Refunds Manager Blog

Greetings, fellow Amazonians. I’d like to share a few tips with you on how we prepare and run the PPC campaigns for holiday (or any short season) products on Amazon.com

The first thing to remember is that most holiday products are just a variation of an everyday product (and mostly in exterior).

For instance, if you’re selling hard plastic cups with golden imprint, switching to Halloween or X-Mas cups would effectively mean changing the print pattern.

On the marketing side, this means that (if you have already been selling a regular version of the product,) you probably have some idea of what kind of marketing strategy fits it on Amazon.com. If this is the case, all you need now is to give it a little boost and be ready to hit the ground running just before the holiday sales galore begins.

Whenever preparing your product listing and PPC for an upcoming holiday sale, first things first:

Find the relevant Amazon keywords to your product

These will be used both for the product listing and the Sponsored PPC Campaign. If you already have a regular version of the product which you’re selling all year long, most of the work is already done. You already have a set of relevant keywords which people look for this product on Amazon on a day to day basis. You can safely take the best performing keywords from this old PPC campaign – and add to your holiday campaign, with some additions.

By “additions”, I mean adding some extra keywords that relate to that particular holiday. For instance, if you’re selling home slippers, and you want to sell an X-mas version (in green, red and white, or with a reindeer or an X-mas tree embroidery) — turn your regular keywords like “home slippers”, to “Christmas slippers”, “gift slippers”, or “winter home gift” even. I suggest setting them into phrase match type too, if there is no historically proven threat of receiving completely random clicks from irrelevant searches, of course.

When looking for correct “themed” search terms and keywords, you may not have sufficient data at the start of your first PPC campaign: the currently popular keywords are NOT accounting for the specific keywords that are used in the upcoming holiday. Thus, you will have to rely more heavily (at least in your first attempts) on common sense when researching these keywords.

Try finding a few competing holiday products (if there are any) to salvage their listing for some ideas. Data from Google (both search console and Ads Keywords Planner are good free tools) can also prove helpful. Just don’t forget to screen out all but sales-related search terms. Google is an information platform after all, not a marketplace.

Alternatively, you could resort to advanced Amazon PPC Creation tools, like Zero to Hero. This tool conducts a wide sweep for all relevant keywords and target ASIN, based on your product listing and a few relevant seed keywords. It’s a serious time saver, especially for Sellers who need many PPC campaigns readied and already running in a matter of hours, not days.

The keywords are in, and now it’s time for an Amazon PPC Strategy

Now, let us assume you’ve gathered enough keywords and are ready to use them.

It’s time to pick a strategy.

Strategy helps to focus efforts and resources (including the budget). And this is especially important for PPC campaigns when there will be not much room to maneuver, as the sales season is short.

There are 3 strategies that can be used to leverage holiday sales:

1 – Selling the same (a regular) product, but with holiday-related PPC campaign

This is probably the easiest strategy to implement. All you need here is to launch an additional PPC campaign (usually Sponsored Products). It targets keywords from all the above mentioned “holiday occasion” combo. It also targets holiday focused ASINs, both weaker competitive products and stronger complementary products (if you know of any).

2 – Temporarily switch all marketing efforts to the holiday product

This strategy is a radical one, and it can benefit non-PL products that are known for having a many-fold increase in sales over the holidays. This strategy also probably means that you have a limited PPC budget, and you want to focus all of it on the advertising that will bring you the most sales.

To implement it, you need to use the already existing regular PPC campaigns, plus the holiday-specific campaign. And set a new advertised ASIN (the holiday version of your product) for all of them.

Now, bear in mind that swapping one ASIN for another in a running campaign is NOT the best solution. Instead you should try and:

• A – Make a full duplicate of your existing PPC campaign
• B – Add holiday targeting options: keywords and competing/complementary ASINs to it
• С – Set the product ASIN to the holiday version of your product
• D – Pause old PPC campaigns (ones that promoted the regular version of the product) until the holiday is over

3 – Adding a special holiday version and selling it in parallel to regular product

This strategy is the most expensive one. However, on a number of occasions we have seen it generating the best results in the long run.

To implement it, you effectively perform Strategy 2, but you don’t cut out advertising to the regular product PPC campaigns either. And you do not include the non-holiday keywords into holiday PPC campaigns–because your regular product’s PPC is kicking.

Additionally, you should put a link to the holiday-version of the product into your regular listing, so customers can quickly find it.

Maintaining running PPC ads for a product is always the best strategy with the Amazon.com search algorithms. Effectively, the more consistent sales you keep (including ads-stimulated), the more favorably the algorithm looks at your product. So, keeping your sales trickling at all times is always a more desirable approach for keeping a warm spot on the Amazon.com search results.

