Amazon Advertising post Pandemic
In the epidemic, what should we do with Amazon Advertising?
This is not the time to panic. Instead, we should review the data and look for opportunities.
In the past few months, our world has changed dramatically. School suspension, remote work, home office and social needs have changed almost every aspect of our daily lives. This has had a huge impact on retail and e-commerce, including Amazon. Demand from some brands and retailers has soared, and product inventories cannot be guaranteed, while sales from some brands and retailers have plummeted.
Do not panic about your Amazon advertising strategy
As an Amazon seller, you can easily fall into a state of panic and make hasty business decisions. However, by taking a step back, assessing strengths and weaknesses, and looking for opportunities, rather than just focusing on obvious threats, Amazon sellers can get themselves out of the crisis and become stronger. This article will focus on Amazon advertising and what Amazon sellers can now do with advertising to help their businesses maintain their operations and long-term success.
First, let us look at two very different situations for sellers. Either you sell hot-selling products like health and wellness and are struggling to maintain product inventory. Or your product has been classified by Amazon as a non-essential product, so sales and conversion rates are rapidly decreasing. We will quickly introduce how to deal with advertising during the surge in sales, so that no matter what trend you are in, you can get more sales through limited advertising expenditures.
Manage sales surge
Sellers of grocery, health and personal care, supplements and other essentials categories have all seen unprecedented sales growth. We have seen this even in categories that are not part of Amazon’s core brand, because the lifestyle changes, we are all going through, and demand is skyrocketing. The demand for toys, games, electronics, and other items that people want to use at home is growing. If you have enough inventory and try to maximize sales, make sure you are adjusting your advertising budget to cope with growth, and use the tactics discussed below to maximize the impact. Continue to optimize your bids and be sure to use the search terms report to find new keywords to add to your campaign.
If your inventory is about to run out and try to control sales, then start cutting advertising budgets and bids to help reduce sales. For products with insufficient inventory, please handle case by case, and allow other ads to continue to run if there is inventory.
Maximize sales
Sellers who are not in the high-demand category related to the epidemic, especially those using FBA, have asked Amazon to postpone the delivery date to 30 days, and these sellers' sales are declining. However, the good news is that other sellers began to suspend operations and advertising, which left the sellers an opportunity to continue their business.
If your product belongs to a high-demand category, if you can maintain inventory replenishment, there is now a great opportunity to maximize your sales. Regardless of the situation, you should now do a few things to ensure that you reach the right audience to the greatest extent and ensure that Amazon’s advertising spend is rewarded.
1. Conversion rate
The first thing to do is to control the loss of advertising and adjust the advertising according to the current situation.
To do this, pay close attention to your ad conversion rate. Many sellers who have experienced a significant decline in sales have discovered that this is because Amazon has delayed the delivery time of customers. In this case, consider switching to self-delivery, so that you can ship orders faster. Turn off your FBA product listing, so that the self-shipping listing will display the purchase box. After doing so, the conversion rate of some sellers doubled.
If you cannot switch the delivery method or have used self-delivery, and the low conversion rate is caused by low demand, then check the conversion rate against ACoS and lower the bid for keywords that are not performing well. If ACoS is indeed soaring, consider suspending poorly performing keywords and retain profit margins.
At the same time, you need to review at the product level. If you have a specific ad or the product conversion rate drops significantly, then pause the ad. Keep a list of suspended ads for future revisit, especially after delivery time improvements.
2. CPC (cost per click)
As sellers abandoned ads and cut budgets, we saw the cost per click drop. As advertising gets cheaper and cheaper, if you have enough budget, this is a great opportunity. Extract bulk campaign files and review keywords with low cost-per-click and high conversion rates within the ACoS target range. Maintain competitive bids (if you can afford them) and find similar keywords to add to your campaign.
3. Customer order for the first purchase (NTB)
NTB (New to Brand) is specific to Sponsored Brand and DSP advertising. It measures the orders of customers who have not purchased your brand within 365 days. As more and more people start shopping online, we have seen this number increase over the past week. Review Sponsored Brand ads, find ads that have a strong freshness on brand metrics, and optimize bids and budgets to maximize your exposure to new audiences.
If you do not see good NTB metrics, or don’t run Sponsored Brand ads, then start now and make sure that any relevant audience who comes to Amazon shopping can see you. Any new advertisement should start with a low budget. Watch them carefully, and if they do not perform well, close them. If you are experiencing a sharp decline in sales, then don't spend too much money on testing.
4. Sponsored Display advertising and DSP
As traffic from online channels such as Amazon surges, redirecting ads through Sponsored Display or DSP will help keep customers on your purchase channel. Through these ads, you can target all customers who have viewed your product page after leaving Amazon. As more people are segregated at home and spend time online, make sure they don’t forget your products when they leave Amazon and start browsing elsewhere. Sponsored Display ads will encounter some troubles in performance, so please use a small budget first to understand whether it is applicable to your product line, if not, then close it.
5. Product Attribute Targeting
This is a function of Sponsored ads that has not been fully utilized. Sellers have the ability to locate and place ads on a specific ASIN. Use your creativity and try those effective methods. Target complementary products, competitive products, and even your own products as an attempt to cross-sell. First try a small budget until you find a product combination that fits your goal.
In Summary
Through the strategies just discussed, we have seen improvements in advertising performance, including cutting unprofitable expenses and stabilizing sales. It's time to pay close attention to your ads and make sure to maximize coverage and return. This is not the time to panic. Instead, review the data and look for opportunities. This is an unprecedented era, and agile and quickly adapting sellers will become stronger on the other hand.
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