Expert Tips For 10 Tips for Amazon Ads Optimization: How to Get the Most Out of Your PPC Campaigns

If you’re running Amazon ads, it’s important to make sure you’re doing everything possible to optimize your PPC campaigns and get the most out of your ad spend. Today, we’ll outline 10 ad optimization techniques to organize and scale your Amazon ad campaigns to help you achieve real results. With these Amazon PPC tips, you’ll be able to improve your click-through rate, conversion rate, and overall ROI from your Amazon ads campaigns. Let’s get started! 

1. Campaign Structure

Your PPC campaigns serve as a general outline for all of your ad activities. A campaign structure provides a set of traits following patterns like the product category, brand, and top sellers. However you decide to organize your campaigns, the most critical thing is to be consistent. If you create one campaign by product and another by brand, you could have the same products appearing in multiple campaigns, meaning that they might be in competition. 

2. Identify Relevant Keywords

If you’re just starting out as a seller or launching a new product, it’s important to start your PPC journey with long-tail keywords. After you’ve mastered these keywords, you can go after the most-searched, generic keywords. If you target highly searched keywords from the beginning, you’ll run into tough competition from established sellers and will likely spend a lot of money without getting exposure for your brands, along with traffic and conversion. It’s recommended to run an Amazon automatic campaign and a manual campaign simultaneously with the same products. Allow the automatic campaign to run for a couple of weeks, then examine which search terms generate the most sales. Next, transfer these search terms into your manual campaigns. This is how to make the most out of Amazon’s capabilities while building up your own campaign to improve PPC optimization. 

3. Rank Optimization

The larger your selection of products, the larger your number of keywords with different levels of specificity should be. For example, if you’re selling a variety of shoes, the keyword “shoe” is relevant for all of them. For some shoes, the keyword “women’s shoes” is relevant. For some women’s shoes the keyword “women’s sneakers” is relevant. If the keyword “women’s shoes” were to be placed in all ad groups for women’s sneakers, heels, or boots, you could easily lose track of which ads are shown for which keyword bids. The concept here is to have three different sets of ad campaigns with mids and budgets varying significantly across each of these sets. The bids and budget assigned to a keyword depend on the search rank of the listing in Amazon’s search results for that query.  

Ad group 1: “women’s shoes” for general keywords of that product category (“shoes for women,” women’s shoes,” and top sellers. 

Ad group 2: “women’s sneakers” for specific keywords “sneakers for women,” “women’s trainers,” “women’s tennis shoes,” and corresponding products. 

Ad group 3: “women’s boots” for specific keywords, “women’s boots”, “hiking boots for women,” and corresponding products. 

4. Group Variations Together

If you have multiple variations of the same product, grouping them together is a great way to create more brand awareness and visibility. Running an ad campaign for multiple different products may not be the most cost-effective and they might end up competing among themselves for ads. This is considered product cannibalization and you should avoid it at all costs when it comes to PPC campaign optimization. A technique to prevent this problem is to group individual variations into one single package, then sell it on Amazon under a unique Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN). 

5. Optimize Listings

Amazon likes to be sure that the ads being shown are relevant to the consumer. This is why ads can only be shown for keywords that are also contained in product listings and text like title, description, search terms, etc. Check to make sure you’re not utilizing keywords that make no impression in the text of your product listing. 

6. Get Rid of Unwanted Search Queries

Amazon ads don’t always show the exact search terms you’ve bid on as a seller. Search queries can depend on the keywords you’ve entered according to match type. There are two techniques that can prevent you from incurring unnecessary costs: set keyword match types and set negative keywords. 

7. Track PPC Ad Spend Based on Performance

Usually, there are many different products in one ad group sharing the same keyword. As you run your campaigns, it will be clearer over time which products sell best within the given ad group. Your goal for Amazon PPC optimization should be targeting the max number of sales with that ad group by removing products with poor performance from that ad group. This will help you concentrate impressions and clicks on those products which effectively converts clicks into purchases. It also avoids spending more money on products with low conversion rates and optimizes your ad spend. 

8. Define Target Ad Cost of Sales 

Your Target Ad Cost of Sales (ACoS) is calculated as ad spend divided by ad sales. It should at least have a rough outline and can differ depending on the purpose of your campaign. If you’re chasing profit, then your target figure will be based on your profit margin. Target figures for ACoS are generally between 5% to 15%. 

9. Track and Optimize Bids

The best target bid depends on the keyword. This is why every bid can be controlled separately for every keyword in manual campaigns. Know that a good amount of data is needed as a base for evaluating bids. A few general principles for bid optimization are:  

• If the ACoS for a keyword is above the target value, you should lower the bid to test whether ad spend and sales can be brought to a cost-effective ratio 
• If the ACoS is below the target value, test the ad’s reach and sales can be expanded by raising the bid price. 

• If keywords aren’t generating any sales or impressions, test whether a higher bid price can make revitalize them. Higher bids can result in higher placement, leading to more clicks and impressions. 

10. Bid on New Keywords at Higher Prices

If you’re adding a new keyword, you should set a higher initial bid price, usually at least 0.75$ depending on the category. In order to get a new keyword started and have it generate some clicks and impressions, a higher bid price must be attributed to it. As soon as some click history builds up, the bid price of this keyword can often be lowered to successfully find an optimal price for the bid.

If you’re ready to revamp your Amazon ads optimization strategy, let Agency Partner Interactive do the heavy lifting. API is growth-focused, helping over 500 businesses dominate their markets and achieve real results they can count on. Our expert team specializes in PPC campaign optimization and we’ll make sure you’re getting the most out of your ad spend. Ready to get started? Contact us today!