When should you start running the holiday PPC campaign?

My team’s experience correlates strongly to the way most PPC experts describe the time it currently takes Amazon’s algorithm to adapt the changes in a product’s sales: 3-4 weeks. And pretty much regardless of how you achieve it, the increase in sales should kick in and remain consistent over 3-4 weeks before Amazon’s A10 algorithm fully settles with your new search result position.

What does this mean for implementing our holiday PPC strategies?

Basically, we should launch the holiday PPC campaign no sooner than 4 weeks before the actual sales begin. And bear in mind that sometimes the period PRIOR to the holiday (like the X-mas) can stretch out for months ahead. It certainly would not be smart to miss out on this opportunity to sell more AND to test how that holiday PPC setup works (and maybe jury rig a few fixes).

Out of season demand

A PPC campaign is definitely worth launching 4 weeks before the sales begin. But you can also leave the holiday product PPC running for the entire year, while keeping a small stock on amazon FBA.

But why? Isn’t this kind of a waste of money?

Well, it rarely is. For instance, there are few (if any) competitors who leave their holiday ads running outside of the holiday. Meaning, that on those few occasions when a smart customer WILL be looking for a Halloween outfit in May,  you’re likely to be on the top of search for her with your Halloween party masks (or whatever you sell).

And you will get few (if any) clicks from people who do not intend to buy because they really won’t be looking for such a product out of season in the first place.

Optimizing a running holiday PPC campaign

To put it short, it’s a bit like aiming the arrow in mid-flight. You will have little time to react. This is what really sets holiday sales apart from any other sales on Amazon.com: short time and intensity of trade.

By the time your PPC campaign has been running 4 weeks, you will have gathered enough data for 2-3 optimization runs, if you’re lucky.

When the actual holiday sales start, you usually will not have enough time to test and try bids to optimise to achieve an ideal ACoS/ sales volume balance. Maybe a couple of fixes. So, in a broad sense, you will have to make do with what you’ve started.

This makes experience invaluable when it comes to repeating the same trick next year. So, make sure you save the holiday PPC campaign setup (e.g. in a bulk upload file) with all the keywords and bids that proved working well.

A little personal advice: note down everything you’ve tried and especially what has worked.

Write down somewhere what strategy you were pursuing, what changes, why you made the campaigns and if they had any effect.

Bookkeeping this seasonal knowledge will let you leverage it in a year’s time, when all the details have faded from the managers’ memory.

That’s all I have to say about preparing the holiday sales PPC right now.

Thank you for making it to the end. Please feel free to share your comments or ask me questions below. I am proud to present to you my experience and first-hand knowledge.

As always, I wish all fellow amazonians good hunting out there!

Ihor Dubovetskyi
Co-founder, Profit Whales

Ihor Dubovetskyi is the co-founder of Profit Whales, the accelerator for Brands selling on Amazon based on advanced decision-making technologies using Big Data & Data Science. Ihor is obsessed with scaling brands beyond their expectations and building tools that will help Brands on Amazon to scale faster more efficiently.

We love serving up fresh, insightful content from the Amazon pros—experts who have been there done that, and seen it all. Today we’re sitting down with Chad Rubin to get his Amazon listing optimization tips for 2019 and beyond.

Chad is the CEO of ThinkCrucial, a brand that creates replaceable products in the home across a multitude of categories and is sold on over 15 channels (including Amazon).

Chad is also CEO of Skubana, a platform for multi-channel inventory management that was born out of Chad’s own frustrations.

Chad is frequently sought out as a consultant by other ecommerce entrepreneurs, particularly Amazon sellers who want help with optimizing their listings. His consulting fee might be hefty, but not to worry! We asked tons of questions on your behalf.

How did you get started selling on Amazon?

Walmart opened up right next door to my parents’ vacuum store when I was a kid. There were times we struggled to pay the bills and make ends meet, so I decided I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. For that reason, I was a first generation college grad. I went on to Wall Street to give advice and insights to hedge funds buying and selling various internet stocks, so think Netflix and Amazon and Bankrate and eBay. I saw a ton of growth happening on Amazon so I said to my parents, “You guys should be selling on Amazon.” They responded, “Who’s going to buy vacuum accessories online?”

Sure enough, I was laid off in 2009. I started helping them sell not just on Amazon but on eBay. We started manufacturing our own products. We started making vacuum bags, and then a whole host of other products such as vacuum filters, coffee filters, air filters, spa filters, you name it we make it…anything that’s replaceable in the home. Now we sell across 15 different channels, and we do a significant amount of business across Amazon. Anything you can think of that’s replaceable in the home and that is high velocity, we manufacture.

