Reading Time: 5 minutesIn the late summer of 2016 Amazon.com, Inc. rolled out their new self-service PPC tool, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), available to all Amazon vendors. AMS allows vendors to build and manage targeted PPC ads that help drive customers to specific product pages on Amazon. The tool includes three products, or types of ads that can be created, which all uniquely target customers in different areas of the Amazon platform.
AMS, although in its early stages of development, has already changed the game for advertising on Amazon.com. It eliminates the need for businesses to have large marketing budgets to place their product ads on Amazon. Instead, sellers can create ad campaigns based on their budgets, objectives, needs, and only pay when shoppers click on their ads.
What makes the tool so appealing for advertisers to use, is its simplicity. Its dashboards are easy to learn, and even easier to navigate and filter for your desired data. Comprehensive online Webinars are also at your fingertips to quickly learn the system and how to optimize every campaign. The AMS team is also available to contact at any time, with the ability to provide training and optimization tips. They are eager to help ensure your campaigns perform to their full capability by being willing to send keyword suggestions, campaign type suggestions, recommended budgets, tips for any new capabilities that can affect your campaigns and increase profitability, and much more.
Reporting capabilities add tremendous value to the AMS system as well. Being able to pull detailed campaign reports, keyword reports, and page reports, help advertisers to be constantly learning about their customers, and how to create more efficient campaigns. These reports pull crucial data, such as impressions, clicks, CTR, sales, costs, and much more. All metrics to dive deep into finding how customers are searching for products, and what is appealing to them.
Immediate Positive Impact of AMS for Advertisers
It didn’t take long for AMS users to see the positive effects the tool has on their business and product visibility on Amazon. Some cases have seen nearly 50% increases in sales, along with improved search rank, and increased ROAS for a very little cost.
Read more about other AMS business success stories here.
Due to the positive returns being seen in using the tool, more and more vendors are turning their ad dollars to AMS. With traffic growing rapidly, even Amazon is turning their attention and priorities in that direction.
With that, Amazon Marketing Services has quickly proven to be the newest up and coming PPC tool for businesses to use.
Why AMS Is Right For Your Business
Here are a few reasons why AMS may work for your business:
- Save Time
Time is always of the essence. Traditional ad campaigns can often take days, sometimes weeks to organize ad details and implement campaigns. AMS gives sellers the ability to create and launch campaigns in minutes.
As a seller, you are given the control with AMS, and the simplicity of the tool decreases a large portion of the planning stages. All AMS ads are confined to the Amazon space, and only click through to Amazon product pages.
Therefore, there is no need to organize and plan publishers, landing page destinations, ad banners, exclusion lists, and all the other gritty details that consume time when planning.
All that’s necessary is inputting your product, your desired daily budget, keywords, and just like that you’re up and running.
- Decrease Advertising Costs
If you’re saving time, you are already saving cost, and saving costs is always what an advertiser wants to hear.
More importantly, as I mentioned above, with AMS you are not forced to spend thousands of dollars upfront to advertise on specific sites or webpage locations. The advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked. No other costs involved.
Daily budgets, and keyword bids are solely up to the advertiser as well. This allows for flexibility with what and how you spend your money, by setting budgets and bidding on specific keywords as you please. For a smaller business who may not have the marketing dollars, this can also help elongate campaign length. Daily budgets and CPC bids can be lowered so that you can gain exposure over a longer period of time.
- Increase Visibility and Share of Space
If you haven’t noticed already, Amazon.com is the #1 site in e-commerce sales in the U.S., with nearly a 75% market share of total e-commerce sales. Also, nearly half of all US online shoppers start their product search on Amazon.
That sure is a lot of eyes and potential buyers in one place. Given the amount of traffic the site has, as a business, having ad space on Amazon is crucial. AMS provides that ability for your business to create multiple ads to capture customers all over the site, with limited costs.
AMS is great for increasing your product visibility, not only just with ads. Given Amazon’s algorithm, as your ads surface, and gain increased clicks and sales, your products will become more relevant and may begin to surface higher in search rank. This also increasing visibility and potential sales.
Why AMS May Be Wrong For Your Business
Sometimes, the shoe doesn’t fit.
AMS may not be a beneficial tool for some business, which is completely normal. Here are a few reasons why AMS may not work great for your business:
- Short Campaign Lengths
AMS may not work well if you have any limitations to how long campaigns can be run. It is not suggested to run campaigns for only short periods. It takes time for campaigns to fully ramp up, and short flights can cause for skewed data as the campaign may not reach its full potential.
Separately, having an always on approach to campaigns allows for your business to gather more information on keywords, and other important trends that you will not be able to capture with short flights. In this case, it may create the never-ending cycle of failed ads.
That’s right, not every ad will be perfect, or as profitable as you thought initially.
If you have a seasonal product, minimal budget, or any limitation on running longer campaigns, there is no way to find out what works, and what does not work. Which leads me to my next point…
- Test, Monitor, and Test Some More
To create the best campaigns possible, you need to try new things. Testing new keywords, ad copy, product groupings, CPC bids, etc. is important to finding the best way to run your PPC ads.
Unfortunately, AMS is not a miracle worker. Campaigns cannot be set up, then left and expected to “do their thing.” Campaigns need to be monitored, and adjustments will often need to be made. When one test isn’t working, test something new. It takes time to push campaigns to their full potential.
This is where bandwidth comes in. If your business cannot support the time it takes to constantly monitor campaigns to make them better, your campaigns may not be as profitable as anticipated. Also, as I said, testing is important, but also costs money. If this cannot be accommodated for, then there may be a better way for your business to spend its marketing dollars.
- Amazon Products Only
If you are a business that does not sell products on Amazon, well then I am sorry to tell you that AMS will not work for you. AMS ads do not click through to off-site destinations, so you are unable to advertise your products and direct people to your online retail store to buy your product.
Fortunately, it is easy to become a seller on Amazon, however, if your goal is to drive business and traffic to your own site, AMS would not be of great benefit.
To Sum It Up
It is important to consider what your business goals are, before considering whether AMS will work for you or not. Like with any marketing initiatives, aligning your ads with your business goals is extremely important. As an investment, costs and time need to be considered as well, and you do not want to invest into a tool that you will not be able to spend time perfecting.
At Vizion Interactive, we have the expertise, experience, and enthusiasm to get results and keep clients happy! Learn more about how our status as a Google Partner, along with our PPC Management, Google Shopping Ads, Social Media Advertising, Amazon Advertising, and other Paid Media services can increase sales and boost your ROI. But don’t just take our word for it, check out what our clients have to say, along with our case studies.
