Amazon has over 6 million sellers. This massive number may make you feel like it is impossible to reach new audiences.
Still, you can move potential buyers up the advertising channel by leveraging the Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP).
With Amazon DSP, you can implement a full-funnel marketing strategy that will help you create brand awareness and reach new audiences.
Throughout this article, we’ll run down everything you need to know about getting started with Amazon DSP. We’ll also tell you how to make the most of the platform to grow your brand.
Let’s get started.
What is Amazon DSP?
Amazon DSP is a software that offers an automated and centralized media purchasing system. It allows advertisers to purchase mobile, search, and video advertising placement from publishers.
With display advertising, your brand will have a broader reach and wider exposure towards prospective buyers. This helps you attain revenue goals quickly.
That’s why most brands and online sellers invest in display advertising and employ the DSP to manage and buy advertising inventory.
With Amazon DSP, advertisers can meticulously purchase display, audio, and video ads both off and on Amazon.
Dynamic advertising is enriched with media elements. But no, they are not the flashy neon digital ads we saw once upon a time. Instead, these elements are inclined on storytelling and emotionally-resounding content.
Content like video and audio ads can help highlight the unique selling points of your product. More often, it takes the right media to deliver a message across more clearly and make it resound to your potential customers.
The greatest benefit of Amazon DSP is that sellers can programmatically purchase video and display ads. This is what sets it apart from PPC campaigns.
They do this while taking advantage of Amazon’s huge client database to target individuals who have clicked or purchased products similar to theirs.
What Is a Full-Funnel Marketing Strategy for Amazon Sellers?
A full-funnel marketing strategy helps you choose the best type of Amazon advertising product to use at every stage.
That way, you will easily manage paid ads since you know the objective or goal of each Amazon advertising product. Maybe you intend to increase sales, drive awareness, or improve brand consideration.
The term “funnel” refers to the marketing funnel that features three primary sections: the bottom of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, and the top of the funnel.
The three stages represent the client’s path throughout the awareness, consideration, and purchase phases.
Nevertheless, Amazon utilizes a different model.
Let’s find out how!
The client’s path is not sternly straightforward or linear, even though it features a funnel shape.
In reality, most clients don’t always begin at the awareness phase.
Perhaps they know everything about the product and have no issue repurchasing it. Maybe they are still browsing reviews to find out if the item is worth purchasing. For this reason, client paths are never the same.
Amazon understands this, and clients can enter the funnel at any stage. They can even skip phases if they like.
This tells us that you can’t predict the process a purchaser uses before buying a product.
Therefore, you must implement a full-funnel marketing strategy as it can assist you in covering all your bases.
This is where Amazon ads in the form of DSP posts a significant benefit.
How Can You Integrate Amazon DSP in Your Full-Funnel Marketing Strategy?
Whatever path shoppers take, they may come across an Amazon touchpoint when purchasing a product. Integrating the Amazon DSP into your full-funnel marketing strategy is a smart move. It will help you reach buyers as they go about their lives.
The impact of Amazon spanned to fashioning a modern shopper’s behavior. Statistics show that about 75% of shoppers the check prices and customer reviews in Amazon before buying a product.
Meanwhile, a full-funnel marketing strategy built around Amazon’s expansive influence can bring advantages to your product or company.
Here is how you do it!
Ensure the Products are Ready to Buy
According to Amazon, you can begin at the bottom and move up while building a full-funnel marketing strategy.
However, you need to ensure you meet retail readiness by optimizing your product’s detail page. Parts like titles, descriptions, bullets, and images must be engaging to clients.
Listing optimization complements your advertising efforts. It maximizes the traffic that the ads bring to your Amazon store, as well as increases the conversion rate of the leads you gather.
Reach Out to Shoppers Who Might Buy
Once you optimize the product listing, you need to reach out to your target market and increase sales.
Use keywords or branded search terms to create Sponsored Product ads.
Maybe you have clients who viewed your product detail page but did not push through with the purchase. If this is the case, you can use Amazon Sponsored Display as your remarketing technique.
Outsmart Your Competitors
Outsmarting competitors is not easy due to the many products you’ll be competing with.
You should therefore create sponsored products, sponsored displays, and sponsored brands.
This is a bit tricky and it would benefit you to seek professional help from experts that can assist you in accomplishing this task.
Aside from choosing the Amazon ad type to utilize, marketers are also faced with the dilemma about budget, especially when aspiring the ideal ROAS.
With careful analysis about your competition environment, you can now devise a strategy that can help you stay afloat while extending a “good fight” with your competitors. This is also when having an expert partner becomes an advantage since their services backed by skills and experience.
The Difference Between Amazon DSP and Sponsored Display
Knowing the differences between Amazon DSP and Sponsored Display is essential. This will help ensure you have a better balance in your Amazon ad strategy.
Let’s take a look at the key differences.
Eligibility
You can use the DSP for brands that don’t sell directly on Amazon.
On the other hand, Sponsored Display ads are available on Amazon only.
With the help of Sponsored Display ads, you have a better chance of improving brand awareness and increasing purchases in Amazon’s marketplace.
While ads might appear outside the marketplace, all the traffic will go to your Amazon listing.
Cost Structure
The cost of the two ads affect why they fit into the ad strategy and how their success is measured. DSP ads utilize a Cost Per Mille (CPM) structure. That’s the average cost you will pay to offer 1000 impressions of the ads.
On the other hand, Sponsored Display ads utilize a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) structure. This is calculated depending on the average cost you pay any time a visitor clicks your ad.
