How To Build a Powerful Amazon Advertising Strategy: Our Comprehensive Guide

Updated
April 18, 2024

Helpful Summary

  • Overview: We detail how to craft a powerful Amazon advertising strategy, emphasizing the platform's complexity and the importance of strategic advertising for brand visibility and sales enhancement.
  • Why You Can Trust Us: Our insights stem from Merch Jar's success in guiding numerous clients to improve their Amazon sales through effective advertising strategies, underscored by real-world success stories and hands-on experience.
  • Why This Is Important: A strategic approach to Amazon advertising is crucial for standing out in a crowded market, increasing visibility, enhancing sales, and reaching targeted audiences effectively.
  • Action Points: We suggest familiarizing yourself with different ad types, setting SMART goals, calculating your ACoS, conducting thorough keyword research, optimizing product listings, encouraging customer reviews, and regularly reviewing search terms reports.
  • Further Research: Explore Merch Jar to automate and optimize your Amazon advertising campaigns. Leverage our tools for keyword management and bid adjustments, and gain insights into ad performance to drive sales.

Need Help Building a Strong Amazon Advertising Strategy? 

Spanning almost 30 years now, Amazon has been helping startups in the e-commerce industry find markets for their products. It has also proven to be an indispensable tool for established brands to continue making their mark with consumers. 

But Amazon can be intricate and complex. If you are not familiar with the alleys of the platform, you might be missing out on a big opportunity. One of these is Amazon advertising, which can propel your brand to greater heights. 

However, before you can succeed in your Amazon advertising efforts, you need a powerful strategy. Fortunately, in this Merch Jar guide, we’ll explore how you can create the best Amazon advertising strategy for enhanced brand visibility and elevated sales. 

Let’s get started. 

Why Listen To Us?

Navigating Amazon's competitive landscape is tough. At Merch Jar, we've seen many struggle to convert views into sales. 

Fortunately, our experience is built on real-life success stories which include improving user visibility and sales on Amazon. We've guided multiple users through creating effective advertising strategies that significantly boost performance.

Our approach is proven. We’ve helped thousands of Amazon sellers and brands achieve their advertising goals, driving sales, increasing visibility, and optimizing ad spend. 

Our expertise coupled with innovative features like Smart Campaigns and Recipes, sets us apart in the Amazon PPC automation space. When you choose Merch Jar, you’re not just getting a tool–you’re getting access to a wealth of knowledge, support, and proven strategies to elevate your Amazon advertising game. 

By focusing on what works, we've helped our users not just compete, but thrive on Amazon. 

What is an Amazon Advertising Strategy?

Like with many aspects of business, if you want to succeed, you need to build the right strategy for your Amazon advertising. 

An effective Amazon advertising strategy involves thorough keyword research, and optimizing product listings with compelling images and descriptions. You’ll also want to utilize various ad formats like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display to target relevant audiences. 

Continuous monitoring, analyzing campaign performance, and adjusting bids are essential for maximizing your ROI. Additionally, leveraging Amazon's targeting options and retargeting tactics can enhance your visibility and drive sales.

Merch Jar is a cutting-edge Amazon advertising management and automation tool. It streamlines your advertising campaigns on Amazon, offering valuable features like Amazon ads automation, bid management, keyword management, and simplification of bulk operations. 

With our advanced tools and analytics, Merch Jar empowers businesses to maximize their advertising effectiveness and boost sales on Amazon.

Here are some of its key features: 

  • Automation: Use Merch Jar to create the most complex ad automations with the use of natural language, allowing for actions like increasing bids, pausing campaigns, diminishing budgets, and so much more. 
  • Smart bids: You can also use the tool to adjust your ad bids so they align with your ACoS goals through daily, data-driven adjustments​​.
  • Bulk actions: Merch Jar also simplifies the management of your campaigns by allowing you to manage several campaigns with bulk updates to bids, ad statuses, and keywords. 
  • Promotions and dashboard Insights: Take keyword management to the next level as you automate this, providing you with a vivid perspective of your ad performance via an intuitive dashboard. 

Take a look at what users say about Merch Jar.

Benefits of Having an Effective Amazon Advertising Strategy

Building the right Amazon advertising strategy for your business is like finding gold in a mine. Let’s take a look at the benefits:

  • Competitive advantage: Effective advertising helps you stand out among competitors, capturing the attention of shoppers and gaining market share.
  • Increased visibility: Using the right Amazon advertising strategy can boost your product visibility, ensuring it appears prominently in search results and relevant product listings.
  • Enhanced sales: Strategic ad placements can drive the right traffic to your product pages, resulting in higher sales conversions and revenue generation.
  • Targeted reach: Precise targeting options enable reaching specific demographics, interests, and purchase behaviors, increasing the likelihood of reaching potential buyers.
  • Data-driven insights: Robust analytics provide valuable insights into customer behavior, allowing you to optimize your ad campaigns in the right direction for improved return on investment (ROI).

How to Build a Powerful Amazon Advertising Strategy

Here’s our comprehensive guide to building the most effective Amazon advertising strategy for your business. 

