Top Amazon PPC Tips For 2024 Success
In the rapidly evolving world of Amazon advertising, staying ahead means constantly adapting and refining your strategies. And that’s never been more important than it is right now with more ad placements in search results than ever before.
While personally managing a six-figure annual spend on Amazon ads and having the privilege of guiding hundreds of students through our Amazon PPC course, I’m in trenches testing things all the time.
This article is designed to share that knowledge, offering my top Amazon PPC tips for 2024 that are essential for anyone looking to enhance their visibility, boost sales, and achieve a better return on investment on Amazon.
By applying these strategies, my hope is that you’ll be better positioned to make informed decisions, optimize your ad spend, and drive meaningful results for your business.
Let’s dive into the proven tactics on how to optimize Amazon PPC campaigns and maximize your Amazon advertising efforts in the coming year.
1. Know Your Numbers
The foundation of any advertising success is knowing the numbers that measure success, and how you can improve them.
Understanding the key metrics such as:
- ACOS: Advertising Cost of Sale
- ROAS: Return on Ad Spend
- CTR: Click-Through Rate, and
- CVR: Conversion Rate…
…is crucial for success.
These numbers tell a story about the health and effectiveness of your campaigns. They help you gauge whether you’re investing your budget wisely, if your ads resonate with your target audience, and ultimately, if you’re driving profitable sales.
But knowing your numbers goes beyond just tracking metrics. It involves setting clear, data-driven goals, benchmarking your performance, and continuously monitoring and analyzing your data to identify trends and opportunities for optimization.
Remember though: Improving performance is not just about your ad campaigns, and needs to involve a holistic approach.
Which brings us perfectly to the next tip.
2. Optimize From Beginning to End
Optimizing Amazon listings is a pivotal aspect of a holistic Amazon PPC strategy, acting as the foundation upon which successful advertising campaigns are built.
A well-optimized listing enhances the relevance and attractiveness of your products, significantly impacting the effectiveness of your PPC efforts in several ways:
Improved Click-Through Rates (CTR)
An optimized listing with high-quality images, a compelling title, and attractive pricing and/or promotions is more likely to capture the attention of potential customers in search results. This not only improves the CTR of your ads but also increases the likelihood of conversions once shoppers land on your product page.
Increased Conversion Rates (CVR)
The end goal of any PPC campaign isn’t just to attract traffic but to convert that traffic into sales. A listing that clearly communicates the product’s benefits and features, backed by persuasive and informative product descriptions, can significantly boost conversion rates. Enhanced content, such as A+ content for brand owners, further enriches the product story, contributing to higher conversion rates.
Better Ad Relevance and Quality Scores
Amazon’s algorithms take into account the relevance of your listings to the keywords you bid on in your PPC campaigns. A listing that’s closely aligned with the keywords it targets will be deemed more relevant, potentially leading to better ad placements and lower costs per click (CPC). This relevance is determined by the content of your listing, including titles, bullet points, and backend search terms.
Efficient Use of Advertising Budget
When your listings are optimized and resonate well with your target audience, each click generated by your PPC campaigns has a higher potential to convert into a sale. This efficiency in turning ad clicks into purchases means your advertising budget is utilized more effectively, leading to a better return on ad spend (RoAS).
How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings:
- High-Quality Images: Use professional, high-resolution images that showcase your product from multiple angles and highlight key features.
- Compelling Titles: Create informative and keyword-rich titles that clearly describe your product and its main benefits.
- Bullet Points and Descriptions: Use bullet points to succinctly list the key features and benefits, and expand on these in the product description with more detailed information.
- Backend Keywords: Utilize backend search terms to include relevant keywords that didn’t fit naturally into your visible listing content.
- A+ Content: For brand owners, take advantage of A+ content to tell a compelling brand story and provide additional product details through enhanced images and text.
In essence, an optimized Amazon listing not only directly contributes to the success of your PPC campaigns but also reinforces your overall presence and performance on the platform, creating a positive cycle of visibility, traffic, and sales.
3. Prioritize Long tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific keyword phrases that shoppers are likely to use when they are closer to making a purchase decision.
These keywords typically have three or more words and are highly specific to the product being sold and prioritizing these long tail keywords over broader short-tail keywords has a number of benefits:
Relevant and Targeted Traffic
Long-tail keywords are by nature more specific, which means they align closely with the user’s search intent.
