What is Amazon PPC?

Amazon PPC — it’s a cost-effective way to boost your sales. But is it worth it? How to create a powerful campaign if you don’t have any Amazon experience? We understand your struggles. That’s why we at Sponsoreds write the fullest online guide about Amazon PPC: what is it and how to set up a successful campaign.

Is Amazon Advertising worth it? 

Yes, it is worth the time and effort you put into it. It is essential to promote your goods in the marketplace. It will increase hot traffic to your products. It works effectively for both small and big businesses.

When you set up an Amazon PPC internet marketing campaign properly, you can achieve marvelous results. 

In Amazon Advertising you don’t need to set a long sequence of actions like in other types of online marketing. Your sales funnel will be 3-4 steps smaller than usual, so you don’t risk losing a lot of clients on this path.

3 types of Amazon ads or why choose Sponsored Products

There are three main types of Amazon Ads: sponsored products, brands, and displays. Many sellers ask themselves: “How to run an Amazon PPC campaign and which strategy should I choose?”. The first one is the most versatile and suits anyone. Meanwhile, the brands and display types of advertisement suit limited business. They are still effective, but they are just not for everyone.

Sponsored Products

This advertisement is quite similar to Google Adwords. A customer writes a request in the search bar, and the marketplace shows them promoted goods in one of the three places: above, below, or on the right side of the search results. Also, it could appear on the product detail pages. Amazon Sponsored Products Cost Per Click goods will be on top of the search so that it can reach more potential customers. 

For example: if a person wants to find an “iPhone charger” and you promote your tech with that term, the user sees it in the search results. If they write “Charger for Android”, they don’t see your ad, because it’s not relevant to them.

Marketplace charges you only when a user clicks on your ad. If they see your promotion but don’t interact with it, you don’t spend a dime. That’s why it gives you control over your marketing budget. It’s the most popular type of ad on Amazon: you will see it almost everywhere on the marketplace. Plus, it has the best ROI (return of investment rate) among all the ad types. 

Sponsored Brands

This Amazon Display Pay-Per-Click option suits you if you are selling your brand. Also, you can use it if you have a “private label” type of business: when another manufacturer creates a product for you and you just put the label on the final goods.

Approve the official connection with the brand, and promote those products. If you are reselling goods of other brands, you can’t use this category.

If you want to find some Baseus products, you see the “Sponsored Brand” ad from the official Baseus online shop. No other shops can create the brand type of ad for this brand. Yes, even if it authorized sellers such as BestBuy.  

This way of promotion appears above the search results (even higher than “sponsored products”), on the left part, and at the bottom of the search results. You can promote multiple (up to 3) goods in the campaign.

Sponsored Display

This type of ads customers will see on the product detail and customer review pages of other products. It’s rarely seen on the top of the offer listing page. But it is more like the exception of the “product” rule. You should be careful when you set up this type of ad. Carefully choose the goods that show on your promo.

Choose ASINs of your competitor carefully: this is how you win a competition attack and attract new followers. If you are a small seller that tries to promote on the page of a popular seller, a customer mostly chooses a big one. It will give them an illusion of security.

The main feature of the display ad: is the ability to re-target users, who have already seen your and your rival’s competitor pages or used relevant search terms lately. Also, they could be displayed even off the marketplace on the sponsor ads. It increases retargeting opportunities.

Why is it important to run Amazon Ads to improve organic sales?

If you think that right after you stop to promote your goods their sales drastically fall, you are wrong. Stick to our instructions, and everything will go nice and smooth.

Create an SEO-optimized product card with A+ content: high-resolution photos, videos, and specifications of the product. It will make it more appealing to the potential customer. 

They will see advertised goods, click, buy them and leave a review. It boosts your rating in the ranking system. It levels your products up in the organic search section called “more results,” so you could sell without such aggressive advertising. 

Difference between Seller Central vs. Vendor Central

There are two types of logging on Amazon as a seller. It’s via Seller Central or Vendor Central. They look similar, while in reality, they are drastically different.

Amazon Seller Central is a web interface that is used by merchants and brands for promoting their goods directly to the customers. You can have a Seller Central account if you are a marketplace or third-party seller. Everyone can log in the Seller Central, you don’t need an invitation.

If you consider yourself a marketplace seller, you have two options to fulfill the orders: FBM or FBA. In the “Fulfilled by Manufacturer” option you handle the shipping, and all the customer help, and return for each individual. If you choose the FBA option, Amazon will handle this instead of you.

On the other hand on Amazon business, there is Vendor Central. Is the web interface which is used by manufacturers and distributors.  If you are considered to sell your goods via Vendor Central, the system views you as a first-party seller. 

You act as a supplier, sending a bulk amount of your goods to Amazon. Then the marketplace will resell your products to the consumers. If you see a “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com”, you can be sure that this seller uses Vendor Central. Also, you will need an invitation to log in to Vendor Central.

We gather crucial differences between them in one table.

If you want to sell products directly to the customers, choose Seller Central. With the FBA fulfill option you don’t even have to worry about the warehouse and shipping. If you only want to produce things without your brand name on them, consider Vendor Central. You will act as a supplier to Amazon’s business.

What are Amazon PPC Placements?

As we told you a few paragraphs ago, PPC Placement is a special place, where the marketplace shows the selected type of advert. We gather all of them on a table, so you can print them and save them as your cheat sheet.

