Did you know that Amazon has more than 300 million active customers?
With such an enormous customer base, it’s hardly surprising that Amazon is a powerful selling machine. As an e-commerce store owner, finding people to buy from you can be the most challenging task. That’s why it’s such a good idea to use Amazon’s platform to sell your products to a wider audience.
There’s more to selling on Amazon than simply listing your products on the site, however. With Amazon Advertising — previously Amazon Marketing Services — you have access to an entire suite of tools for maximizing your sales.
With Amazon Advertising, you can find out how to create an Amazon storefront to represent your business. Then you can learn how to use Amazon marketing services to find new customers and make more sales.
As with most things, however, getting started can be a serious challenge. The sheer range of features Amazon provides to businesses can be overwhelming. To the new store owner, it can be hard to know where to begin.
In this article, we’ll help you understand what Amazon Advertising is and how it can boost your business. Keep reading to learn more.
Amazon Marketing Services
In 2018, Amazon Marketing Services was rebranded as Amazon Advertising. This change marked a new era in Amazon marketing, as several of their services were altered or consolidated.
The original features have remained unchanged, although some of the names are different. But the important thing is that, with Amazon Advertising, any entrepreneur can get the tools and support they need to make their store profitable.
The following are the primary systems and tools that Amazon Advertising offers.
Sponsored Products
The Sponsored Products ad platform is a self-service system that allows sellers to create cost-per-click ads. Each ad is comprised of a single product listing and gets displayed in pertinent areas across Amazon, including shopping results and product detail pages.
As the name suggests, this service is for creating sponsored listings alongside other sellers’ products on Amazon. This ensures that your products are seen by a wide audience of people who are most likely to be interested in what you’re selling. It allows you to make Amazon promote your offers to more people.
When customers click on your Sponsored Product ad, they get taken directly to your product page on Amazon. Because of its flexibility, you get to decide how much you want to spend on ads, with no minimum investment.
Sponsored Brands
Similar to Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands is another self-service advertising platform that lets you place ads in shopping results. However, instead of promoting a single product at a time, you get to promote your entire store or brand. You also get enhanced customization options.
A Sponsored Brands listing lets you include a custom headline in your ad, as well as your brand’s logo. You also get to promote several individual products within the same Sponsored Brands ad.
When customers click your ad, you have the choice of whether to send them to a specific product page or your Amazon Store page. Like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands ads operate on a cost-per-click, auction-based pricing model, allowing you to set the maximum amount you’re willing to spend.
Sponsored Display
While Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products are limited to the Amazon website, Sponsored Display ads go beyond Amazon.com.
If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’re most likely familiar with display ads. Not unlike ads found in newspapers or magazines, display ads can be found on practically every free app and website.
With Sponsored Display, you get to design visually-engaging ads to be placed on Amazon and services that they own or partner with.
As with Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Products, you get to target Amazon customers who are most likely to be interested in what you’re selling. But instead of only targeting those customers while they’re on Amazon’s website, with Sponsored Display ads you can reach them in places like IMDb, Prime Video content, and Fire device screens.
Once again, Sponsored Display ads operate on a cost-per-click basis, so you only have to pay what you’re comfortable with.
Stores
Despite its name, there’s a lot more to Amazon Advertising than just ads. With Amazon Stores, you get to learn how to create an Amazon storefront of your very own.
When you create ads with Amazon Advertising, all of your Amazon products are displayed for sale. Unlike ads, however, deploying an Amazon Store is completely free. Best of all, you don’t need to know anything about web development to create a Store, although some technical skills are helpful.
Stores appear on the Amazon website and in the Amazon mobile app. You could think of Amazon as a virtual mall and your Store as one of the shops inside the mall.
Although you’ll need to do some other form of marketing to get visitors to your Store, building an Amazon Store is essential for establishing your brand as a seller. You’ll get to choose layouts and graphics to design your Store with, similar to setting up a website.
Video Ads
Like most of the services on this list, Video Ads provides paid advertising for Amazon products you’re selling. And like Sponsored Display ads, Video Ads can appear in many places across Amazon’s family of sites and products.
Video Ads are divided into over-the-top (OTT) video ads and out-stream video ads.
OTT ads appear before, during, or after OTT content on Prime Video. Out-stream ads appear outside of video content, such as on websites and apps. These function more like display ads, and appear across the web wherever Amazon has permission to place ads.
Another thing that sets Video Ads apart is that you have the option to direct customers to an external website instead of an Amazon listing. This makes it a viable option for those who prefer to sell products on their own online stores.
