When you think of PPC advertising, Amazon might not be the first website that comes to mind. Most brands prefer featuring their ads on Google or Facebook so the logical assumption would be that the amount of competition on Amazon is relatively low. However, more and more companies are beginning to realize the potential that Amazon has to boost their brand visibility and consequently, sales.
PPC marketing is immensely popular because it effectively achieves what most other forms of marketing fail to, reaching out to a target audience. And what better platform is there to feature your ads on than what is currently the world’s largest online marketplace? Since Amazon deals with products in about 25 categories, it’s hardly surprising that there’s a wide range of audiences that flock to this site.
Also, because Amazon enjoys over 90% customer retention, it’s easy to see why implementing a PPC marketing strategy on this site would be worth it in the long run. After all, if a customer is likely to purchase from Amazon over and over again, they’re also likely to view your ads over and over again. Besides, those customers that return to Amazon frequently to purchase products might associate the favorable opinion that they have of the site with your ads as well.
In today’s world where brand image is every company’s bread and butter, a favorable perception among customers might go a long way in giving your revenue a healthy boost. However, it’s not all simple as it sounds and there are nuances to PPC advertising on Amazon that you shouldn’t ignore. For instance, if you’ve ever visited Amazon’s site (who hasn’t?), you’ll have noticed that many products featured at the top of every results page are sponsored. You don’t exactly have to be eagle-eyed to notice this as the product is quite clearly labeled as ‘sponsored’.
Reliable statistics have indicated that featuring your products on Amazon in this way is very likely to boost your CTR (click-through rate). And this makes sense if you think about it. The convenience of being redirected to a product page to make a purchase immediately upon viewing it appeals to scores of users which is sure to lead to increased sales for your company. The main advantage of advertising your products on Amazon in this way is that it helps you reach out to your target audience.
In much the same way that the search results at the very top of Google’s search results page are relevant to your queries, Amazon features sponsored products based on your searches as well. Therefore, when a user looks for a particular product on Amazon, the first products that they view at the top of the page would be yours (among those of other brands that have sponsored their products similarly).
Since this makes it convenient for users to find your product along with all the details that are relevant to it, there’s a good chance that they’ll purchase it. However, this is just one of the ways in which you can advertise your products using Amazon PPC marketing. Another way in which you can achieve good CTRs is by using sponsored display ads. This essentially consists of using display ads to target those viewers who have either purchased your products before or purchased those products that are similar to yours.
Users will find these ads whenever they use Amazon, thereby prompting them to purchase from your brand again. Also, rather than sponsoring a product or two or creating display ads, you could choose to have an entire product line displayed at the top of a page. Therefore, when a customer enters a certain query into Amazon’s search bar, they’d view all your relevant products before they’d have to scroll down and view unsponsored products. In this way, Amazon gives your brand a better chance of making sales than those brands that haven’t sponsored their product lines on the site.
These are also known as brand ads since they entail promoting more than one product from the same brand. Together, this combination of sponsored product ads, brand ads, and display ads is sure to pay off both in the short and in the long run, if you play your cards wisely. After all, it takes a great deal of investment and planning to get it right with any PPC marketing campaign, and even more so with Amazon since many advertisers are still navigating how it can be used to their advantage.
Besides, considering the immense popularity of Amazon and the amount of traffic that it garners every minute, the competition for ad spaces on this platform is fierce. Therefore, it might come as no surprise that advertising on it can cost you an arm and a leg (and quite possibly more!). Planning an elaborate PPC marketing campaign on Amazon is one thing, executing it is quite another. You would need the help of PPC experts to make sure that the details of such a campaign are looked after and your large investment proves worthwhile.
You could consider reallocating some of your PPC advertising budget that you’d chalked out for display ads on Google or Facebook to Amazon. After all, if the stats show that this retail giant is likely to provide you with better results than other sites, then it makes perfect sense to spend your money wisely here.
