Tips To Using AMS Ad Campaigns on Amazon.com To Grow Your Sales

Advertise on Amazon.com with AMSAmazon has a really simple ad program available to help you grow your sales.

Many people refer to these ads as “AMS ad campaigns” because Amazon Media Services runs the program.

Here’s how Amazon positions these ads:

  • Start a campaign for as little as $100
  • Pay only when shoppers click
  • Optimize performance with detailed sales reports

3 ways to advertise your products on Amazon.com

Amazon Product AdsAmazon offers three different approaches to promote your products or brand.

  1. Product Display Ads are cost-per-click product or interest targeted display ads that drive traffic to your product listing on Amazon.
  2. Headline Search Ads uses keyword targeted cost-per-click search ads offered. They allow brands to drive traffic to a brand page or to landing pages at Amazon with 3 or more skus (Amazon calls them ASINs).
  3. Sponsored Products are keyword-targeted ads that allow you to advertise the products you sell on Amazon.com. They use keywords in your campaign to the search terms that shoppers use to search for products at Amazon.com. When a shopper searches for the keywords in your campaign, your ad can show up.

Your ads will appear on the product detail page, on the left rail of search results, at the bottom of search results, on the customer reviews page and at the top of the offer listing page – in other words, all over the place.

Use AMS ad campaigns to generate a >500% ROI

I haveamazon-marketing-services-ad been using AMS ads extensively for the last 6 months and have generated an average ROI of 500% on my advertising dollars. There’s no catch but it has been a learning process. Not every ad campaign has been a winner.

AMS ads are not pretty. The creative for your campaign is automatically generated through the Amazon Marketing Services ad builder. You can customize the headline and logo before you send the ad. Importantly, you don’t need an ad agency or graphic designer to create effective ads.

Best of all, AMS ads are inexpensive. Amazon Marketing Services uses a cost-per-click, auction-based pricing model. You set the maximum cost-per-click you are willing to pay. The more competitive your bid is, the more likely your ad will be displayed.

Tips to getting the most from your AMS ad campaign

  • AMS Advertising on AmazonFor your first ads, pick your best sellers. Don’t be tempted to bring attention to slow movers or new products.
  • Create a short catch-phrase likely to interest your target audience to use for your headline. Don’t simply copy your product description into the headline. I’ve found “Save Now On…” works well unless there’s a key benefit I can highlight.
  • Click the option to display your ad as quickly as possible (don’t let Amazon spread it out evenly). Unless you’re overbidding, it’s hard to make impressions, so get as many as you can.
  • Change the month of the end date. Set the end date as far into the future as the system will let you (several months). You can end it anytime manually.
  • I have found product targeting drives sales better than interest targeting.
  • Select at least 25 (more is better) products to target. Don’t focus on near in competitors – think about the larger category or space your audience could be searching for.
  • Enter specific keywords, even key-phrases, highly relevant to your product. Try a variety of keywords and phrases, but remember that relevance is key.
  • Relevance matters when targeting, not only to get the most out of your ad (you want it to sell once you get traffic), but also to prevent your ad from being stopped.AMS Ads
  • Start your bidding around $1. This is your max out-of-pocket cost per click and you may be forced to raise it if you are not getting impressions (meaning you are not winning the bid). You can always raise your bid later. I like to proactively raise the bids of my most expensive keywords when they are generating sales.
  • Your stats aren’t show in real-time and can actually be delayed by a day. Don’t rush to make changes, especially at the beginning.
  • We’ve found that it pays to touch our ads every few days. Add keywords, or pause non-performers, extend the end date or change a bid. Do this with winners and losers.
  • You’re not obligated to spend your whole ad campaign budget. You can pause or end your ad at any time.
  • Name your campaigns by what you are trying to do. The default names aren’t helpful at all. Trust me when I say you’ll never remember once you get more than a handful of ads running (we’ve run 47 different variations and stuck with only a handful longer term).
  • Amazon has an ad performance dashboard that you should check daily. If you’re spending money but not generating sales, stop your ad before you lose more money. Try to improve your ad before running it again. An exception to this is when you are trying to get attention to a new item but think of this as an investment.
  • Look at your short-term ROI (return on investment). If that ROI is uncomfortably low (let’s say 100%), step back and try to decide why. Something isn’t working, so either stop the ad or try to improve it.

Try many different approaches with small sums and commit more heavily when you see something working. This is the secret to our crazy high ROI percentages.

Good Selling!
Active Search Results (ASR) is an independent Internet Search Engine using a proprietary page ranking technology with Millions of popular Web sites indexed.

Advertisement

3 Ways to Grow Your Online Sales

e-commerce is a growth machineE-commerce is a growth machine for many manufacturers. It’s considered organic growth and many worry it’s ultimately undermining the traditional channels of distribution.

But for now, it is opportunity that you need to leverage.

Is E-commerce your fastest growing channel?

Is ecommerce your fastest growing channel?There are basic three ways that you can use to grow your ecommerce business. Granted, this is an oversimplification, but it will help you focus your efforts and drive your tactics for sales growth.

  1. Add more online customers
  2. Add more products to the customers you already have
  3. Promote your online listings

Adding more online retailers really means building a Direct to Consumer business model

ecommerce(1)Once you develop the capacity to handle online sales the process is fairly easy to expand. The exception is if you have a warehouse program (with Amazon.com, for example) and you are shifting gears over to a Direct to Consumer shipping model.

D2C is the foundation that most etailers are looking for. It shifts the cost structure to you (your team warehousing and shipping) but it makes doing business with those etailers as simple as establishing your skus on their website.

More products will help build sales but not overnight

Overwhelmed onlineIt makes sense that as you add more products you will increase your sales with an online retailer. The problem is that those sales take time to build into any real volume.

There are so many products for sale online now that it’s hard to get new products noticed. And the websites they are on are looking for consumer views, sales and recommendations before they are going to get much visibility.

Getting attention online means spending money to make money

How do you gain visibility in an online marketplace? Really the answer is site dependent but the ideas are the same for almost any site.

  1. Use key search terms
  2. Make it visual
  3. Pay attention to reviews

Getting attention online means spending money to make moneyAvoid “salesy” marketing copy and use everyday search terms that will drive viewers to your listings. Consumers are rarely search for your brand names. Your familiarity with your products is likely clouding your judgment about how consumers will search for your product category.

Many sites allow for extensive use of rich marketing content like photography, 360 degree views, video, instructions sheets, FAQ’s, and the like. Consumers look at the pictures first to narrow down what they are looking for – they are not reading your features and benefits so make those picture count.

Success is also dependent on the reviews your product has. You may think you are in great shape – 5 stars all the way – but if you have only a few reviews, consumers will be suspicious and the site algorithms won’t push your product to the top of the search results. On the other hand, a composite four-star rating or better with 75 or so reviews will help you gain critical placement in site searches, allowing you to gain more sales with less traffic. Had a negative review come through? Respond to it online in a positive manner to show you are engaged with the customer.

Good Selling!

Active Search Results (ASR) is an independent Internet Search Engine using a proprietary page ranking technology with Millions of popular Web sites indexed.