Amazon is one of the world’s largest online marketplaces for both new and used products. It attracts businesses that are constantly vying for visibility and profit.
In fact, Amazon took in 51.2 percent of U.S. digital sales in 2020. This was an approximate increase of 50% from the previous year.
This means that the retailer continues to attract more merchants, with competition for brand exposure on the platform remaining quite stiff.
The more visible your brand or product on Amazon is, the more likely you are to make sales, grow, and expand your business.
Brand visibility on the platform has now become mandatory for any business seeking to tap into a vast customer base.
The best way to achieve this much-coveted brand exposure is through constant advertisements, marketing, and brand promotions.
Apart from the several marketing channels, Amazon Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the best advertising strategies that can help you achieve brand visibility in a quicker and more cost-effective way.
Amazon PPC allows your ads to show on the most prime spots in Amazon. It enables you to pay for visibility and traffic. Do you see those products marked with a fine-print “Sponsored Products” that show when you searched for a particular product? That is one example of a PPC-driven ad.
So How Does Amazon PPC Work?
Amazon PPC is an advertisement strategy where sellers pay a small fee to Amazon anytime a customer clicks on your product.
With this strategy, you get to pay for the traffic generated by your ads.
With PPC, it’s much easier for you to monitor your expected and actual performance. It also gives you a firm grip on your advertisement budget.
Amazon PPC is an excellent way to achieve positive ROI because you’ll only pay for results.
Apart from that, Amazon PPC offers a chance to boost your sales.
The most beautiful thing about PPC is that it gives you the flexibility to re-strategize. Say you placed an ad, and it didn’t generate the expected amount of traffic, you can optimize it to yield the results you want without getting out of budget.
Think of PPC as a means of getting instant traffic to your site that you can easily convert to sales.
By achieving brand visibility, you’ll be in a better position to do business or even get many referrals.
Amazon PPC is not just like a traditional paid advertising where it shows the ads to a specific number of audience. There, you pay per number of impressions.
Instead, it is programmed to display your brands ads to shoppers who are looking exactly for your product.
To establish the relevance between your product and search terms, you have to bid for the right keywords.
For example, if someone searches for a product, the word he types will have a corresponding keyword that the algorithm can understand, which can either be exact, phrase, or broad match.
You then can bid for that keyword and establish the connection.
If you win the bidding, your PPC ads will show to the search results of your target audiences, labeled as sponsored products.
Bids vary depending on the competitiveness of your keywords. Usually, the more vague a keyword is, the more competitive it is. Thus, the bidder should use different keyword match types in a PPC campaign to make it cost-effective and to lower the ACOS.
Brands and retailers alike can both benefit from Amazon PPC because of its flexibility. You can configure product ads to your goal – whether to improve brand awareness, grow revenue, or indirectly increase organic ranking.
Running PPC Campaigns vs. Hiring PPC Management Services?
While you can run your own Amazon PPC campaigns, there comes a time when an expert opinion is necessary for running your PPC accounts.
Sure, it’s okay to start on your own when the business is still small and on a shoestring budget.
As the business grows, however, so do its needs. It may be overwhelming to run an effective PPC campaign on your own and still concentrate on other aspects of your business.
It’s important to note that an expert will see your business from the outside. They are more likely to relate to the customers’ pain points and know precisely what they are looking for from your company.
Therefore, outsourcing your Amazon PPC campaigns is an effective way of meeting your customer needs.
Additionally, you procure more of your valuable time when you outsource your PPC campaigns. This time can be used for focusing on critical and essential matters that can directly help you grow your business.
With that said, let’s take a look at some items that will show you it’s time to hire a company to manage your PPC campaign.
New Entrants and Increased Competition
The E-commerce business is lucrative, and many people are opening up E-commerce stores making it easy for customers to have several options.
How do you stay relevant in such a rapidly growing market?
An expert will likely re-strategize your PPC campaigns to help you achieve a competitive edge.
In the same way, you have someone focused on realizing opportunities along the way.
You can count on an expert to be always on top of your campaigns, gathering insights, and implementing the necessary optimization to stay afloat and thriving in the competition.
You May Not Have the Time
As a business owner, you have lots of stuff going on, and you may not give your PPC campaigns the time it needs.
For your pay-per-click ads to generate meaningful results, they must be constantly monitored, altered, and managed.
From keyword research, ad testing, SEO optimization, reducing wastages, and monitoring results, all these require time.
Instead of spending a lot of time on the campaigns, let the experts handle them as you concentrate on other matters that will help grow the business.
You can use a tool that automates some of the mundane processes in Amazon advertising. However, having a dedicated person to do the job provides human insight. This is crucial to most decision-making situations.
Exponential Portfolio Growth
When your portfolio grows too big for you to manage, it’s time to outsource PPC services.
An Amazon PPC expert is capable of handling the different demands of big portfolios without missing the details.
Keyword bidding for various products may be tedious, hence, having an expert can do this in the most organized way.
In addition, an Amazon advertiser can focus on monitoring for opportunities.
