In this episode of the Marketplace Blueprint Podcast, Robyn speaks with Melissa Burdick President and cofounder of Pacvue and Matt McGrory Senior Account Marketing Manager at Pacvue about how to get the most out of your advertising dollar on Amazon.
Matt and Melissa share from their experience of working with a large number of advertisers. Pacvue is a third-party tool that allows sellers and brand owners to automate their ads on Amazon. To be successful in advertising on Amazon it is about making sure that you are using a strategy that will maximize your budget and existing traffic for your product.
We also recently published an article in Search Engine Journal on the “Top 11 Amazon Advertising Mistakes To Avoid,” that we recommend for those looking for ways to be more effective with Amazon advertising.
Amazon advertising in 2020
Amazon advertising has experienced a lot of change and new opportunities. Amazon launched several new advertisement products and placements. It came with the highest number of changes and the quickest change of pace that we have seen in quite a few years.
2020 comes with new opportunities and strategies. Specifically, Amazon’s sponsored brand ad unit looks promising.
A 15-second short video spot is a great branding opportunity to tell your brand story and include some lifestyle content. It will display right next to shoppable product detail pages, so it’s genuinely a seamless customer experience.
Also, in 2020 voice shopping will be a top priority for Amazon. Alexa is pretty well known to most consumers and marketers at this point. The next step is integrating advertising efforts with Alexa. So expect that to be a big focus going forward.
Think about the customer experience when implementing video ads.
One common mistake that a lot of advertisers made in 2019 was taking existing video content they had for TV or on their website and using it unedited on Amazon. It just wasn’t optimized for that specific shopping experience.
Another of the biggest mistakes we saw was that videos did not include any text or call to action on the video itself. So it relied on customers having their sound turned on and actively listening for the entire duration of the video. We recommend conveying your message via onscreen text in the video to make sure that you don’t have to rely on customers listening to your ad to get the message you’re trying to put across.
You always want to make sure you’re thinking about your customers.
- Are they in a cubicle where they don’t want a lot of sounds?
- Maybe they have their sound turned off?
Many Amazon shoppers are going to be browsing on their commute or perhaps at their desks at work. Also, keep in mind potentially hearing impaired customers who may rely on that video text to be able to engage with your product.
Get in early in programs and always review and retest
Being involved in Amazon programs as they evolve can help you get leg up on the competition. Amazon will even incentivize you to participate in these betas on occasions, especially when they’re trying to get the word out around a new product.
Amazon iterates fast, and they typically launch programs at 70%, so usually, betas don’t work as intended or as well as they will, that’s why it’s essential to be continually testing, remember what doesn’t work today will improve over the following months. You don’t want to fall behind.
Biggest Amazon advertising mistake to avoid during 2020
Matt says he feels that the biggest mistake he sees people make on a consistent basis is focusing on keywords that are too broad. While focusing your ad spend on a broad keyword with a lot of search volume used to be a viable strategy, now that CPC’s are increasing on Amazon moving to more relevant, lower volume keywords allow you to get more lift from your advertising dollar.
Amazon’s getting more sophisticated, so your ad strategy has to get more sophisticated, and that means moving to a longer tail keyword profile.
As more advertisers join the platform, we have seen an increase in cost per click almost quarter over quarter for the past two or three years on Amazon, and it’s probably safe to assume it’s going to continue to get more competitive and more expensive.