1. Get To Know Amazon Ads

Before you actually begin advertising, you must get to know the various types of Amazon ads available. The most popular ones are:

  • Sponsored Products: Categorized as a keyword-targeted ad, Sponsored Products show up in Amazon search results below the fold on product pages. Basically, they promote a single product. 
  • Headline Search Ads: Also a keyword-targeted ad, your Headline Search Ads show up above search results as banner ads, promoting a maximum of three products.
  • Product Display Ads: Meanwhile, Product Display Ads are categorized as a product or interest-targeted ad. They show up below the product pages’ fold and on listing, review and related product detail pages. 

Keyword-targeted ads are triggered when somebody searches for the keywords you targeted. On the other hand, product-targeted ads are those that appear when somebody visits a certain product page. 

Essentially, each type of Amazon ad serves a particular purpose. 

For instance, Anker, a leading brand in mobile charging, leverages Amazon advertising quite well. They utilize Sponsored Products to boost visibility for individual products. Simultaneously, they use Headline Search Ads to capture customer attention at the very beginning of the shopping journey. Finally, they also employ Product Display Ads to reach customers who are already looking at their products.

2. Make Your Goals SMART

Regardless of the type of Amazon ad you create, you want to ensure your goals are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, And Timely.

Some specific examples of these SMART goals could be; 

  • Garnering 30 reviews for a product in a six-month period
  • Increasing the sales of a product by 15% within three months
  • Reducing a product’s inventory by 95% before launching a new product

These goals often shape the ads you intend to run on Amazon. Your products also play a crucial role in your advertising campaign strategy. 

To explore how you can make this work, let’s turn our attention to Burt's Bees, a company that offers personal care products. 

Their main goal could be to increase the sales of its bestselling lip balm by 20% within a four-month period through Amazon Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns.

This is a comprehensive goal because it’s split into: 

  • Achieving 20% sales increase through a targeted advertising campaign
  • Focusing on their best selling product
  • Its four-month time frame

3. Calculate Your ACoS

Before you start creating your Amazon advertising campaign, you’ll need to calculate your ACoS or advertising cost of sales. This is very important as it can significantly influence your cost-per-click (CPC) bid and campaign budget. All in all, an accurate ACoS leads to a realistic and performance-driven budget. 

To calculate this, you should consider the following factors for each product–selling price, cost of goods sold, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) cost, and miscellaneous costs. 

Once you have those figures, subtract all your expenses – cost of goods, FBA fees, and miscellaneous costs – from your selling price. The remaining number is what you can spend to earn a sale while getting profits, still. 

On the other hand, if you’re clearing inventory, you must calculate your break-even point. To find this out, you want to take your maximum spend and divide it by the selling price of your product.

Luxe Performance, a company specializing in high-quality, custom-fit sunglasses, has done this strategy perfectly. By meticulously calculating and monitoring their ACoS, it is able to adjust their Amazon advertising strategies dynamically, ensuring that they remain profitable while scaling their sales.

4. Do Keyword Research

When crafting your Amazon advertising campaign, you’ll also be doing some keyword research. This can help you discover new keywords for your campaigns, and see how they perform. 

You must also look at your competitor’s listings. Depending on the level of familiarity on Amazon advertising, you may find out their product title and descriptions are optimized for search, which will reveal the keywords they are using to drive sales. But don’t explicitly copy the advertising strategy of your competitor, it’s just supposed to help with your research. 

A real-life example of effective keyword research in an Amazon advertising strategy can be seen in the approach taken by EcoTools, a company known for its eco-friendly beauty tools.

EcoTools kicks it off by identifying a broad set of keywords relevant to their products, such as "eco-friendly makeup brushes," "bamboo beauty tools," and "cruelty-free makeup sponges." Then, they carefully analyze the product listings of their main competitors, and refine their keyword list based on those findings. 

But, they doesn’t end there. EcoTools also makes sure to monitor performance, and continuously conduct keyword research to find new opportunities and respond to changing market trends.

Merch Jar’s hands-free keyword management feature called Smart Campaigns can help you streamline your keyword research process. With this, you can continually monitor search term performance, thus creating keywords from your best keyword performers, while negating the poor performers.

5. Optimize Your Products

Prior to launching your Amazon advertising campaigns, you must also optimize your product listings. When you do, you can improve the chance your ideal shopper won’t just come across your ad, but actually buy your product. 

Consider the following features–title, images, and description. For the best results, be sure to optimize these three areas, which can also help you rank high on Amazon search results. Ranking high means more organic sales for your products. 

Take the following steps to improve your titles, images, and descriptions:

  • Place more weight on creating accurate product titles than descriptive ones. 
  • Include high-quality images in your product listing. 
  • Include at least five bullet points to your product description.
  • Revise your product description to incorporate relevant and useful product information. 

While revising your titles and descriptions, you must also add the keywords you found from your research, as discussed earlier. After launching your campaign, you can utilize data from your ads to further refine your listings. You’ll need to spend a lot of time on this, but it is all worth it. 