Keywords may be relevant at the moment but not anymore at the next. Having a person who can spot trends and act on them accordingly is indispensable for vendors selling in a marketplace as competitive as Amazon.
Expert human eyes combined with AI tools can also mine insights out of data and metrics useful to your growth and scale.
In addition, another perspective to look at when it comes to opportunities is customer questions.
Providing timely and expert answers to customer inquiries can increase your credibility, therefore, may affect your product listing, positively.
Advantages of Using Amazon PPC Management Services
With customers spending more time online and relying on online content to make purchasing decisions, businesses can leverage this new opportunity to push their products and services to the million net users through PPC.
Amazon, however, is rapidly growing, and competition is quite stiff. Sellers are constantly trying to outshine one another.
This means that as a business, you should intensify your PPC advertisements to give you the much-required leverage.
And then alongside, you also need someone who ties all the loops and aligns everything so that the whole customer journey will run smoothly.
Talk about optimizing product listings and keyword targeting while at the same time, working on establishing a strong brand presence through the Amazon Brand Registry.
These requirements may not be your priority, but they are essential to your success in the platform.
Therefore, you should exhaust all your options in Seller Central to keep up. And it is a breath of relief to know that you can have an expert to do that for you.
Below are some of the benefits of using Amazon PPC management services.
You Get to Work With the Experts
Amazon PPC consultants have several years of experience working on different campaigns, making them more flexible and adaptable to different situations.
This means they can improve your campaigns and introduce better strategies that will yield results.
With an expert, it’s easier to identify gaps and correct them in time.
Experts can also look at the information in your dashboard more keenly. With their experience, they won’t miss a thing about opportunities and risks it presents.
Analyzing the cost-per-click and lowering your product’s ACOS are just some of the indispensable skills they have.
With a mind and eye trained for everything about Amazon ads, you have the advantage at every level.
It Saves You Time and Money
Outsourcing your PPC campaigns saves you time and allows you to concentrate on other areas of your business.
A successful PPC campaign requires time.
A company’s inexperience could lead to wasted time trying to figure out everything. This may eventually yield unexpected results.
On the other hand, an expert may not spend the same amount of time because they already understand the kind of campaign strategies your business model will require based on your current needs.
Furthermore, an expert will not require tons of dollars to deliver good results.
Once you give them your PPC budget, they’ll work around it to ensure that they achieve the targets.
It’s also important to note that an expert will minimize wastage. And will strive to lessen the CPC to lower the ACOS.
You can now safely say that all of the costs involved in hiring experts and running the ads more effectively will yield higher returns in the long run.
Positive Return on Investments
Return on your investments means more traffic to your site, more conversions, and ultimately increased sales and profitability.
With an expert managing your PPC campaigns, you can be sure that targets will be met.
Some are hesitant about hiring experts because they are worried about the cost.
However, the time you save, the chances you seize, and the progress you will experience will be greater than, not just match, your investment.
Sales Growth and Profitability
With the increased visibility, customers are likely to notice and purchase your products or services.
PPC consultants know how to optimize your ads to help them rank high where clients will easily see them.
The massive traffic to your site will eventually lead to improved sales and profitability.
Improved visibility may just be one, but definitely critical, step towards business growth.
Experts can help direct the PPC ads to achieve specific goals at a time or the same time. This is where strategic placement and timing becomes critical, which a typical Amazon seller may not have the skill to do.
In reality, increased visibility does not automatically translate to sales. And you increase the chances when the product page is optimized. That is, if it educates and entices customers.
Are the features and benefits both present in the product listing? Are the front and back ends both optimized for the algorithm and human reader? Experts have the skills to tie all the loops and align everything.
PPC ad experts are trained to maximize the traffic and turn them into sales.
Clear, Realistic Advertisement Goals and Better Resources
You may not be in a position to define your PPC campaign’s goals and results clearly.
An expert though will put your business model and clients into consideration before coming up with a proven strategy that’s likely to yield results.
They also have the necessary advertisement assets that will help them run their campaigns seamlessly.
Aside from access to tools, they can also work around the nitty-gritty elements like the brand logo, images, video ads, ad placement choice, and an effective headline for the display ads.
They also have to set aside time for making sure no detail is left behind. Is your product listing optimized for desktop and mobile view? Are there videos uploaded? Is the detail page filled?
A holistic approach is something you can expect from expert advertisers since they are both looking at reaping short-term and long-term results.
Amazon sellers are scattered in different categories and differ in their needs. There is no one-size-fits all approach to every product type.
Therefore, they have to work on a variety of aspects to hasten the results and ensure they are favorable to you.
What to Watch Out for When Working With a Third PPC Service
While working with a PPC campaign expert has numerous benefits, there may be times where these agents work against your business’ best interests.
Here are some of the concerns that you should watch out for.
Promises Guaranteed Returns on Your Ad Campaigns
Any PPC management service agency that guarantees that you’ll get, say, $400 for an ad budget of $200 is lying to you.
Or, a specific CPC they will strive for you to achieve.
While they may be good at what they do, they cannot guarantee results with so much certainty.
