Best Practices To Successfully Use The Amazon CPC Program

Updated
June 9, 2023

Amazon does a great job of offering different useful features for its users. One such feature is the Amazon CPC program which is available to anyone looking to grow their Amazon business. This program is designed to allow sellers to advertise their listings on Amazon and get them in front of the right customers. 

Want to learn how to effectively use Amazon CPC to get a higher ROI for your advertising efforts? Our comprehensive guide will give you the best practices you can implement today! Let’s dive in. 

What is Amazon CPC? 

Your cost-per-click, or CPC, is defined as the cost you pay as an advertiser on Amazon for a single click you receive from your ads. It’s a metric that’s important for marketers and sellers to consider because it ultimately measures the price for your brand’s paid ad campaigns on Amazon. The lower your CPC, the more cost-effective your campaigns are, meaning you get a much better return on investment. 

So, how do Amazon CPC ads work? Essentially, CPC works through a bidding system. As the seller, you choose different keywords that are relevant to your products and bid on them. So, when customers use any of those keywords in their search, Amazon will show them the products that are relevant to those keywords. The product that has the highest bid will win the ad placement on the Amazon search results page. Winning the ad placement and receiving clicks will trigger the billing. 

Why is Amazon CPC Important? 

  • Complete Control of Spending on Ads: When using Amazon CPC, you only pay when a potential customer actually clicks on your ad. This ensures that you have complete control over how much you’re willing to spend for every click and for your ads overall. 
  • Reach More Customers: The majority of the time, sales conversion rates are much higher on Amazon compared to other search engines like Google. This is because when customers are set on buying a product, they’d rather go straight to an e-commerce site where they can view the product directly. Essentially, Amazon CPC campaigns allow sellers to invest in the wide marketplace traffic by ensuring relevant ads get in front of the target audience. 
  • Maximizes Sales Revenue: Since you’ll be directly advertising your relevant products to potential customers, CPC advertising helps you increase your sales and revenue. When potential customers click on your ad, they’ll be directed to the product’s sales page, where they can complete the purchase without any further distractions.  

How Do You Calculate Amazon Cost-Per-Click? 

 Essentially, measuring your cost-per-click on Amazon is pretty important to determine your overall ad spend strategy. The goal should be to reduce the price per click while also cultivating high-quality clicks as well as satisfied customers. 

Your CPC is calculated by dividing your total ad spend by your total clicks. For example, if you paid $100 for your ad, and it gets 100 clicks, that means your CPC for that ad is $1. The $1 is the amount you’re actually spending for every click. As we’ve mentioned, the lower the cost-per-click, the more successful your PPC (pay-per-click) campaign is because it shows a high volume of customers are clicking on your ads.

Ultimately, if the ad you placed gains more clicks than your initial bid, that means it’s a success. 

Best Practices to Lower Your Amazon CPC

Now that we’ve established the basics, it’s time to share some tips that will help you succeed with your Amazon CPC campaign. 

Step 1: Use Automated Amazon PPC Tools

Using an Amazon PPC tool can be a saving grace when it comes to effectively managing your ad campaigns. Such tools are designed to base their actions on your specific campaign goals in order to manage your bids. They incorporate AI to help you evaluate your keywords so they can be added or removed to be as effective as possible. 

MerchJar is a great option to consider to help make your Amazon ad management much less stressful. In particular, the Smart Bids feature uses automated small, daily bid adjustments–based upon your set criteria–to make sure your bids are consistently evaluated to meet your Amazon cost of sales (ACoS) targets. This way, you can rest assured that your brand is generating cost-efficient ads that convert. 

Step 2: Adjust Your Bidding Strategy

As we mentioned before, Amazon uses your bid amount as well as other factors to determine which ads will rank the highest. So, one of the best ways to beat your competition for the best ad placement is to optimize your CPC bidding strategy

You can do this by:

  • Avoiding underbidding. While you may think that bidding as low as possible (e.g., $0.30 per click) will help you lower your CPC, this is not the case. Launching your campaign with low bids can actually hinder your opportunity to bring your ads in front of customers because the lower the bid, the less likely you are to win an auction. This doesn’t mean you need to bid a price you’re not willing to pay. You can base your bid on a set budget you’re comfortable with because, ultimately, what you’ll actually pay will also depend on how relevant your ads and keywords are compared to your competitors. 
  • Experiment by increasing or decreasing your target amounts over a few weeks. This will help you identify which changes actually impact your conversions positively–which is what you want. 
  • Stay consistent with your bidding. This will help you stay on top of seasonal shifts that may cause bids to change over time and you can control escalating your average CPC. Fortunately, there are tools that can help you with this. 

Step 3: Choose Long-Tail Keywords

Only targeting highly competitive short-tail keywords can lead to you overpaying for your CPC. The obvious solution to this is to prioritize long-tail keywords that are more intentional and focused. 

Long-tail keywords are more specific, and customers are more likely to use them when they have a strong purchase intention. It will also be much easier for you to create ads that are highly relevant to those keywords, which will ultimately help you secure those sales conversions.  

Step 4: Use Backend Keywords

A great way to maximize your product visibility and ensure your target customers click on your ads is to include backend keywords. Backend keywords on Amazon are the phrases you can add to your listing which remain invisible but still count toward your product indexing. There’s a special section in your Amazon Seller Central where you can input these keywords, and you’ll be the only one who can see them. 

To find relevant, non-competitive backend keywords, you can enter a key phrase in Amazon’s search bar that’s relevant to your product and discover the other keyword suggestions that come up. Additionally, you should also include common misspellings of your high-traffic keywords, as well as alternative spellings and synonyms, so that you can better maximize your coverage. 

Step 5: Do Audience Segmentation

A special trick to help with considering your keywords and targeting your ideal customers is to consider audience segmentation. Doing this can help you create more relevant ad campaigns, which–if you remember–is one of the factors that influence Amazon to give you an ad placement. 

The simplest form of segmentation you can use is demographic segmentation. In this type, you identify your customers according to their gender, age, nationality, or occupation. You will need to ask your customers to share this information with you when they make purchases. This information can ultimately help you to target your ads much better to make sure they get in front of the right people. 

Conclusion 

Given the right strategies, you can effectively use Amazon CPC campaigns to grow your business almost overnight. Not only that but by utilizing useful tools such as MerchJar, you can automate your marketing process so you have more time to perfect your product listings.

Ready to check out all the useful features for yourself? Supercharge your campaigns today with a 30-day free trial