One of the most difficult dragons to slay as a new Amazon Private Label Seller is the issue of learning and using Amazon Pay Per Click (PPC). It can be a confusing and difficult thing to learn. But you aren’t alone in the process, Scott’s here to help. Amazon recently made some changes to their PPC platform and Scott’s put together this episode to help you understand the platform as a whole, learn about the changes, and know how to use Amazon’s PPC platform to get more sales for your Amazon Products. Sound like something you’re interested in? Then grab a pen and paper and get ready to take notes because you’re about to get the whole scoop, step by step on this episode.
Isn’t Amazon PPC a confusing thing to learn?
Today’s guest, Chris Schaeffer doesn’t think so. He’s been an ecommerce and internet marketing specialist for years and he says that it’s very easy. The new tweaks Amazon has made to their pay per click functionality makes it even easier than ever to maximize your marketing budget and increase your sales at the same time. In this episode Scott and Chris walk through the changes to the PPC interface and tell you exactly what the options mean, how to use them, and how to step by step increase your sales using Amazon Pay Per Click. It’s an amazing free resource for you today on this episode.
The 3 different types of keyword matches in Amazon PPC and how to use them.
The main changes to Amazon Pay Per Click that have come down the pike are the addition of some options for choosing the type of PPC campaign you want to run. Using these tools makes it much more likely you’ll get your target buyers to see and click on your ads. The types are “broad”, “phrase” and “exact”, with the option of adding negative keywords (things you don’t want to rank for) as well. Using these and a little bit of patience you can figure out exactly which of your keywords are working and increase your PPC on those, which ones are not working (and remove them from your PPC altogether), and increase the likelihood of your Amazon private label sales. This episode walks you through how to do that, step by step.
Once my product is up and running and making decent sales, can I turn of PPC?
Today’s guest, Chris Schaeffer is a PPC and marketing expert and he says that you should never turn off your Amazon PPC campaigns, and here’s his reason why: What’s the worst that could happen? You have two top listing on the first page of the Amazon search – they click on your ad instead of your organic listing – and you still get a sale (more than likely). That’s it. You always want to make sure that your products are being seen OVER your competition, that way you will have the ability to dominate the market when they don’t. Find out how Chris suggests you set up your entire PPC campaign by listening to this episode.
Why learning Amazon PPC is so vitally important to your Amazon Private Label business.
If you learn how to use amazon PPC you’ll have a huge advantage over your competition. It’s the only sure-fire way to get your products in front of those who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Your competition is likely not going to take the time or make the effort to learn this fairly simple way of getting your products up in the Amazon rankings, so that means you’ve got a secret weapon you can use to advance your business ahead of theirs. Don’t be fooled into thinking that PPC on Amazon is too difficult to learn. It’s not. This episode can take you way down the road to learning PPC and getting on your way.
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Hi Scott,
Thanks for the great episode. I have a question regarding the organic sales. You say that you had 1500 sales organically, how are you able to differentiate your organic sales from your ppc sales?
Thank you in advance 🙂
Hey Sebastian, organic sales = Total Sales – Sales From PPC
Hi Scott,
When you move a keyword from a broad match campaign to a phrase or exact match one. Do you just pause the keyword/s in the broad match campaign or add the exact match keyword as a negative match for that broad campaign?
So broad match is keyword Garlic Press, I find exact match opportunity of ‘cheap garlic press’ I then create an exact match campaign with this in. Do I then put ‘cheap garlic press’ as a negative exact match keyword in the broad campaign.
I am trying to work out how not to overlap between different ad campaigns at different match levels.
Thanks!
Hey James, NO.
What ever you’re moving gets added as a negative of the same type.
So If I see that “purple garlic press” is a high performing search term and I add “purple garlic press” to a pharse campaign, I would also add “purple garlic press” as a negative phrase match keyword in the broad campaign.
Remember you shouldn’t be analyzing your ppc off the keyword report, you need to be using the SEARCH TERMS column of the search terms report, that’s what your customer is actually typing in.
Great episode again!
Amazon suggests the bid for any keyword in the Campaign tool. I am not getting impressions even though my bid it higher than “suggested bid” . Lets say cost per click is .40$ , my bid is .45$
My question is:
– is this “keyword” not relevant or just bad keywords no one looks for ( even if it is relevant to my title and description)
– i should bid more like 50% more than amazon suggest i should to rank for that keyword
Thanks for the suggestion!
Hey Luka, It’s tough to say, but I will say that the amazon suggested bid is not usually a good indicator. I would increase my bid and see what happens.
Hey Scott,
Sorry, I know similar questions have been asked before, but I’m having trouble filtering through all the great info here.
I have been running a broad campaign for the last month and have now worked out what keywords are performing well for me. My question is, do I roll those keywords into a phrase campaign, or do I turn the ‘customer search term’ into the phrase campaign?
