If you are selling products online you need to optimise not only your e-commerce website but all sales channels and advertising platforms. Amazon is the world’s largest and most powerful retail marketing platform, so today we’ll take a quick look at how you can leverage it to increase sales.
What Is AMS?
Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) is Amazon’s equivalent of Google AdWords. It is arguably the most important retail advertising platform on the Internet, even more important than AdWords, Facebook, eBay and Google Shopping.
AMS allows you to create pay-per-click adverts within Amazon to promote your Amazon-listed products. These PPC adverts are shown at the top of Amazon’s search results pages, which allows retailers to get their products right in front of shoppers without having to rely on Amazon’s organic listings.
In the screenshot above, a search for “Google tablet” shows an advert at the top of the page from Fusions, which links a page listing three of their tablets. Below this, there are three more sponsored adverts, and the organic listings then follow. Organically, brands such as Google Pixel, ASUS, Fire HD and IT feature heavily, but Fusion’s sponsored placement has allowed them to rank above them all in Amazon.
AMC is based on a bidding system, similar to AdWords and Facebook, and advertisers pay for a set number of impressions based on a maximum price per click. Advertisers with a large budget can now dominate the first results on Amazon, but as with AdWords and Facebook, it is possible to identify keywords that are less competitive and provide a good ROI.
Simple And Effective
AMS is a very simple platform with just a few options for advertisers. You can choose to set manual or automatic targeting; with manual targeting, Amazon will target users who search using the exact match keywords you request, whereas with automatic targeting Amazon delivers ads to “relevant customer searches”, which has both advantages and disadvantages.
How To Make An Amazon Ad
To start you need to create a “campaign” which will cover a set of “ad groups” (you can have just one ad group in a campaign if you wish). Finally, “products” are set up within “ad groups”. It is at the product level that you set the keywords for your advert.
Amazon provides very clear step-by-step instructions to help you get started. As with all forms of digital advertising, you do need to monitor performance and optimise your bids and keywords to improve your ROI. Many major brands that wish to dominate Amazon search allocate large budgets for the sponsored slots.
Amazon AMS Tips
AMS is not a good choice for slow-moving products, especially at times when demand is low. It works best when demand for products is high and your products are not being seen in the organic listings.
As well as optimising adverts, you need to optimise your product pages. Ideally, your product pages should closely match your keyword bidding, and the product descriptions and images must make the product stand out. Amazon shoppers read descriptions and reviews before making a purchase decision – the click-through is only the first step to making a sale.
Analyse your campaign reports on a regular basis to ensure that you are not throwing money away.
If you can discover the right keywords and bids for your products, you can massively increase your sales through Amazon. A well-optimised AMS campaign could well become your biggest advertising channel. Speak to FSE Digital today to learn how we can help you develop your AMS and other PPC campaigns.
