When it comes to e-commerce and online advertising, possibly one of the easiest platforms to advertise on comes in the form of Amazon Advertising. However, when one thinks of advertising on the internet, Amazon isn’t usually the first advertising platform that they think of—it is usually Google, Bing, or Facebook or Twitter. Amazon is not just an e-commerce site, loaded with great reviews; it is a search engine, much like Google, Bing or Yahoo – but it’s only focus is e-commerce. This means that people are already on Amazon, engaged in the shopping process, and are already low funnel in terms of success of leads – they are ready to make a purchase. This is why Amazon Ads is so powerful.
Not only is advertising on Amazon a homerun because consumers (leads) are already champing at the bit to spend money, as they are already perusing an e-commerce site, it is also a great way to market due to how easy it is to establish and maintain product advertising on Amazon.com. When you go to set up your ads in Seller Central—Amazon’s version of Google Adwords—you don’t have to plug in all the information for the product or even create custom ads, it automatically pulls it from the product listing. As the product information changes, it automatically changes in the ad as well. Once a successful campaign is established and optimized, it requires very low maintenance.
When you set up the types of ads you want to add on Amazon, there aren’t different layouts—like the banners or text ads you are used to seeing with Google—they are called Amazon Sponsored Products, and they act as an extension of your e-commerce product page. You can choose from five different ad types: Add to Cart, Coupon, Customer Review, Shop Now and Static ads.
Once the ads have been created, you can choose whether to turn on automatic or manual targeting. Manual targeting is often best—this is where a trained professional, with years of experience, can really get you the best return on your advertising. With manual targeting, you can optimize ad placement and keyword optimization. It is still good practice to A/B test manual targeting and automatic targeting for the first few months.
Very rarely is there an opportunity in which someone can advertise and guarantee a return on the product that they are selling. With Amazon’s Amount Cost of Sale (ACOS), you can almost achieve this small business feat. ACOS is the amount you spend on ads per product listing – and the revenue directly generated from the ad. This Return on Investment (ROI) tool allows you to determine keyword profitability as long as you know the gross margins of your product, just ensure that ACOS is smaller than your products’ gross margins. If it is not, then all you need to do is keep on lowering bids, until you find profitability.
From the customer low funnel, to the ease of use, to the direct feedback of the Amount Cost of Sale metric, advertising on Amazon is an obvious choice for those looking to sell products online. In an e-commerce world, a business owner needs every edge he or she can get, and a business owner not advertising their products on Amazon is missing out on a chance to beat their competition.