Hey Kate, you should be using “customer search terms” in the other campaigns. NOT the keywords. Search terms are what people actually typed in when they saw your ad.
Thanks so much. I have seen instant results!!
When I add the negative keywords (negative search terms) do I also add them to my automatic campaign?
Thanks for all your advice/knowledge. I love your podcast!
Yeup, I would add them to any campaign you don’t want them running in!
Hi Scott, what do you mean NOT the keywords? you should not use the customer search terms for the keywords? Thanks
Hey Ezra, there are two columns. You should be looking at the customer search terms column NOT the Keywords column
I have a parent child listing with 3 total children. I would like to drive traffic to the 2 lesser performing children. all share about 98% of the same keywords when setting up PPC I noticed you can pick more than one Product (child) to run under that same campaign. I dont fully understand what that would do. would they compete and show both at the same time in different ad slots or maybe, alternate and how would it show in the search term report? I have gotten pretty good a ppc but cant wrap my head around this part.
Hey Gary, the easy way would be to pick ONE child listing to advertise, that way you have full control over which one shows when.
In your search term report, it should show you which product sold (regardless of which product was displayed on the ad) that should help you figure out which one to push heavy with ads.
Thanks for the advice Scott!
Quick question: So in regards to having 2 campaigns with the same keywords (except one broad and one phrase for example), it will not conflict or bid against each other right? I did email amazon and they said do not use the same keywords in the adset, but did not mention anything about campaigns.
And also, how long worth of data would you collect before you start trimming your campaigns and optimizing them?
Hey Kenny, you’d want to collect no less than 7-10 days worth of data before it’s even worth looking at. Having the same keywords with the same match types anyone on the account can cause conflicts, but it’s not a huge deal. If you notice one in your search terms report, see which match type performs better and pause (or add it as a negative) into the lower performing campaign.
Thanks for your response Scott. I am a bit confused as to what you just said, I was told by Amazon that it is okay to have 1 same word but different match types, but you are saying I should have them in seperate campaigns, and I was wondering if you could please help me clarify 🙂
I generally have just 1 campaign for that item, but 2 different ad sets (1 broad and 1 phrase), and it has been a bit difficult because my item is a bit more expensive and so data is hard to come by, so moving it down the funnel is taking quite a while. You don’t think they are fighting each other do you? I thought only if they are the same match types even in different campaigns, then they bid against each other, but not if different match types correct?
Hey Kenny, the reason Chris does them as different campaigns is just to have more control over the budget. He wants to have direct control over the spend for each match type as opposed to setting a general budget for all match types. Does that make sense.
Great I have listened to this 4 times now and there is always a nugget. I actually changed my kw while driving .:)
Scott,
I have two products that compete for the same keywords. One is already established on PPC and gets great ACOS for 20 keywords. The other needs more sales but I’m not sure if I should pause the successful campaign’s keywords because I thought I heard you say there could be a penalty for doing so. I’ve currently got the successful campaign at $0.02 bid on many keywords but I think that $0.02 bid is still preventing my other product from showing under those searches. How would you play this?
Thanks very much!
Hey Kris, if they are on seperate listings, I would run ads to both. If they are on a parent child listing I would run ads to the higher converting listing. In either case, make sure you’re taking advantage of the search terms fields in the listing backend. You’d be surprised at the magic you can work but working on that section.
Hey Scott,
Great job on the pod cast. I sell a parent item with many child size variations i.e. garlic press 5″ handle, garlic press 6″ handle etc. I’m currently running broad keyword campaigns for each item and I’m ready to move to phrase match. Many of the customer search terms for each ASIN overlap i.e. blue garlic press converts for each child. Would I be bidding against myself to have blue garlic press in each campaign? Should I only including it in the best converting child ASIN even though I want to sell all sizes? How would you manage this situation.
Hey Pete you would generally only need to advertise into one variation, in your case, pick the best selling variation (the one that sells the most) and run your ads directly to that variation. Customers looking for other sizes/variations will still have the option of clicking the one they want, but you’ll drive traffic to the “best” place and reduce any competition against yourself.
Hey Scott.
You have introduced me to the wonderful world of Podcasts! Have no idea how I drove for hours before this! Sales have definitely gone up since using Auto targeting, and used your strategy.
Question on PPC – In my second week I used the strategy of using AMZ Shark and competitor titles to come up with a list of competitor keywords (these are all branded products) and threw them into a Phrase campaign. Haven’t seen any impressions since, and we were told that the competition keys aren’t relevant. When you say to use competitor keywords, did you not mean that we can use their brand names as well?
Thanks!
Hey Caleb, we are talking about using something like Simple Keyword Inspector to get a list of the keywords that they rank for and running a campaign with those! Hope that helps.
Ooooh! OK. Thank you Scott!
I will see how we can tweak that. I’m noticing no impressions for even the main ingredient in our product as well! I wish Amazon would reveal if something is relevant or not.
You are awesome, thank you so much.