For example, a customer searching for “waterproof men’s hiking boots size 11” knows exactly what they want, as opposed to someone who just types “boots.”
By targeting such detailed queries, your ads are more likely to be shown to potential customers who are further down the purchase funnel, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Lower Competition
Because long-tail keywords are so specific, they tend to be less competitive than more generic, shorter keywords.
This helps because lower competition typically means your ads can achieve higher visibility without the need for aggressive bidding. For instance, it’s generally easier and more cost-effective to win the ad auction for “organic dog food for small breeds” than for a highly competitive and broad term like “dog food.”
Cost-Effectiveness
The reduced competition for long-tail keywords often leads to lower costs per click (CPC). This cost-effectiveness allows you to stretch your advertising budget further, enabling more clicks and potentially more conversions for the same amount of money. It’s about maximizing the efficiency of every dollar spent on PPC, where even niche products can gain significant traction without the need to outbid larger competitors on broader terms.
4. Embrace AI
With lots to do and limited time in which to do it, AI-driven software can be the secret weapon of a successful Amazon advertiser.
The best Amazon PPC tools will help you:
- Create Structured Campaigns: Save time on creating campaign structures by adopting the presets given by many tools.
- Adjust Bids Around The Clock: Create rules that trigger on preset parameters (like breakeven ACOS) so that when any keyword hits the threshold an automatic bid adjustment is made. This is super helpful for keeping permanent “guide rails” on your campaigns and keeping them on track.
- Promote Winning Keywords: Create additional rules to move keywords to dedicated proven keyword campaigns where budgets can be maxed out for profitable spending.
- Negate Unprofitable Keywords: Further rules can be created to automatically negate any keywords that aren’t converting or are deemed too expensive.
With the amount of time and cost savings available, the price of good Amazon PPC software can pay for itself very quickly.
5. Go All-In On Video
With the recent addition of vertical TikTok-style videos as an ad format, Amazon continue to move in the direction of as much video content as possible.
This adds to existing video ad formats that are becoming increasingly popular and appearing in new ad positions such as on product pages and in multiple slots in search results.
As such, sellers would be wise to double down on video production efforts and launch as many video ad campaigns as possible to test these new opportunities.
As always, remember to stick to best practices with your Amazon video ads:
- Show Don’t Tell: Show the benefit of your product with images and graphics rather than describing them with words.
- Story Without Sound: Remember that many viewers will watch your video ads without sound, so make sure they can understand your video without sound through simple imagery and subtitles.
- Mobile First: More shoppers than ever are checking out on their mobile devices, so be sure to make any text or product shots big and easily viewable on smaller screens.
6. Use PPC As A Ranking Tool
The most savvy Amazon advertisers right now are more concerned with TACOS than they are with ACOS.
- TACOS: Total Advertising Cost Of Sale
- ACOS: Advertising Cost Of Sale
The reason TACOS is so key is because it’s a reflection of how your Amazon advertising efforts are impacting your overall business performance.
If your ACOS is growing but your TACOS is shrinking, it shows that the aggressive approach you are taking to your advertising strategy is generating enough sales to increase your organic visibility.
Then, as organic sales start rolling in, your overall profitability improves, even if your ACOS isn’t coming down.
So, my top tip is to use an Amazon ACOS calculator to calculate your breakeven ACOS, then use that figure as an aggressive goal to drive more sales and increase organic ranking.
7. Always Be Testing
In any area of marketing, things move fast. And that is no different with Amazon PPC. Amazon will continue to test and create new opportunities for sellers, so it’s key that sellers also continue to test everything they can, such as:
- Ad Formats: While Sponsored Products will make up the biggest portion of most sellers’ sales, don’t neglect Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display in order to squeeze more profit from Amazon PPC.
- Placements: The top of search placement is always the most desired, but is it always the most profitable? Only testing will tell!
- Creatives: A good as is only as good as the creative assets it utilizes. Test multiple main images, custom ad images, and video ads in order to find the winners.
In short, the more you’re able to test, the more opportunities you have to find winning strategies and grow your sales on Amazon.
Utilize each of the tips laid out in this article, and you will be well on your way to Amazon advertising success this year — and beyond!
Author:
Ben Donovan
The Founder of Brand Builder University.