On this episode of the Marketplace Blueprint Podcast Robyn speaks with Jeff Lieber from Turnkey Product Management. He shares his insight on the Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP) and how it enables clients to buy display and video ads programmatically.
Retargeting potential buyers
DSP offers retargeting ads to customers that have visited your Amazon product listings but didn’t buy. So, it provides an excellent opportunity to get in front of people that already showed some interest in your product but did not convert into a sale, retargeting and following them around on other websites and potentially converting into sales.
Video is here to stay
With DSP you can also do several video ads that generate an opportunity to be creative and show your product in a different and more detailed way rather than the classical image and description mockup we’ve become accustomed to.
“Amazon is moving heavy into video, and I think that will happen more and more in the coming years. So, there’s a lot of really cool video ads that you can do that are custom to keyword-based searches.” Jeff Lieber.
Don’t jump the gun.
Jeff emphasizes that DSP is not for beginners. If you’re starting out and not spending hardly anything on Amazon PPC ads, don’t jump into DSP.
Once your Amazon PPC ads are successful and you’re able to profit from them, then that’s a good starting point where DSP will add extra visibility and help scale your business to a different level.
Do your research and define your target.
If you’re running DSP ads to people who haven’t necessarily expressed interest in your product, that ad is going to be the first exposure to people before they’re ready to buy. So, if you’re not clear on what demographic you’re targeting and what motivates them to buy, it’s going to be difficult for you to craft compelling ads. Then it becomes a trial and error scenario, and you lose money because we’re not just looking at impressions we need to convert.
Aim small miss small
When starting out, you want to focus on your number one bestseller, maybe pick two or three SKUs that you know are high converting products that have had success. Start with targeted ads, spending on the products that you know are winners, that are high converters, and building out the retargeting ads first because those are the lowest hanging fruit. Only then, you can test some of the other portions of your budget on broader items such as targeting different demographics and trying to reach your audience in other ways to increase sales.
Always ask the right questions
When you’re working with any agency, you want to ask them what expectations you should have from the stipulated budget? When do they think you would break even? When do they think you’ll be profitable?
Keep in mind marketing is not an exact science, so they can only give you projections based on your data but never guarantee a specific number.
Marketing during uncertain times
Especially when the market is in a state of flux, you want to continually monitor all your products, shipment times, conversion rates, and try to be as lean and conservative as possible when running ads. Reduce budgets or maybe not even bid on the long tail, broader keywords that haven’t been super profitable for you. Focus only on highly relevant and converting keywords for now and monitor your inventory and your PPC daily because things are changing every single day. So you need to make adjustments on the fly to prevent losing money.
