How to structure your Amazon advertising campaign

 ou have a stunning product on Amazon, but how do you make sure customers discover and buy it?

A good way to get started is to get your products on the first page of search results. How? A strong Amazon advertising campaign.

But there’s a problem. Most sellers are involved with other ways to advertise and promote on Amazon. So, how do you ensure your products get the desired reach and sales through ads, and do it with minimum Advertising Cost of Sale? (ACoS)? This is where the importance of structuring your campaigns comes into play.

It starts with setting up the campaign but managing it well is often complicated. Every one of them must be properly organized and structured. A solid, well-built Amazon advertising strategy helps you get noticed and convert potential customers while optimizing your spend. It also makes it a bit easier to manage.

Structuring a PPC campaign involves many things. You always need to follow the rules and technicalities to make your structure workable. You may be dealing with multiple campaigns at a single time. The strategy you adopt for Amazon advertising campaigns will depend on various factors.
Let us explain the strategies with some examples.

Group similar products in your ad campaign

We recommend grouping similar products in a campaign for better management. You can group the products based on factors including product line, profit margins, and product goals.

• Product line: It’s the most convenient way to group your products in a campaign. In such grouping, you add all the products with a common parent ASIN. However, you don’t have to add all the child ASINs. You can choose the top-selling ones or the new additions that you want to promote.
• Profit margin: If products in your PPC campaigns have almost similar margins, it is easier for you to set a bid. For example, if you plan to set aggressive bids on a product with higher margin, your campaign may contain products with higher margins. You can group the products with smaller margins in another campaign.
• Product goals: A product’s goal would depend on several factors like its lifecycle and inventory availability, etc. For example, your bidding strategy may not be the same for a newly launched product and a product already on the market. Also, a new product or a new campaign may not perform as effectively as an already existing product or campaign. It always takes time for a new product to gather information regarding the effective keywords and strategies. Ensure you strategize such campaigns differently.

Optimize your keyword-based campaigns

 

Set up an optimized structure for your keyword-based campaigns. In this case, you need to create two campaigns for your products. One is automatic, and the other is manual. The automatic campaign will help you get the search terms and the most relevant, high-converting, long-tail keywords.

You can use these keywords when you run the manual campaign to improve the efficiency of the campaign. This process is called keyword harvesting.

You can use all three – broad, phrase, and exact keyword-match types in the manual campaign.

Here’s what different match types mean for your understanding:

• Exact match type keywords: The keyword searched by the customer should exactly match your set keyword, word by word. Let’s say your target keyword is “bottle” with an exact match, your ad can appear only for the search term “bottle” or “bottles.”
• Phrase match type keywords: Your products rank for similar phrases when you use this targeting type. For instance, if your targeted keyword is “bottle” with a phrase match, your ad can appear for search terms like “water bottle” and “red water bottle.”
• Broad match type keywords: The keywords should have all the words and components of your set keyword. They can also have several additional words and synonyms. Let’s say, you targeted the keyword “shoes” with a broad match type, your ads could appear for “shoes for men” or “sneakers” as well.

You can also set negative keywords for which you do not want your campaign to perform.

• Negative keywords: You can find negative targeting under the campaign or ad group in the Amazon advertising console. You can set negative keywords for which your ad should not appear using this option. Besides, add non-performing, irrelevant keywords as negative keywords to save your ad spend.

Create audience-based campaigns

If you target an audience instead of keywords, you may run one automatic campaign and three manual campaigns. The three manual campaigns include generic, brand, and competitor.

• The generic campaign may target anything generic. For example, you sell “Fossil watches” on Amazon. You can target audiences who search for “watches” or “watches for women” in generic campaigns.
• Brand campaigns can target audiences who search for watches from your brand. In this case, you can add keywords like “Fossil watches” or “Fossil watches for men” in your campaigns.
• The competitor campaign aims at audiences who search for competitor products. Let’s say you have a competitor named “Seiko,” your competitor campaigns would include keywords like “Seiko watches.”

Ensure you add appropriate negative keywords in the relevant campaigns based on their campaign structure.

Differentiate your campaigns, use a naming convention

You need to differentiate your campaigns by giving them names. Though there are no strict guidelines on naming a campaign on Amazon, it is often recommended to follow a convention that helps you remember the strategy you followed to create the campaign. For example:

• Campaign type_Targeting_Product Name_Product Attributes
• A generic campaign for watches can be SP_Generic_KW_Broad_Watches_Digital.

Budget allocation and optimization

It is crucial for campaigns to run on sufficient budget allocation. If you do not allocate sufficient funds on your campaigns, they will run out of budget and have minimal results. You can also reallocate the budget from existing campaigns to your converting campaigns to run efficiently. You can also use dayparting strategies if you want to efficiently adjust your campaign budgets.

Automating the Amazon advertising campaign optimization

Optimization of ad campaigns is a time-consuming job that involves lots of monitoring and managing mundane activities. This includes monitoring bids, finding and setting relevant keywords, removing non-performing campaigns, etc. This is where automation comes into effect. With the help of automation and optimization tools, you increase speed and accuracy and save time for other productive activities such as managing your accounts and inventory, etc. Automation will help you seamlessly optimize bids, keywords, and campaigns.

 

As shown in the image, you can create various advertising rules to increase visibility, optimize your ACoS, and effectively manage your budget with SellerApp’s advertising automation tool. Setting rules is pretty easy from the SellerApp dashboard by navigating to “Advertising,” then choosing “Automation,” and then “Automation Blueprints.” These blueprints can be customized. Templates are also available. The tool will help you implement a negative keyword strategy, optimize return on investment (ROI), and increase visibility, impressions, and conversions.

Getting started, now what?

Structuring an Amazon campaign involves many factors, such as keyword optimization, suitable budget allocation, creating compelling ad copies, and tracking campaign performance every now and then. SellerApp can help you optimize and track your campaigns with our dedicated Amazon PPC Managed Services. We help creates strategies to help you understand the customer journey for better advertising insights.

Ultimately, running a campaign without the right structure is like driving a car with no clear destination. Know where you’re going and beat your competitors by building and structuring campaigns proven to work.