Features
Amazon currently stands as the most popular e-`commerce platform, boasting over 300 million active users worldwide. With such a thriving consumer base, the platform provides sellers with an amazing opportunity for lucrative growth through its Amazon Marketing Services (AMS).
AMS can help Amazon sellers get their products in front of relevant customers based on product offerings, keywords, and buyer interests. However, many new sellers still don’t know how to use it effectively. In this comprehensive MerchJar guide, we’re going to show you how you can leverage AMS so that you get the sales you deserve!
Let’s start with the basics–what is Amazon Marketing Services, and why should you care?
Amazon Marketing Services (AMS–also now known as Amazon Advertising Console– is a collective term used for multiple Amazon seller services. Essentially, AMS is the set of advertising tools that help sellers run and manage their ads on Amazon.
According to Statista, from 2022, Amazon accounts for 37.8% of the e-commerce market share in the U.S., followed by Walmart, Apple, and eBay, holding 6.3%, 3.9%, and 3.5%, respectively. Clearly, this wide margin shows that Amazon takes the online retailing cup by a long shot. More importantly, a large percentage of customers find sponsored ads helpful, so it’s definitely worth your effort to prioritize Amazon Marketing Services.
Since first launching its advertising solutions, Amazon has been increasing its marketing options for sellers. It first started with Sponsored Products, then extended to Sponsored Brand ads (previously known as Headline Search ads) and Sponsored Display ads (previously known as Product Display ads). It’s important to know that within every ad type, the targeting options are also increasing, so we’re going to help you understand these three popular options a little better so you can grow your business on Amazon.
Amazon Sponsored Products promotes your products to buyers on Amazon that are searching for specific keywords or looking at similar products. Only certain product categories are eligible to use this ad type, and they need to be eligible for the Featured Offer program that has performance-based requirements. The major benefit is that Sponsored Products ads will always appear in very noticeable areas, such as the first page of search results.
Sponsored ads are pay-per-click, meaning you’ll only pay when a customer clicks on your ad. You’ll also be able to set a budget to manage how much you want to bid for every click. Amazon typically recommends a daily minimum budget of $10.
Sponsored Brand ads will showcase a collection of products from your brand to buyers that are searching for specific keywords on Amazon. This ad type is cost-per-click (CPC), and you’ll be able to add your brand logo, a personalized headline, and multiple products you want to promote.
The main goal of Sponsored Brand ads is to help you increase product awareness by reaching your target audience. When buyers click on your logo, they will be taken straight to your Amazon store or a custom landing page. If they click on a specific product, they’ll go straight to the product page. Sponsored Brand ads are only available for professional sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry and book vendors and agencies.
Amazon Display ads help you get the attention of buyers on and off the Amazon platform that viewed your products or similar products. This is a self-service Amazon Marketing Services advertising option. You’ll be able to create simple campaigns and automatically generate display ads that will get you clicks.
The goal is to reach your target audience anywhere online and drive them to your detailed landing pages. Sponsored Display ads are available to professional vendors enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry, and agencies with clients who sell products on Amazon.
The best first step to using AMS effectively is determining your advertising goals, so you have a clear picture of your desired outcomes. Your goals must be S.M.A.R.T– Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
This is what S.M.A.R.T goals can look like:
Before creating your ad campaign, you need to ensure you’re conducting research to make your ads as relevant and appealing to your audience as possible. When delving into this process, you should be:
Of course, before you create your ad campaign, you’ll need to select the ad format you want out of Sponsored Product ads, Sponsored Brand ads, and Sponsored Display ads. If you have the budget for it, you’re also free to choose all three. It’s also a great idea to test each one to see which format leads to higher conversions.
Now, as you're creating your ads, you don’t have to consider including all of your products. Just highlight the products that will resonate the most with your target audience.
Here’s a short checklist you can refer to when developing your eye-catching ad campaigns:
If you want some extra help managing your Amazon advertising campaigns, it’s not a bad idea to look at some tools.
MerchJar is an Amazon ads optimization software solution that’s dedicated to helping Amazon sellers automate and manage ad campaigns so that you can attribute the majority of your efforts to growing your business.
Our formidable tool’s flagship feature, Recipes, ensures that you get the ad automation of your dreams. It works by performing routine maintenance operations on your ads, like pausing specific campaigns, increasing your set bids, or lowering your budgets depending on the preset conditions you’ve set. This way, you can always make sure that your ads are continuously being optimized to meet the goals you set out at the start without doing much of the heavy lifting yourself.
Establishing your budget for your ad campaigns ensure that you’ll be able to get the best ROI.
Some best practices for determining your budget are:
It’s important to make good use of Amazon’s in-built auto-targeting tools such as “Automatic Targeting” and “Advanced Targeting”. These tools will help you effectively refine the audience that your ads will be placed in front of. This is also why it’s important to do your research when planning your ads.
Amazon Marketing Services will give you the options of two main targeting methods–interest-based and product based. It’s best to use both so that you’re able to reach a wider audience.
As you continually test your ads to see which formats are the best fit, you’ll then need to optimize them regularly so that they keep improving. Make sure to look out for these aspects so that you can remove the assets that are underperforming:
To ensure you’re getting the most out of your ad spend and meeting your business goals, you’ll need to consistently analyze the performance of your ad campaigns. A good practice is creating Amazon advertising reports to keep a comprehensive track of important metrics.
Some metrics you should be tracking are:
Fortunately, you can easily access this data in real-time via reporting dashboards within Amazon Marketing Services.
Amazon Marketing Services is an extremely useful tool for businesses to get their product offerings in front of their target customers and increase ROI from their ad spend. However, as we’ve discovered, it’s important to perform adequate research and continuously test your advertising efforts in order to utilize the service effectively.
To make your life a whole lot easier, consider useful tools such as MerchJar to automate the tedious parts of using and managing your ads. You’ll be able to regularly optimize your campaigns so that you’re always ahead of your competitors with prominent features like Recipes and Smart Bids. Ready to check it out for yourself? Supercharge your campaigns today with a 30-day free trial!
