On Amazon, staying on top of your game as a seller includes you choosing from a range of Amazon campaign types. And expect the number of these new alternative ad angles to grow as Amazon’s efforts to make advertising more complex and intricate with each release.
As ad kinds become more complicated, additional advertising fields will be introduced on search engine result pages and product pages. It’s safe to state that advertising isn’t going away.
Because we start testing with these new ads more, complexity will most likely lead to more ad spend, which will benefit Amazon. Mastering and focusing on the fundamentals is more crucial than ever to stay on top of your game. Concentrate on enhancing product quality and regularly tweaking product listings to make the most of your advertising dollars.
With this logic in mind, some Amazon marketers may consider pausing campaigns in the hopes of maximising their efforts.
This is sometimes the best method. However, halting campaigns isn’t always a good idea. Continue reading to learn when it’s ideal to pause campaigns and what to do instead if that’s not the best plan for you.
When is it required to pause an Amazon Campaign ?
Let’s get to the point right away. When a campaign’s ad spend is too large and its ACoS ratio exceeds your account level objective, it’s preferable to suspend it. When this happens, your account level performance suffers.
You might also suspend your campaigns if you notice that they are experiencing deterioration without making any meaningful modifications.
Sponsored brand ads with out-of-stock products should be paused as well, if these products were driving the majority of sales. Because Sponsored Brand campaigns, unlike Sponsored Product campaigns, will continue to run even if the product is out of stock. That is the most rapid and effective way to get your ratios back on track.
Check if the portfolio/product level performance of the campaign in issue is on goal. If so, you have more freedom in letting them run. If your “north star” measure on a product level isn’t being fulfilled, you should definitely suspend the campaigns, especially if they’re spending a lot of money in comparison to your total weekly ad spend.
What is a north star measure ? The North Star Metric (NSM) is a metric that a company uses as a focus for their growth. This number best reflects the amount of value that your company brings to your customers. Amazon has “Number of purchases per month” as their North Star Metric
Another factor to consider when advertising on a younger account is that you may have established too many campaigns too soon. This can be unsuccessful at times since you are splitting your energy across too many campaigns. Simplicity should always be a cornerstone of any plan.
When there are too many campaigns, it is best to pause some of them and focus your marketing spending on fewer efforts that will receive more “ammunition,” so to speak.
If your campaigns are prone to Out Of Stock circumstances, items being out of season, or other similar issues, we recommend pausing campaigns rather than archiving them. Keep these campaigns because their historical campaign data will be useful in the future.
Another circumstance in which you should consider halting your campaign is if you have already harvested your campaigns to extremes, squeezing the life-juice out of them, or if you have too many meaningful conversions as negatives, particularly in auto campaigns. When this occurs, A10 concludes that the product is unsuitable for the search terms.
The reasons for pausing your campaigns are determined by both the stage of your product’s life cycle and the campaign’s aim.
When you are in an aggressive launch phase, you allow your campaigns greater flexibility. This also applies to ranking campaigns in which you are attempting to improve your product’s rating for specific search queries.
The A10 algorithm, which Amazon uses, assigns values to the variables in each campaign and determines which ad will win the auction and receive the click.
The ad with the highest projected CTR, CVR, and revenue will almost certainly win any auction. Amazon prefers predictability. High click-through rates and conversion rates are critical factors in the success of your advertising.
If you notice a drop in conversion or click-through rates in your account, it will lower your overall campaign score. To counteract dropping rates, halt the campaigns; take your “players” out of the game for a second and keep them there to save the campaign.
Let’s return to the coach analogy for a moment. You must choose one of two to enter into the game. One has a proven track record and experience, while the other is still talented but needs to show himself on the field owing to inexperience. Which one would you prefer? The player with a proven track record is most likely a safer investment.
All of these are valid grounds to pause Amazon promotions. Each argument, like everything else related to Amazon marketing, has its own nuance. Choosing what is best for you and your campaigns involves sound judgement and long-term planning.
How are old campaigns still valuable ?
According to Amazon’s definition of successful advertising, the winner of each auction in a bidding pool is determined by the click-through rate, which is the first variable considered by the A10 algorithm.
If your campaign’s CTR is less than 0.30 percent, there is an adjustable screw you can turn to boost the campaign score. In this case, the campaign is not progressing as quickly as it should. Because Amazon likes products having a higher possibility of earning a click in any bidding pool, you should pause the campaign and re-upload it.
Ideally, you want to figure out why your click-through rate was so low. Possible instances include keywords in the campaign that had a lot of impressions but had a lot of under-optimized clicks that weren’t all that relevant or were too wide. This lowers the overall campaign score. In that case, we propose separating those keywords into separate campaigns with different goals to ensure optimum CTR efficiency.
Because of their CTR history, old campaigns are still valuable. It is sometimes best to focus on the essentials, such as increasing your CTR, rather than pause your efforts.
Let’s see how to improve our CTR
Improving Your cTR
Primary Image and Title
We propose upgrading your listing’s primary image, incorporating the fathead of your main keyword in the title, optimising your listing page for mobile, and knowing who your competitors are.
