Developing an Integrated Organic and Paid Amazon Strategy

The brands that are winning in Amazon are the ones that are not only leveraging all of the different ad formats Amazon has to offer, but also doing so in an integrated fashion. Being able to connect organic and paid data through Amazon Advertising and Amazon DSP—in addition to other digital channels—is difficult to do. However, Rise has pioneered strategies and developed proprietary technology that integrate paid media with organic Amazon optimizations in order to develop a plan that is an efficient use of both time and money.

Developing a Holistic Amazon Strategy
 
The first step a brand should take is making sure that products and pages are complete with all of the right details. Below are some of the organic tactics that, when executed well, will give a brand the chance to get its products in front of potential customers.
 
1. Become “retail ready”: Before a brand can start thinking about advertising on Amazon, it needs to ensure that its products and product detail pages (PDPs) are retail ready. This means that the brand has developed optimized PDPs with images, a 3.5 star rating or higher, descriptive bullets, and helpful content that will enable the buyer to make a more informed purchase.
 
2. Ensure your top pages have A+ content: Building A+ content can be a daunting task and most often requires you to develop creative from scratch. However, it also offers valuable information to a customer which helps them make a more educated decision. By ensuring, at the very least, that top selling products have A+ content, you will maximize the likelihood of a potential purchaser actually committing and making the purchase.
 
3. Develop a keyword strategy to fuel performance: Once your PDP pages are retail ready and have A+ content, you are ready to start developing a keyword strategy for what you want each PDP to rank for when someone searches in Amazon. As you’re building out your keyword strategy it is important to think about search volume and search intent. While Amazon does not yet provide insight into keyword search volume, marketers can still have an edge by leveraging keyword trends seen in other engines such as Google, and other Amazon tools like ARA Premium.
 
Now that you have well-optimized PDPs and they’re starting to rank within Amazon organically, you can start to think about using Amazon Advertising to ignite performance and fuel sales. Because Amazon’s organic algorithm is influenced by product performance, Rise has developed unique strategies to integrate organic and paid data together to maximize efficiency and scale revenue no matter which placement the user clicks.
 
Integrating a Full-Funnel Amazon Media Strategy
 
Utilizing a combination of both Search and Display into your strategy will allow brands to hit customers at different points in their buying journey.
 
Amazon Advertising
Consumers that come to Amazon and search are considered to be “hand raisers”—they are already in market, browsing within the category, and are actively looking to purchase a product. By leveraging Amazon Advertising (sponsored ads) to capture these potential customers, brands can ensure that they are converting those at the bottom-of-the-funnel. For ROI goals, Rise typically recommends spending the majority of your budget here because you’ll find the most engaged purchasers and conversion rates tend to be higher.
 
One thing to keep in mind is that different ad formats within Amazon Advertising do have different objectives. But in nearly all cases, the purchasers are already actively shopping. Be sure to test your campaigns by mapping your objectives to the ad formats you’re using to create the most efficient mix of budget and ads.
 
Amazon DSP
Amazon DSP is a way for brands to recapture, resell, or simply educate consumers that are in-market but may not be actively browsing for your products. This is more often used in bringing awareness to your brand or filling the top-of-the-funnel with leads. By doing so, you will inevitably bring more hand raisers to your products over time.
 
Below are some examples of strategies you can implement within Amazon to keep your brand top-of-mind:

• Use category-based targeting to fill the top-of-funnel. This allows you to then recapture those potential customers and re-engage them via Amazon Advertising. Not only can you then grow category awareness but also expand into new categories via Amazon DSP.
• Implement ASIN-based retargeting strategies to capture hand raisers that have navigated away from your PDP and left their basket with items still in it.
• Target these people all across the web. Whether they're viewing related content on Amazon or on another site, you want to continue nurturing them towards making the purchase.

Many brands realize the power behind Amazon. However, ensuring you’re focusing on the details before jumping into advertising is imperative for brands to be successful. Once you are ready to tackle the advertising side, the next step is to make sure your strategies are integrated to allow you to use your resources as efficiently as possible. Contact Rise today and take the first steps in developing a holistic organic and paid Amazon strategy.