It is important to note that the success or failure of any campaign depends on many factors, and ads are re-strategized for continuous improvement.
These ad service experts can guarantee that they’ll do their best to ensure that you get the expected results and that your brand receives the kind of exposure it deserves.
They have to present you not just opportunities but possible roadblocks along the way.
But of course, you have to look for systematic and strategic steps from your prospect expert advertisers’ end depending on your goals.
Less promises – only data-based and shopper-oriented resolutions.
Holding Your Login Details Hostage
A good PPC agency should work with its client’s best interests at heart.
Every client yearns for a good working relationship with their PPC agency. However, it’s unfortunate that some still fall into the trap of agencies that hold on to their website details long after the campaign has ended.
In a bid to have you under control and keep the contact running, they’ll have autonomy of your sites, making it difficult for you to run your business.
The best thing to do is have your team involved in the initial set-up of the accounts. Be wary of having them handle everything, as it may be a decision you regret later on.
Also, make sure that you understand all the terms and that they are stipulated in a contract to protect yourself from this kind of problem.
Lack of Transparency
This happens a lot when you seek reports on the ad campaign’s performance.
Instead of the agency delivering actual results, they’ll regress and talk more about themselves.
They’ll talk about the problems they encountered, the parts of the job that made them shine, and why you are lucky to have them.
If you are paying for results, results are what you should get. Avoid working with agencies that are not open enough to tell you about their secrets for fear that you’ll later use them.
With these third-party red flags, many businesses opt to run their own campaigns.
You, however, can choose your PPC agency wisely and still enjoy working with an expert that helps elevate your business and sets it up for success.
Transparency establishes mutual trust and the right expectations. Trust has a huge impact on the results in many ways, especially on PPC campaigns that require continuous work.
Thus, it is important that everything is laid out at the beginning to avoid friction and misunderstanding.
And also, if you are planning to work with a third-party service provider, aim for setting mutual goals. Provide the right support and trust in their expertise.
Tips on Choosing the Right PPC Management Service Provider
In order to succeed in your advertisements and achieve brand visibility, you need to work with a PPC service provider who understands what the job entails.
Choosing the right agency, therefore, is critical for the success or failure of your campaigns.
Never settle on just promises but look for proof of accomplishment. Check reviews of past clients as well as their product listings to see if the results align with your goals.
Take these tips into consideration to guide you searching for the right PPC management service provider.
Open Communication
Communication is critical in any relationship.
When looking for a PPC agency, ask about how you’ll be receiving reports, how they will integrate your in-house team, and their preferred mode of interactions.
Since this is likely to be a long-term collaboration, you must get the communication aspect right before hitting the road.
While there are no set rules on how reports should be delivered, the important thing is that it should work for you.
Some companies will send reports on a weekly, monthly, or even daily basis. Some also prefer letting their clients follow the campaign process via an app, eliminating physical meetings.
Choose what’s most comfortable and suits you.
Check Their Certifications
A passionate PPC management service provider will be up to date with the latest digital trends. This means that they’ll constantly be training themselves to ensure their skills live up to or even exceed industry standards.
When looking for a PPC service provider, ensure you ask for their credentials.
You can check if they have a Facebook blueprint, YouTube ads, and Google ads certifications.
Suppose they’ve also collaborated with other PPC firms in different locations to offer specialized advertisement services to clients, you can check out such collaborations to ensure that they hired a qualified agency for the job.
How Knowledgeable are they in Keyword Selection?
In-depth keyword selection knowledge is paramount to the success of PPC campaigns.
Selecting the appropriate target audience will require the selection of the right keywords. This makes it easier for users to find your products and services online.
Have a look at their website and have a feel of their keyword selections. You can see that from the traffic their landing page generates.
The PPC service provider you’re looking to work with must have a grasp of keyword selection because that’s the only way you’ll achieve results in your ad campaigns.
Make sure that your PPC manager knows the value of every $1 he allocates on his choice of keywords.
What is Their Conversion Rate, And How Well Do They Monitor Performance?
It’s not enough to put up ads and sit pretty. A good PPC service provider should constantly monitor performance.
If the conversion rates do not hit the target, they need to go back and re-strategize and re-design their ads.
If you are looking for a PPC management service provider, ask them how they track results and how best they ensure that the conversion rates are high.
They should also know how to play around using the appropriate ad type, what goes together in ad groups, and how to strategize on ad placements.
They must also know how to analyze the metrics on display and extract insights that can be useful for your growth, profit, or branding.
This way, you know that they will allocate your ad budget efficiently.
Find the Right PPC Management Service Provider Now
Product visibility remains the number one factor that’ll enable you to achieve success on Amazon.
As a business looking to double its sales and profitability, invest in a good PPC agency that will run your campaigns well and set you up for the success you envisioned.
At Signalytics, our dedicated team of professionals works hard in ensuring that your business is pushed straight to the spotlight in the most cost and time-effective way possible.
We let you concentrate on running your business as we give your brand the exposure it deserves. Contact us today and let’s work together in achieving the success your brand or business deserves.