Video Ads vary in cost, with significant cost flexibility for self-service Amazon DSP users. But you can also buy managed-service video ads, which typically require a minimum investment of $35,000.
Audio Ads
Audio Ads take advantage of Amazon’s music streaming service to get your name in front of more customers. When Amazon customers use the free version of Amazon Music, they are served 10-30 second ads in between songs.
Pricing for Audio Ads is a little less flexible than the other options listed above. Ads are sold on a CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) basis. They usually demand a minimum investment of $25,000. This could put it out of reach for most beginner store owners.
Although the ads are primarily sound-based, they have a visual component in that you can display a banner image while the ad plays. However, for products that need to be seen to be understood, Audio Ads probably aren’t the ideal option.
Amazon DSP
For more established e-commerce businesses, Amazon DSP is a semi-automated, highly flexible advertising solution.
Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform that allows advertisers to invest in different kinds of ads programmatically, making it easy for them to reach a wide audience across the web. Programmatic advertising involves automatically purchasing ad placements in different formats, as well as selling placements that are no longer needed.
Amazon DSP is a highly advanced form of advertising. But it is also powerful, allowing you to make the most of all ad types.
Surprisingly, there’s no minimum investment for self-service customers, which means you can be in complete control over pricing. For the managed-service option, you will need to spend at least $35,000.
Getting Started With Amazon Advertising
Now that you know what Amazon Advertising is, you’ll want to know how to use the Amazon marketing services it offers.
As with every other marketing endeavor, your first challenge will be to define your goals and budget. Then you’ll choose which marketing services are right for your store.
But before you can get started with Amazon Advertising, you’ll need to gain access to it by creating a valid seller account. We’ll start by explaining what this means, so you can get started quickly.
Accessing Amazon Advertising
Before you can get paid advertising for Amazon products, you’ll need a seller account that lets you use Amazon Advertising services.
Valid credentials include:
- A Vendor Central login
- An Advantage Central login
- A Vendor Express login
- A Kindle Direct Publishing account
- An invitation to represent another vendor
For most sellers, getting a Vendor Express account will be the simplest way to gain access to Amazon Advertising. A Vendor Express account will allow you to sell your products directly to Amazon, which will then sell them to your customers.
That said, the type of credentials you use to log in to Amazon Advertising will probably depend on what kind of seller you are. For example, if you’ve published a handful of Kindle books and specialize in digital products, you should already have a Kindle Direct Publishing account.
Setting Your Goals
When it comes to setting goals, it’s important to be realistic while also challenging yourself. In the case of advertising specifically, this usually means striking a balance between playing it safe and trying new things.
Most advertisers will have a goal of making a certain number of sales. This is a good goal to have because it’s straightforward and you’ll know exactly whether you’ve reached it or not.
However, impressions, clicks, and leads can also be good goals, depending on where you are in your business journey.
Setting Your Budget
Most of Amazon’s advertising services allow you to set your own budget up-front. This means you won’t accidentally pay more than you can afford for your ads.
However, just because you’re under budget doesn’t mean your ad campaign is a success. While you don’t want to spend any more than necessary, you must spend enough to actually make an impact and generate sales.
When you’re just starting out with advertising, you’ll also need to do some experiments to find out what kinds of ads people are most responsive to. It can cost a few thousand dollars just to figure out what ads your customers respond best to. But once you have that figured out, you should be able to run the rest of your ads at a profit.
Choosing the Right Marketing Services
Once you know what you want to accomplish and how much you can afford to invest, it’s time to choose the marketing services to use. Amazon Advertising offers several ways to reach your target audience, but the best one for you will depend on what you’re selling.
If you’re selling Kindle books, then advertising with Sponsored Products will place your books alongside books that other people are already looking at. If you’re promoting an audio course or music album, Audio Ads are an obvious choice.
For physical products, Sponsored Brands and Video Ads would probably be your best options.
Getting Help With Amazon Advertising
By now you should have a clear understanding of what Amazon Advertising can do for your business. Between the wide array of Amazon marketing services and their enormous customer base, Amazon Advertising presents an opportunity that no store owner can pass up.
Of course, your time is probably limited. Learning about new sales channels is just the beginning. If you can’t effectively utilize them, knowing about these opportunities isn’t much help.
That’s where BlueTuskr comes in. Our skilled marketers step in and do the grunt work for you. For industry-leading marketing and advertising services, contact us today.
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