The great thing about this is that you can continue optimizing your keywords to keep driving sales to your brand. Just don’t do keyword stuffing, as Amazon disapproves of it. 

A standout example of product optimization on Amazon comes from Osmo, a brand that offers educational games for children that integrate physical play pieces with digital environments. 

Their methodical approach to optimizing their product listings on Amazon not only improved their visibility, but also significantly increased their conversion rates. They make sure to use high-quality visuals, and detailed and clear descriptions, amongst other things.

Optimizing your products is also about optimizing your bids. With Merch Jar’s Recipes feature, you can optimize your bids in real-time, allowing your advertising strategy to adapt to ever-changing market conditions.

6. Invite Your Customers to Leave Reviews

Reviews have become the lifeline of every successful business. Several shoppers have this habit of reading reviews before making a purchase, especially when shopping online. Thus, reviews have the power to boost your brand’s sales. Not to mention, Amazon utilizes reviews as its ranking factor for organic search results. 

You can encourage your customers to leave their feedback through automated emails, like when you confirm their order, or they can reach out to you directly. You may also include a product insert, such as a brochure, in your product’s package.

A prime example of effectively encouraging customer reviews on Amazon is the strategy implemented by Vitamix, a brand renowned for its high-performance blenders. Vitamix's proactive approach to gathering customer feedback not only enhanced its product visibility and credibility but also played a significant role in driving sales through positive word-of-mouth. 

The brand uses automated email follow-ups, direct engagement for feedback, and product inserts. They also make sure to proactively feature some of the customers’ reviews in their marketing materials and social media. 

7. Review Your Search Terms Report

As you launch your advertising campaign, it is easy to get obsessed with your sales and revenue. Don’t worry, that’s normal. But, it is also vital that you also focus on what’s driving those purchases. We’re talking about keywords. 

Make sure to invest some time in reviewing your search terms report. These terms appear in your dashboard, under “Advertising.” It is a valuable selection of data for your Sponsored Products, as well as for your Headline Search Ads because it reveals what keywords are driving sales and clicks. Thereby, they can inform your current and future campaigns. 

For instance, say you notice that a particular keyword is giving you lots of clicks. Yet, zero purchases. As you investigate, you find out that while the keyword vividly describes your product, it does not match the user intent. 

By spending some of your time on this, you can save on your advertising budget and improve your overall strategy.

An illustrative example of the strategic importance of reviewing search terms reports in Amazon advertising, comes from the success story of Thorne Research. It’s a company that specializes in the development of high-quality dietary supplements. 

A meticulous analysis of their search terms reports was a key factor in optimizing their Amazon PPC campaigns, leading to improved visibility, increased sales, and a better understanding of customer search behavior.

Best Practices for Building an Impactful Amazon Advertising Strategy

The following are the best practices to consider when building a powerful Amazon advertising strategy.

1. Thorough Keyword Research 

  • Conduct extensive keyword research to identify high-converting search terms relevant to your products.
  • Utilize tools like Amazon's own Keyword Planner or third-party software to discover relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition.
  • Incorporate a mix of broad, phrase, and exact match keywords to capture different levels of search intent.

2. Optimized Product Listings

  • Create compelling product listings with high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and informative bullet points.
  • Optimize product titles and descriptions with relevant keywords to improve visibility in search results.
  • Ensure accurate categorization and attributes to enhance the chances of appearing in relevant search queries.

3. Strategic Campaign Structure

  • Organize advertising campaigns into logical ad groups based on product categories or themes.
  • Segment campaigns by targeting parameters such as product type, audience demographics, or geographic location to optimize performance and budget allocation.
  • Test different ad formats and targeting options to identify the most effective strategies for each product or campaign objective.

4. Continuous Monitoring and Optimization

  • Regularly monitor campaign performance metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and return on ad spend (ROAS).
  • Identify underperforming keywords, ad creative, or targeting settings and make data-driven optimizations to improve results.
  • Adjust bids, budgets, and targeting parameters based on performance trends and competitive landscape.

5. Data-Driven Decision Making

  • Leverage analytics and reporting tools to gain insights into customer behavior, trends, and competitor activity.
  • Use A/B testing to experiment with different ad elements and strategies to determine what resonates best with your target audience.
  • Incorporate historical performance data to inform future campaign planning and budget allocation decisions.

By implementing these best practices, businesses can build a powerful Amazon advertising strategy that drives visibility, engagement, and sales on the platform.

Conclusion

Building a powerful Amazon advertising strategy is essential for businesses looking to thrive in the competitive eCommerce landscape. By implementing thorough keyword research, optimizing product listings, structuring campaigns strategically, and continuously monitoring and optimizing performance, businesses can maximize their visibility, engagement, and sales on the Amazon platform. 

To streamline and supercharge your Amazon advertising efforts, consider leveraging the advanced tools and capabilities offered by Merch Jar. Take the next step towards advertising success and unlock the full potential of your Amazon presence with us right now. Elevate your brand, amplify your reach, and achieve unparalleled results.

Get started for free today!