How to set up Amazon PPC
When it comes to Search and eCommerce, no one dominates quite like Amazon. The brand rose to overtake Google back in 2016 and now (according to GeekWire)…
- 62% of customers start their search for a product on Amazon
- 70% of Amazon searchers never click past the first page of search results
- 35% of Amazon searchers click on the first product featured on a search page
Current conversion rates on Amazon are around the 13% mark for standard customers, and for Amazon Prime members it’s 74%.
PPC is the easiest way to drive your sales up on Amazon (surprise, surprise Amazon is just like Google – you give it money and it helps you out).
Not sure where to start? I’m here to show you a step-by-step guide to not only setting up your Amazon
Step 1: Create manual PPC Campaigns
Start by creating manual PPC campaigns to target your keywords, then pump up the bids to drive exposure. Again, just like Google, running your paid activity for a short period at cost (or even at a loss) will be worthwhile to increase your organic rankings.
Unlike Amazon organic results, Amazon paid ads should be around 30-33 characters. Nice, short, and straight to the point:

Step 2: Set the keywords you want to target
Next, it’s time to set the keywords you want to target. If there’s one thing to take away from this,
Take the below example, where we’ve searched for ‘asics running shoes

What if we change the search slightly, to ‘asics men’s running trainers’? We get even

Source: Amazon.co.uk

We don’t see Ascis until we scroll further down the page, which means they’ve already lost 35% of their potential customers – customers who have searched for them specifically by brand.
Looks what happens when I take one word out of the search and try ‘asics running trainers’ instead:

This why the most important thing to remember about Amazon PPC is to get your keywords right and consistently review yourself and your competitors.
A note about choosing your keywords
We live in a world of automation, and you do have the choice to let Amazon choose the keywords it thinks are most relevant for you.
If you’ve done detailed keyword research, you should always do it manually. Like on AdWords, you can decide if you want the keywords to match exactly, broadly, or as a phrase. A mixture of all three is the best way forward.
Remember, the majority of Amazon search queries are longtail (3 or more words), so this needs to be heavily factored into your keyword research. The best tools that I’ve found so far are Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Helium10.
Step 3: Monitor your campaign
You type in the campaign name, so you can monitor the results. I know this goes without saying, but you’ll be surprised at how many people don’t do this.
Make sure your campaign names are all different so you can compare them – I’ve worked on too many accounts that have hundreds of campaigns that are all called ‘campaign1’!
Give it four weeks, review what’s working and what’s not, and amend your campaigns accordingly.
Step 4: Add in how much your daily budget is
The minimum is £1, but I tend to start off with £50-£75. It’s better to boost exposure as much as possible and you very rarely hit the limit.
PPC boosts your organic, so it’s worth running at an initial loss or, better yet, break even for the initial gains. Plus, you get the added benefit of having an initial surge of data that you can use to refine your own process and learn more about your customers.
It all really depends what your acos (Advertising Cost of Sales – the percent of ad spend divided by the attributed sale). You can see this number in the Keyword section of your advertising tab.
Attributed Sales (how many sales you made that week that are directly linked to your ad) are important. If by the 2nd or 3rd campaign you’re not showing a weekly ROI, there’s a good chance you’ve not targeted the right keywords.
Not only will this cost you money, but it’ll be ruining your CRO on your Amazon account, which is an Amazon Ranking factor. Impressions (the number of times your ads were displayed) are important, but not at the cost of lowering your rankings.
Step 5: Choose whether you want Amazon to target your ads on their data
Or you can configure this manually. I’d recommend the
Step 6: Create segments and profiles
If you don’t feel like you totally understand your customer, you need to be able to answer the below in order to beat Amazon (and Google, for that matter):
- What your customers
likelooks - Who your most profitable customers are
- What the lifetime value of a customer is
- How much do you want to/do you spend per customer acquisition
- What time of day does your customer buy from you
When you’re collecting data, make sure you centre your efforts on the quality
How to optimise Amazon PPC Campaigns
There are a ton of different methods to optimise your campaign, but
The first thing I’d do is look at what’s working. After your first
The next step is to look at what these keywords are costing you and look at the
Make sure you make the best use of your negative
Offer people deals – 90% of customers will go from a retailer’s own site to buy the same product from Amazon because they want it cheaper or want a deal. Use this to your advantage.
Final thoughts…
Set yourself some goals. If you’re new to Amazon PPC, use the same goals as you would for your Google account.
If you’re totally green to the
But don’t look for
If you can optimise Google Ads, then, as long as you put the same amount of work in, you can optimise Amazon ads.
Remember Amazon only cares what’s selling – the more you sell the higher you rank! Ready to deal with Amazon PPC? Drop me a line at [email protected].