3 Tips For Getting More Out Of Your Amazon Program
One of the most commonly asked questions that many brands ask themselves and their digital agency partners is “How much can I scale my Amazon performance?” Unfortunately, this question can be very difficult to answer, as marketers are used to accessing data from more established engines like Google and Bing. But that’s the key—they’re more established. It typically doesn’t come as a surprise to marketers that Amazon does not provide Search Volume, Impression Share, Auction Insights, or really any competitive information to help brands understand how to truly maximize spend when we remember that Amazon is still in its infancy.
Although it’s currently difficult to answer these types of questions within Amazon, Rise believes having this data is imperative for a brand to succeed. In order to answer these questions, we have developed unique strategies to help brands determine how much they should be spending based on different objectives and goals, as well as where they should be spending those dollars to get the most efficiency and scale. The three primary ways a brand can scale their Amazon programs are through Keyword Expansion, Ad Format Diversification, and Product Mix Selection.
1. Scale Through Keyword Expansion
The primary way of scaling spend and revenue is by expanding the universe of keywords that are being bid on. By using features like auto target and broad match modified keywords, brands can analyze new queries to build out where bids, budgets, and revenue can be increased.
However, doing this at scale can be extremely time consuming, especially for brands with large, complex search accounts. Rise has developed proprietary technology to automate this process. We’re able to build a high volume of new, granular keywords that are query-level specific in an account. This allows a brand to avoid overpaying for searches with lower performance, and instead focus on developing improved bid strategies or ad format strategies.
Another significant opportunity to expand keyword builds in Amazon is to leverage data from other channels (Google Shopping or Pinterest search) to help influence which new keywords you should be testing within Amazon. If keywords are performing well in Google Shopping or in Pinterest, there is a high likelihood that those keywords will perform well in Amazon too.
2. Scale Through Ad Format Diversification
Once you’ve started to expand your account structure with new keywords to bid on and optimize, you can then start thinking about ways to continue scaling spend by using the different types of ad formats Amazon offers. For Vendors, there are Sponsored Ads, Sponsored Brands, and Product Display Ads. Each of these ad formats is located in a different part on the Amazon interface and performs best when used for specific, yet different, objectives. By taking the keywords that you’re building out and mapping them to objectives (for example, basket building vs. conquesting) you can then overlay the best ad format to accomplish that objective.
From there, brands can start to move outside of Amazon.com by leveraging Amazon DSP. Amazon DSP is a fantastic way to scale spend and performance by re-engaging customers who have viewed specific ASINs/products, or by prospecting new, qualified Amazon customers.
3. Scale Through Product Mix and Selection
The third way to scale spend and performance within Amazon is to ensure that A) you are advertising on the right products, and B) that your products are mapped to the right keywords and campaigns.
By constantly analyzing product-level performance by campaign, brands can identify products that perform well and poorly within each campaign. When poor performing products are identified, brands can start significantly increasing spend to the better performing products by replacing low performing products with new products to test. This also creates an opportunity to build new product types to help increase the average order value, which will in turn increase return on ad spend and lead to more opportunities to increase spend.
Identifying the Point of Diminishing Returns
Whether brands are scaling their programs using any of the above areas, it is extremely important to monitor performance as you spend more. Rise believes in using a data-driven testing strategy to systematically increase bids and spend while monitoring CPCs, POs, and total revenue to identify the point of diminishing returns—the point where the increase in spend is no longer delivering the expected increase in performance. At this point, we then look to move into the next stage of scaling performance.
Contact Rise today to understand how much more you could be getting out of your Amazon spend.