy as soon as you look up using the search engine, you wouldn’t consider scrolling further. This is why you must attract the shopper with the relevant product before your competitors. Amazon PPC Ads help you do just that as they are located in prime positions for your buyer to notice them. They appear at:
- Top of the search result page
- At the bottom of the search result page
- On the product detail pages
Due to the position of Amazon PPC Ads on the search result page, they help you attract your traffic. The shopper is taken to your product’s detail page on clicking your ad after which his/her purchase decision primarily depends on how you persuade him/her to convert the click into a sale through your description.
Are you eligible to access Sponsored Product Ads?
To access Sponsored Product Ads or SPAs, an Amazon seller has to meet a few requirements.
Sponsored Product Ads are only available to :
- Professional Sellers
- Retail Vendors
- Kindle Direct Publishing Authors
To be eligible to use sponsored ads, your product has to be new, eligible for the Buy Box, and listed in a qualifying product category.
How much do Amazon Sponsored Product Ads cost?
On average, for every ad click, Amazon sellers pay $0.81.
However, this ad cost is not set in stone. Keywords have the most notable impact on the cost of your Sponsored Product Ads. For example, if you’re bidding on keywords with a high competition and cost-per-click, it will cost you more.
AiHello AutoPilot is a new Amazon PPC automation tool that automatically adjusts your bids, bid boost, placement, and budget for your Amazon ads to increase sales and lower ad costs. It enables you to monitor your ads and automate the bids continuously to minimize your ad spend and also boost your sales.
Using automation, the AutoPilot ensures that you don’t overspend on ads and keeps your sales flowing.
How to create a Sponsored Product Ads campaign?
Creating campaigns:
To create a Sponsored Product Ads Campaign:
- Go to the campaign manager in amazon seller central and click on create a campaign.
- To create an automatic campaign, click on automatic.
- It is always best to put an apt name for your campaign to avoid confusion.
- Enter the start date, end date, daily budget and finally input a default bid and Amazon will take care of the rest.
- Click launch campaign to launch it.
Do’s and Don’ts:
1. Use different types of effective strategies like using video ads or an attractive yet genuine product image ad etc.
2. Do not bid on too expensive and irrelevant keywords. They take up most of the budget and end up ruining you PPC campaign.
Sponsored Display Ads
Sponsored Display Ads are quite a competitive choice for Amazon Advertisers. They were formerly known as Product Display Ads. These ads focus on how relevant your product is to the shopper’s interests and can give your product decent exposure. Instead of bidding on keywords, Sponsored Display Ads look for similarities and relevance between your product and buyer’s interests, product categories, and select products.
Shopping on Amazon is all about relevance. With Product Display Ads, you can upsell your products to shoppers in your target audience who have a similar interest. This also allows your business to reach out and connect with shoppers that your competitors’ ads would have missed.
Like Sponsored Product Ads and Sponsored Brands, however, Product Display Ads also use a PPC advertising model which means that you only pay when a buyer clicks your ad. Instead of bidding on keywords, you’re solely bidding on clicks.
Amazon features two types of targeting options namely, interest-based targeting and product-based targeting:
Interest-based targeting: With interest-based targeting, you target shoppers by their wider interests. This helps you reach a wider range of audiences and build your brand, which has positive impacts on your selling business.
Product-based targeting: With product-based targeting, you target related, complementary, or adversary products on Amazon. It is helpful if you’re looking to gouge your opponent’s sales or promote your product’s suitability as an add-on purchase.
Where do these Display Ads appear?
Amazon Product Display Ads appear in the following locations:
- Related product detail pages
- Merchandising emails
- Customer review pages
- Amazon websites like IMDb
- Amazon devices such as Amazon Fire
- Amazon Demand Side Platform (DSP)
With Product Display Ads you can reach a wider audience than the other two types of advertising since they are way more relevant than the former types of Ads.
How do you create a Product Display Ad campaign?
Build your Sponsored Display Ads by implementing these steps:
- Log on to your Amazon Advertising account.
- Select “Choose a Campaign Type,”
- Click “Product Display”.
- Choose “Product targeting” or “Interest-based targeting” based on your preference.
- Pick the product you want to advertise.
- Select the products or interests you want to target.
- Create your campaign name, budget, and bid.
- Set your campaign start date and duration.
- Enter your ad headline and upload your brand logo.
- Submit your campaign for review
Just like other ads, Display Ads take around 72 hours to get approved.
Do’s and Don’ts:
- In Vendor Central, you can create Vendor Powered Products. When you set up your Product Display Ads, you can also promote your VPCs. This encourages more shoppers to click on your ad and buy your product.
- Run your campaigns continuously as this will boost your chances of being visible to the potential buyer and thus, increase sales.
What Are Headline Search Ads?
Headline Search Ads are a type of ad campaign that enables Amazon sellers to promote their products and brand to Amazon shoppers. These ads are keyword targeted and also operate on a pay-per-click basis. Headline Search Ads are located at the top of the customer search results page, whether the customer is shopping from a desktop page or a mobile app.
How are Headline Search Ads Different From Sponsored Product Ads?
Sponsored Product Ads look similar to search results in size and content. However, Headline Search Ads are spread across the entire top of the search results page. This makes them stand out from the rest of the search result products listed. Headline Search Ads contain a brand logo, a custom message, and three distinct products of the brand. If a customer clicks on any one of the three distinct products featured in the Headline Search ad, they will be sent to the detail page of that particular product. However, if the shopper clicks on the brand logo or headline of the ad they will be taken to a search results page that includes products that the seller has chosen to display.
Creating a Headline Search Ad
Build your Headline Search Ads by implementing these steps:
- Qualify to gain access
To make sure you qualify to access Headline Search Ads, you must meet the mentioned requirements:
- Have a registered brand
- You have to be a professional seller
- You must have at least three products from the open categories for Headline Search Ads
- Decide what goes in
Here you decide how the customer sees your ad. You put together the incomplete parts of this puzzle to make your ad look relevant and complete.
- Define a business goal for your Headline Search Ad
- List of target shoppers including most probable relevant keywords
- Decide the ad budget
- Design Custom Ad message
- Design a brand logo (about 400×400 pixel)
- Create the ad
To create a Headline Search Ad,
- Navigate to Campaign Manager in the Seller Central
- Select ‘Headline Search Ads’
- Click on ‘Create Campaign’
- Get approval
After creating your Headline Search Ad, it will go through a moderation process for Amazon to ensure it meets their standards. However, for a quicker approval:
- Have a unique headline that matches your top keywords of the products featured in the ad.
- Make sure you make no spelling to punctuation errors.
- Do not use words like ‘best’ or ‘top-selling
Best Practices for Headline Search Ad
- Headline
The headline is the most crucial part of your ad as this creates the first impression on the buyers. Keep it unique, clear, and relevant. It should align with the ad’s major business goal.
- Relevant Keywords
Since these ads are also pay-per-click, choose the keywords that are high converting and relevant. Remove the negative performing keywords from your campaign.
- Observe your metrics
While running your ad campaign, keep an eye on performance metrics and note what’s working for you and what’s not. This way, you can further improve your ad campaign to boost your sales.
- Optimize
The key to a successful ad campaign is to never stop improving it. Test, observe, and improve. By continuous optimization of your ad campaign, you will notice a drastic improvement in the sale of the items.
Take Away
Marketing plays a crucial role in bringing in the right traffic for your products and brands. Amazon offers wonderful marketing services to retailers which properly used, boost the sales and show a powerful impact in the journey of becoming a successful Amazon Seller.