Based on the conversion rate of the ads, PPC or CPM might benefit your brand. Your product category, conversions, brand awareness, and goals might affect the cost structure you choose.
Minimum Investment
Sponsored Display ads direct the traffic back to the Amazon listings. Therefore, Amazon makes the entry barrier low. Advertisers can spend a minimum of $1 which makes it easier for you to get started.
DSP needs a heavier investment to leverage the audience insights and advanced reporting offered in the program. This self-service advertising service sees minimum spending at $10,000 every month.
So firstly, you should evaluate your total marketing budget. It is a fact that DSP ads cost way more than PPC campaigns. Yet, this could easily be compensated by the expanse of its reach and opportunities.
Even though Sponsored Display ads have a low entry barrier, the Amazon DSP program provides a strong ad solution that requires a sizeable investment.
Targeting Custom Audiences
Sponsored Display ads provide three targeting options. They include product targeting, audience interests, and views remarketing. Since Sponsored Display does not require advertisers to define customer audience segments, they are focused on automated retargeting.
Advertisers who want to build custom audiences should opt for DSP ads. This is because Amazon DSP lets advertisers build custom segments using Amazon demographics and user activity info. You can create custom audiences using data collected directly from the clients. It lets you build custom-built, contextual, and highly targeted audience segments for your product ads.
Customization as an approach in advertising provides a new dimension in the customers’ shopping journey. They find that you speak precisely to them by tapping their emotions and solving their pain points. The likelihood of conversion is also higher with DSP because of this.
Sponsored Display and DSP Control Over Creative
One of the strongest features available in DSP ads is the control you have over the creativity of the ads. That means you can fully customize your Amazon DSP ads. You can changed the headline, use custom-designed images, and customize the brand logo. This helps in improving buyers’ attention to product ads and enhances the CTR.
This feature can benefit all sellers, including those whose products rely heavily on graphic ads. DSP elevates the game by providing a strong avenue for sellers to express their creativity and capture their audience’s attention.
Sponsored display ads can automatically create display ads that are optimized to deliver the outcome. However, this ad type does not provide any customization. Since it’s automatically optimized using Amazon product data, it offers a lower-maintenance alternative for brands that don’t have enough resources and time to personalize the creativity of the ad.
The Benefits of Using the Amazon DSP for Your Business
Amazon DSP ads offer you a chance to run targeted display ads to eager purchasers off and on Amazon. Here are the benefits of using Amazon DSP ads.
Transform Spontaneous Shoppers into Purchasers
The perfect place to begin with Amazon DSP is remarketing shoppers who have visited your product info pages but didn’t push through with buying the product. Amazon makes it simple to choose and target people who have viewed your products recently but did not convert to a sale.
Now, aside from enticing regular and Amazon Prime shoppers, you can also bring customers outside the platform inside with DSP ads.
Marketers are now seeing many opportunities to encourage customers to buy at any point of their journey. Remember the funnel? Now, with DSP, it is possible to bypass the other stages and go straight to purchasing. It is just the matter of persuasion tactics through AI and powerful ad copies shown in perfect timing.
Cross-Sell Your Products
If you sell complementary items, you can create an audience of shoppers who have bought one of your items but not the complimentary ones.
For instance, let’s assume you sell violins and their cases. If an individual purchases a violin but does not purchase the case, you can have targeted ads showing the benefits and features of the cases.
These types of DSP campaigns broaden your target market. They do not limit you to marketing to direct customers or users of the product. Rather, you can also do so based on interest and need.
In all fairness, this way, you also make it easier for customers to buy what they need and have them in one go. It helps them have a complete and satisfying buying experience, benefitting the platform as well.
Helps in Driving Repeat Purchases
If you sell consumable products, you need to get clients to subscribe and save money with your items.
For the individuals who don’t subscribe, running ads will remind them to repurchase the product.
Let’s assume you sell a supplement that will last for 30 days. You can run an ad to remind the shoppers that your product is of excellent quality. Getting consumers back to your product info page will motivate them to subscribe and save.
Running DSP ads are beneficial to both the conversion funnel and the sales funnel. With the former, it is a matter of timing while the latter, of convenience. These two elements are what drive most e-commerce purchases nowadays.
Lure Your Competitors’ Clients with Competitive Conquesting
This is an exciting and powerful way to leverage your Amazon DSP ads. This option allows you to target competitive purchasers in various ways. This includes:
- Purchasers who have viewed your competitors’ products previously
- Purchasers who have bought your competitors’ products previously
This offers an opportunity to obtain new purchasers by showing them what they’ve been missing from not using your products.
DSP ads can help you directly compete with your competitors side by side. You maximize this opportunity through research; that is, by finding areas you can improve on their product and then highlighting them on yours. Not only it benefits new entrants but also competing brands.
Running Ads that Resemble Amazon While Showcasing Your Brand
Amazon is a big brand.
You will want to leverage the trust and familiarity associated with this giant brand. You want your product and brand to be the focus of the ad, while Amazon’s branding and top-notch trustworthiness helps increase clicks and conversions.
If you are to choose the marketing channels where you can grow your brand, Amazon is on top of the trends and action right now – or maybe for longer. It continues to expand its reach across the globe, including those countries with robust economies like US, China, India, Brasil, Canada, France, and UK.
Conclusion
Amazon DSP is an awesome advertising tool for companies to drive growth and make a business successful.
However, the cost isn’t cheap. So, if your budget is limited, you can use Amazon DSP for special occasions only.
That includes launching new products or using them during the holiday shopping season to increase brand awareness and generate traffic.
If you want to boost purchases, increase new client acquisition, and improve exposure, then investing in Amazon DSP is the move to make.