The primary image is the most important click-through-rate aspect for a consumer, since it should break the client’s pattern recognition when scrolling through the search engine results page. Examine how your first image compares to your competitors’ and ask yourself honestly if you stand out from a customer standpoint.
The title is the first text a buyer will read. This is why stressing the primary term in the title is critical. Other text places can also be found in the title. Use this area to highlight the key characteristics of your product.
This descriptive text informs shoppers that your product is the one they are looking for, and they click on your product with the flick of a finger.
First impressions are important in real life and on Amazon because we are not selling B2C or B2B; we are selling B2People.
Relevant Keywords
Amazon informs you of which keywords get the most traffic (high CTR). CTR indicates whether your advertisements are reaching the intended audience. You can then eliminate the less relevant keywords from your list to save money.
The higher the CTR, the more relevant your keywords are and the greater your chances of attracting your target audience.
Reviews
This is another important feature that a buyer will consider before taking the time to click and inspect your product. Customers typically consider a product with more reviews to be more reliable since buyers trust purchasers.
Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
Typically, more than half of the shoppers are prime account members. Who wants to wait a week when they can get it in a day or two? Amazon Prime is only available for products Fulfilled by Amazon. Furthermore, Prime members spend twice as much as regular members. If there is a product in the listing that is as good as yours, but you have the added benefit of Amazon Prime delivery, the buyer will choose yours without hesitation.
As a result, Fulfillment by Amazon is a far better alternative than it appears to be.
Price
Needless to say, price is one of the most important variables that clients consider when deciding whether or not to purchase your product. It also has an impact on everything from cash flow to inventory. The pricing of your goods determines whether you make a profit or a loss. How does the price of the product effect your sales? If your product is under priced, purchasers are more inclined to conclude it is of poor quality. Similarly, if you overprice it, many of them will not bother to look at it.
Price reductions are another option for increasing CTR. They are a traditional, powerful, psychological motivator. If it makes sense for your pricing point, we recommend adopting dollar discounts rather than percentage reductions because it is a more tangible deduction in terms of customer psychology.
It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on your competitors. Understand who your competitors are in your bidding pools. Each bid will place you in a new bidding pool with other products, determining your CTR and CVR. Keep in mind that we are not operating in a bubble.
There are other things to consider when considering how to enhance your CTR approach, but another aspect that may influence whether or not pausing your Amazon advertisements is the right plan for you is CVR, or conversion rate.
What effect does CVR have on your Amazon Campaign
Following CTR, we would analyse conversion rate and expected revenue or average or value to identify the optimal strategy for pausing or not pausing Amazon advertising.
Amazon is a self-contained machine-learning system. As a result, it will most likely choose initiatives with more data that have already shown themselves.
The A10 algorithm relies on CVR because it constantly checks each product for maximum gain. The A10 is constantly asking, “What product can generate the most income while providing the best customer experience?”
To summarise, the product that generates the highest money while having the lowest return rate will be ranked first.
As a result, double down on the keyword sets you’re advertising on and make sure they’re as relevant as possible for these terms. Improving your CVR will raise the score of your campaign.
However, generating clicks for specific keywords (even if they are appropriate) and not converting leads the A10 to conclude that we are not creating revenue for that term.
If your CVR does not improve after adjusting for keyword relevance, try suspending and resubmitting the campaign since the algorithm’s historical conversion rate is too low.
We’ve encountered examples when campaigns are set up perfectly but aren’t generating impressions or have low click-through rates. This could be because you are uploading numerous campaigns in a single upload.
Despite being the most sophisticated e-commerce market in the world, Amazon’s system occasionally suffers registration troubles due to the volume of new campaigns published every second. Patience is a virtue you need to certainly have in such a situation.
When and Why should you reactivate a paused campaign
When it comes time to reactivate paused ads, keep in mind that the search volume for the item advertised in the previous campaign may have changed. Examine your competitors’ strategies to fine-tune and remodel your own.
Campaigns that have been removed from the game require maintenance in the same way as a vehicle does. Keep in mind that the sales velocity must be restored. Advertising campaigns can break down as a result of being harvested too much, too quickly, and for too long, and if they are not cared for like a mechanic, they will succumb to decay.
Finally, some campaigns can be kept running and have been shown to be effective following reactivation. However, in some situations, they never recover after being pressed too tightly.
In some ways, the A10 is similar to us. Yes, it is a machine learning system, but it reads our behaviour and, as far as we can tell and have observed, favours consistency in terms of spending volume.
Conclusion
In general, pausing Amazon marketing is an excellent way to immediately reduce high expenditures. You take the underperforming players “out of the game” for a short period of time in order to provide more budget or “play time” to campaigns that are performing well.
The overarching strategy we advocate is to put such campaigns in maintenance mode and analyse the Ins and Outs influencing CTR and CVR.
Finding the fundamental cause of a loss in performance is how we decide sensibly, rather than emotionally, what is the optimal plan based on data. The numbers speak to us, and we can only successfully decide if we listen to them and observe them objectively.
If you put in the effort and target the most relevant search phrases, you will gradually climb the ranks. Amazon is betting on you to win. There is no mystery here.