The sponsored product ads are universal. It will suit every seller. Sponsored brands are good for those who want to create brand awareness.
Choose the “Sponsored display” if you sell goods where your potential customer needs to think before the purchase for at least a few days. It can be phones, large household appliances, computers, expensive clothing, etc. The user can click on the basic “products” type of ad and close it because they are still thinking about the choice. A few hours later, you can start to retarget them on different sites with a sponsored display ad on a third-party website.

Exact phrase and broad match, which one to use?

When you create a campaign, choose the keywords to be promoted with. They are specifying your goods to the customer. If you sell iPhone chargers, you need to use keywords that suit your goods and be relevant to your customer. It can be an “iPhone charger”, “cable for iPhone SE”, or “Wired Lightning Charger”.

You need to select a match type for every key. It looks similar to Google categorization, but they are not identical. Here are the 3 match types on Amazon and their differences from each other:

1. Exact Match. Marketplace shows the customer your ad if their search turn looks exactly like the term. If you have an “iPhone 8 charger”, but a user searches “cable for iPhone”, they won’t see your ads.
   
   
2. Phrase Match. The customer needs to write a search term that has your keyword in it. If you have an “iPhone charger” key, and a user writes “iPhone charger pink” they see your ad with this word. But if they write “iPhone pink cute charger”, they won’t see your ad, because it doesn’t have the exact promoted phrase.
   
   
3. Broad match. The keywords can be in any order in the search term. There can be even other words in this type of key. If the user writes the “iPhone cute fashion charger” while you choose the “iPhone charger” as the “broad match” key, they will see your ad.

When you choose a keyword for your campaign, take a closer look at the negative keys. They are words that you don’t want your product to associate with. If you sell iPhone chargers, your main negative keyword will be “Android”. You don’t want to spend your money on irrelevant and unuseful promotions, so choose the negative keys. They are as important as regular ones.

How to use Auto campaigns?

We recommend you don’t use auto campaigns. It will be better to use third-party Amazon PPC management software that helps you to find suitable keywords, categorize them in semantics, find the appropriate size of bids and change them to make your campaign highly profitable.

The auto campaign often chooses the wrong categories and unsuitable keywords that aren’t even relevant to your product. Also, you don’t have control over the bids, so Amazon will set high bids on all types of keys. It leads to wasting money because you won’t get as many customers as you want.

In manual mode, you can customize your campaign, and find suitable keys.  You can choose “negative keywords”, it’s phrases that don’t suit your business. Plus, you can change the amount of the bids anytime you want!

Here is an example: you sell iPhone chargers. And there is a user who writes “charger for Android”. If you choose “Auto campaign”, the user sees your iPhone ad while searching for Android tech. They click on it and leave. You will pay money for a click that didn’t bring you any profit.

But if you choose the manual mode and set up “Android” as the negative keyword, this user won’t see your ad. It will show only to the users who want to buy an iPhone charger. You have more chances to sell your product with the same amount of marketing expenses.

How does the Amazon PPC Auction work?

Amazon Pay Per Click cost varies from the category, rivals, and season. This system works on a bid system. The price for every click (CPC) is determined by those who will be second in this auction. Each advertiser submits its maximum bid. It’s a price that they will be OK to pay with one click on their ad. The final price will be the bid of the advertiser, who is in 2nd place in the auction + $0.01. Use the Amazon ACOS calculator to find the optimal bid.

Here is an example of how Amazon PPC works in real life. You place a $3 bid, someone else places a $2.50 bid, and some other seller posts a $0.80 bid. You are the winner of this auction. But you don’t need to pay $3, you will pay just $2.51 as the final price of the bid. Marketplace automatically adds $0.01 to bid.

Ultimate guide to creating your first Sponsored Product campaign

Creating campaigns from scratch may be quite challenging. But there is software that can ease up your seller’s journey. We in Sponsoreds create an Amazon tool “Zero to Hero ” that will help you and make your seller career less challenging. It has a user-friendly interface, so you can create your first advertising campaign even if you don’t have any relevant experience. All you need is to follow three simple steps:

1. Preparation. Select products that you want to advertise. Select the ad type that suits you.
   
   
2. Launching. Add up to 3 seed keywords for your product. If you sell iPhone chargers, it can be “charger iPhone”, “lightning cable”, or “cable apple phone”. If you sell cat bowls, write keywords like “cat bowl”, “bowls for pets”, or “cute cat bowl”. It will help the tool to understand your product. A few moments later Zero to Hero tool offers you a few bid strategies: from economical to aggressive.
   
   
3. Enjoy! Your campaign is sent to your Seller Central account. If you want to make some changes, you can do it in Zero to Hero or in Seller Central as well. Make the Amazon Pay-Per-Click cost suitable for you.

How much does Amazon PPC cost?

The price of Amazon Pay-Per-Click search engine advertising depends on the category and the competition in your niche. In some cases, you can get a new customer for $0.80-1.10. But if you choose the high-margin niche, be ready to pay a lot, until you get your fan base. In those cases, you pay up to $5-10 for a single customer.

We recommend you to start with lower bids, regardless of your product. Wait for a few days to see how it will work. After that, you start increasing bids up to $2-3. Try an aggressive strategy and lure the customers of your rivals to your shop.

The final cost of the campaign depends on your business, niche, and bids of rivals. Sponsoreds Amazon PPC audit tools help you to find and set optimized bids.

Conclusion

Amazon Pay-Per-Click Advertising is an effective way to promote your goods. Here is what you should do to create a good campaign. Find suitable keywords, choose the type of advert, key matches, and size of bids.

With Sponsoreds free Amazon Seller tools, you only need to choose a type of advert, write 3 seed keywords, and set an approximate budget. For the rest of the work, our tool will be set up for you. Try it now!