As Facebook eventually found out, ads are a necessary part of keeping any business alive. You don’t have to love them, but you should know how to make good use of them and in this post, RepricerExpress goes in-depth at how you can perfect the art of using Amazon ecommerce ads.
The Lowdown on Amazon Ecommerce Ads
There are essentially just three different ways you can target the Amazon ecommerce ads — and we’ll get to them shortly — but think of them as shiny stickers that immediately grab someone’s attention. But unlike stickers, Amazon ecommerce ads pay off in (hopefully!) increased revenue for you by virtue of their hypnotic come-to-me power.
Every successful merchant will tell you that one of the biggest reasons they got to where they are is because people a) heard about what they were selling, and b) were convinced to give it a try. You may have the greatest thing in the world since Betty White, but if nobody knows about it, then you’re a tad up the creek without a paddle.
Using Amazon Ecommerce Ads
The main thing to remember when using Amazon ecommerce ads is you want to advertise, i.e. just tell your target demographic about what your brand is and why they need it in their lives. Try to keep it as simple as this, too, as this focus of advertising hasn’t changed since it was first invented who knows how long ago.
What’s really neat is Amazon has stuck to this same type of stripped-down simplicity in their ecommerce ads, giving customers the same unified experience they’d encounter anywhere on Amazon. There’s nothing overly dressed up or fancy, just features like add-to-cart, coupons and customer reviews, to help make the whole experience seamless and easy.
But one of the things we love best about these ads is the video integration aspect of it. It’s no secret TV commercials are incredibly powerful — for 30 seconds, they keep you riveted in your seat while a display of bright and flashing colours dance across your screen. Depending on how well you curate the video, you can grab upwards of 50% more customers just by integrating video into your Amazon ecommerce ads.
How to Target Customers
In the beginning, we said there were essentially just three ways to target potential customers with your ads:
- Untargeted Ads: Think of this as going fishing and throwing a huge net overboard. You’re not trying to pick up anyone type of fish or another, but rather focusing on trying to haul in a huge quantity.
- Interest Targeted Ads: Keeping with the above analogy, let’s say you have a school of fish — a school of many different kinds of fish — but they all hang out together because they love watching baseball games on TV. These types of ads will target consumers based on the similar interest they share.
- Product Targeted Ads: This may be the type of advertising you’re most aware of, as it’s geared towards highlighting the awesomeness of a specific product.
Whichever type of targeting you go after, there’s one parameter that should be guiding your actions: cost per sale. Unfortunately, and as with just about any type of advertising, Amazon ecommerce ads aren’t free, and you’ll have to spend some money to make some money. All told, you’ll want to aim for the high single digits (around 8%-ish) as your baseline and try not to exceed 20% as your maximum. If you can stay around the 14-16% area for cost per sale, you’ll be using Amazon ecommerce ads very efficiently.
Final Thoughts
One of the first things we here at RepricerExpress are going to recommend you do, no matter how long you’ve been an online merchant, is to review your inventory as though you’re brand new at it. This will help give you an idea of how to use Amazon ecommerce ads in the best way. And once you’re done that, we want you to sign up for your 15-day free trial so you can take advantage of all the new interest in your product line.
