Amazon Marketing in 2020 – How to plan and execute?

Amazon – it is the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace. And it has reached its current stature after decades of updates and enhancements, which provide immense value to both buyers and sellers on the platform. Most online vendors have a product page on Amazon as well. It becomes important for customers to be able to search these product pages, similar to how users search for websites on search engines.

Amazon, like other search engines, has its own search algorithm – A9. Thus, it is vital for you to know how A9 works so that they can get their product pages ranked higher to increase discovery and sales. The difference in how Amazon A9 works as compared to the search algorithms of Google and Bing lies in the fact that Amazon is first and foremost a buying platform, which means that the website-SEO concepts alone won’t be of much use.

Again, similar to other search engines, Amazon also offers sellers to use the Sponsored Ads feature, which helps attract more customers, improve sales figures, and allows the sellers to meet their goals.

WHAT IS A9?

While Google and Bing searches are related to almost every possible topic that humans can think of, every Amazon search query has a sole transactional purpose. For this reason, the A9 algorithm focuses on two primary aspects only – Relevance and Performance. Optimizing these two factors can yield wonderful results for your Amazon seller account, and you will see your conversions increase steadfastly.

Relevance and Performance can further be broken down into multiple sub-categories, as discussed below.

A9 RELEVANCE RELATED FACTORS

1. Product Title – This is the most important Amazon SEO element for any seller. You should use the most relevant product keywords in the product title, but keep in mind that keyword stuffing will depreciate your Amazon search rankings. Some of the points to consider while optimizing your Amazon product name are:

• Inclusion of brand name
• A concise and clear product description outlining the use(s) of the product
• Include the name of at least one essential material or special ingredient
• Include product size and color
• If applicable, you should mention the product quantity as well

2. Seller Name – If the main keyword(s) for your product is included in your seller name, your products get ranked higher in Amazon search results.
3. Backend Keywords – Backend keywords can be thought of as similar to the meta tags of a website that tell the search engine what the webpage is about. Backend keywords are used to guide the A9 algorithm in figuring out which particular product listing is targeting which specific keyword on Amazon. For backend keywords, sellers get five fields with a 50 character limit for each field. Sellers should make optimal use of these limits by not repeating any keywords and keeping the use of quotation marks to a minimum. Using synonyms will also help.
4. Brand Field – Your brand name spelling should be exactly right, as many searches on Amazon are based on a product’s brand name.
5. Product Description & Bullet Points – These are again very vital for your search rankings as they give detailed information about the product to your customers, and hence, the description and bullet points need to be as descriptive as possible and need to include your product’s most relevant keywords.

A9 PERFORMANCE RELATED FACTORS

1. Product Price – Having a competitive price for your products on Amazon as compared to other sites is a big bonus as it increases the likelihood of positively growing your conversion rate. If a particular category has many similar products that are selling for less than you are, then your sales will take a hit. Pricing for products on Amazon should be done only after thorough research and comparison with your competitors.
2. Product Images – Amazon recommends its sellers to use high-resolution images with guidelines to be 1000 pixels or larger in either of height or width, while also mentioning that the smallest image should be 500 pixels on its longest side.
3. Amazon Reviews – 85% of the customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Also, generally, the products ranking at the top of an Amazon product search have more and better reviews as compared to the ones down below on the same list. This concludes that more and better reviews have a positive impact on conversion rates and sales. To ensure that your customers do leave your reviews after purchasing products from you, simply send them follow-up emails requesting them to leave a review. If you have negative reviews, understand what the customers’ complaints are and resolve them.

WHAT ARE AMAZON SPONSORED ADS?

Sponsored Ads work by targeting shopping queries or products and occupy high-visibility sections on Amazon’s website. These work similar to Google Ads or Facebook Ads in the sense that different ads are shown to customers based on their search and behavior patterns.

TYPES OF SPONSORED ADS

1. Sponsored Products – Available to all Amazon professional sellers, these ads are visible on the Amazon website and are useful in promoting specific products. These are visible in the ad placement sections on product search results and product pages. The primary objective of using these ads is to increase traffic to product pages to boost sales.
2. Sponsored Brands – This is available only to the vendors registered in the Amazon Brand Registry. These ads include multiple products along with the logo of your brand and a customized headline. Once a visitor clicks on the ad, they will be redirected to a grouping of products or your brand store. This ad type is primarily used to increase brand awareness and boost sales across the entire catalog of your products.
3. Sponsored Display – These ads are used to build customer engagement by targeting those buyers who either viewed the product detail page of your products or showed interest in categories similar to or related to your promoted products. Specific products or categories that are complementary or similar to your product can also be targeted. The sponsored display can help you reach a wider audience both on and off Amazon. This is available to vendors registered in the Amazon Brand Registry only.
4. Stores – A store is more like a brand campaign where you can showcase your seasonal collections and bestsellers, share your brand’s story, and even publish videos. Automatic widgets can be used to customize the user experience. It helps maximized user engagement with your brand using a custom-made brand experience, which improves user loyalty and retention. Again, available only to the sellers and vendors registered on the Amazon Brand Registry.

BUDGETING

Each advertiser, before launching a campaign, would want to have a heads up about how much the ad campaign is going to cost. To help sellers understand the advertising costs, Amazon has some points for you to consider.

1. There is no upfront on a monthly advertising fee. While setting up a sponsored ads campaign, sellers can determine their ad budget along with the bid amount for each click. Sellers only pay when their ads get clicked by customers, and the cost charged for each click is the exact same amount set as the bid price by the seller.
2. Sellers have complete control over their ad budget as they can set daily budgets or a campaign-level budget. Not a single penny extra outside of the budget specified by the sellers will be charged to them.
3. A budget, once set, can always be revised. If you are working on a daily budget, you can either increase or decrease it each day. But a campaign-level budget can only be increased from its current value.

A Sponsored Products ad campaign generally takes about 5 minutes on an average to be setup up, and the ads start showing to targeted users almost instantly. In the campaign manager, you can find real-time information, which is also where you create the ads. These ads are designed, keeping in mind the diverse seller backgrounds, which makes it very easy to implement, without having any prior advertising experience. There are even multiple report types to help you understand your ad campaigns better and optimize them.

CONCLUSION

Amazon is a platform in itself, and it is important to know all it has to offer before you become a seller. This will help you optimize your sales and increase your revenue, which is, after all, the primary motivation of becoming an Amazon seller.