DECEMBER 9, 2020

The Biggest Success Factor on Amazon + Seasonal PPC Tips

1. Creating an Amazon ad campaign with just 1 keyword in it? Utter madness? Perhaps not. The theory boils down to being granular with your campaign structure, and also being well organised. My good friend Florian believes that chucking your top-performing/high-focus keywords into their own campaign allows you to: Set placement bid adjustments for each individual keyword; Have full control of your budgets on a granular level; Always have the performance data in mind when opening the advertising console (campaign data = keyword data)
2. 81% of people in my network get most of their Amazon and eCommerce knowledge from LinkedIn. Ok, this is a skewed survey because it took place on LinkedIn, but I still find the insights interesting. I utilise the platform heavily as I’m connected with other industry experts, where I’ve built up relationships and ultimately trust their opinions. On the flipside you have something like a Facebook group, sure you get a plethora of ideas, but for me there is just so much noise and not really any validation. If you missed the survey but still want to share an opinion, add a comment on the poll here.
3. According to 99designs, there has been a shift in 2020 in the efforts brands are going to to create an enhanced, unique experience on their website. And so there should be! You can’t have a single point of failure in eCommerce today. By that I mean you can’t overly rely on one single revenue source, this principle can apply to multiple facets. With the surge in online spending though, you’ve got to be focusing even more on how to differentiate, and more importantly, how to create an EXPERIENCE. The 99d blog post linked above gives some great examples.
4. Here are my 3 pillars to succeeding on Amazon George stop pitching your own podcast in your emails, we get it, day 1 this day 1 that. Well, I’ve got good news for you my fury friends, today I’m pitching someone else’s podcast. Checkout my chat with Kunal Chopra (CEO of Kaspien) on Master the Markplace. Kunal has experience from Amazon, Microsoft, and Groupon, so he really puts me to shame with his experience – but at least I tried. I discuss my 3 pillars to success on Amazon, they’re super simple, go listen.
5. In case you hadn’t realised, your products main image is potentially the biggest success factor on Amazon. It’s just become more important though. Ok, why does this matter to you? Well, touchpoints. It’s the first touchpoint a prospect has with your brand. Whether that be within the search results, or as part of a PPC campaign. The first image, is ultimately, what generates the click! Now that the first image can be engaged within the search, there is even more pressure for it to be sublime. My tip, include some form of overlay (make it crafty though, so the algorithm doesn’t notice) that highlights your key feature/USP, so when someone clocks that one image, all of their problems are solved and they click through to buy!
6. There’s a growing theme emerging of people calling for more support of small brands on and off Amazon. Particularly during holiday deal events recently, with many asking us/you to go shop on the brands own website. I fucking love this. My good acquittance Charles Instone spoke of it during Prime Day, I mentioned the idea of a shop local filter, and many others continue to preach the importance of sacking off Amazon and giving the brand that extra ~12%. One chap, Sean Riley of Dude Wipes, went a step further and was actively buying everything that people shared with him – on the condition the brand was less than a year old.
7. Here is a very clean listing from Belkin. There is nothing fancy about this, but it works so well
8. Online sales grew as much in 8 weeks as it had in the decade before the pandemic. If you’re still scratching your arse wondering when you need to optimise your digital shelf, the answer is yesterday. The second best answer is today. I recorded another podcast episode with Jason Magee (Director of Sales at Teikametrics), and you’ll never guess what, he makes it 26/26 guests that have mentioned the importance of CONTENT. Online sales are pumping right now, customers are unable to interact with your products in the traditional manner, so you’ve got to pull every lever you’ve got to help them see that your product is the solution to their problem.
9. Amazon Advertising revenue was up 51% this year. Google was up 6.5% YoY, Facebook up 20%. eMarketer estimates that the triopoly will account for nearly two-thirds of total US digital ad spending this year.
10. 7 quick tips on seasonal Amazon Advertising. Destaney Wishon is one of my selected trusty resource for content on this topic, it’s why I’m hosting her on the podcast again this week. These aren’t even overly complicated: Diversify your ad spend;  PRODUCT TARGETING everywhere; Creating landing pages for your deals;  Budget adjustments and bid optimization
     Holiday specific imagery where allowed; Adjust copy for your deals and promotions; Run DSP or re-marketing to take advantage of your ad spend
11. Reimbursement services are a sound investment for every seller. Sure, they take a fee for what costs they recover, but it’s a case of would you prefer X% of something or X% of nothing. Amazon are apparently putting time limits on how far back you can go with your reimbursement claims, so I’d advise getting signed up to a provider soon.

Thanks,

George