Along the way, I started struggling to find software to help me run and automate my business. There was a separate shipping software and a separate inventory software and they didn’t talk to each other because ecommerce has changed so much since the early 2000s. We needed a software to help us sell across 15 different channels and we didn’t find one, so we started Skubana. We’re very Amazon centric but we also support every other marketplace or channel that you sell on.

What’s your overall philosophy for ecommerce success?

A lot of times you can double down on Amazon or you can start growing SKUs across many different channels. I believe in playing Monopoly. In order to win, you need to spread out a bit and diversify. I don’t just want to double down on Park Ave. I want to be paid when someone lands on the Railroad.

So for me, I try to focus on being multichannel and being everywhere I can. Anywhere that people have dwell time, I want to be there.

What factors matter for ranking a product?

You need to make sure that you’re building proper product detail listing pages on Amazon. If you’re going to send traffic there, whether its organic or paid, you want to make sure that the traffic converts because that’s really what Amazon cares about. The number one thing they care about is making sure it converts. You also want to want to have a high click through rate, from the search results page to your listing.

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The world’s most successful entrepreneurs are all avid readers, and so are the top Amazon FBA sellers.

Doesn’t matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, reading is essential. Picking up a book is the easiest way to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, which is something you as a business person know you must do.

Here are the best books for Amazon FBA sellers, books that will give you insider tips, help you operate your business more strategically, and even inspire you to set bigger, better goals.

1. Amazon Selling Blueprint – How to Find and Launch Your First Private-Label Product on Amazon in 90 Days or Less by Scott Voelker

There are lots of Kindle books about selling on Amazon, most of them too bland and too basic. Amazon Selling Blueprint is a top pick for learning the ins and outs of private labelling, whether you’re looking to move away from arbitrage or haven’t had the success you hoped for with your first product launch.

Scott Voelker covers a lot of the info (choosing a product, getting it made, optimizing your listing, launching, advertising) in various segments on his podcast but this book gives a great overview and breaks the process down step-by-step.

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Amazon is THE place for a good deal, so why not excite your buyers with something a little more special than just a sale price?

Amazon promotions are a great way to increase sales on an entire line of complimentary products or on just one item. To learn how to succeed with a temporary promotion on Amazon, read on.

Amazon has three different types of promotions:

• Money Off: This promotion works by incentivizing customers to buy more products from your brand in order to receive money off of their total (either a percentage or a specific dollar amount)
• Buy One Get One: Customers can receive a free item if they meet the qualifications–note that customers will have to add that item to their cart to receive it, as it won’t automatically be added if they qualify
• External Benefit: You can offer customers some other type of benefit to be received after the order, such as membership to a private online community or an instructional video

Tips for creating promotions within Amazon

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When you’re coming up with new Amazon product ideas while exploring items you’re less-than-satisfied with in your own home, or when you’re using an Amazon product research tool, you might have come across a great new idea only to find that it is in a restricted category. 

There are over a dozen different restricted categories that Amazon only permits certain sellers to offer products in, and there are even more restricted products outside of these categories. 

In this post, we detail the categories that are restricted, how you can increase your chances of selling in them, and what products are restricted as well. 

Why does Amazon restrict some categories?

Amazon restricts certain categories to only experienced sellers. Likely, the strategy behind this is to ensure the quality of those products and make sure that there are no fakes, bad ingredients, or other undesirable items being sold on their site. 

It all comes down to Amazon needing to protect their brand in the eyes of consumers. Any Amazon shopper has seen reviews stating that a personal care product wasn’t “the real thing.” Just imagine how much worse the level of fraud would be if Amazon didn’t restrict certain categories like collectibles, fine art, and DVDs. 

Amazon gated categories list

The following categories require approval from Amazon to sell in.

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Maybe you’ve launched a couple products on Amazon before, and you want to stay current with the best strategies for your next launch. Or maybe you’re launching a product for the first time and you want to avoid newbie mistakes. Either way, you’ll learn something in this post, which helps you learn how to market your private label or branded product on Amazon.

What your Amazon product launch should include

Developing the right timeline for your Amazon product launch will be determined by your experience and how much time you can devote to this new product. However, the main features of your product launch remain the same. You need to include:

• PPC traffic
• Organic traffic
• Listing optimization for conversions
• Listing optimization for SEO traffic
• Quality photographs that contextualize and sell the product
• Review request campaign (product insert or email request)

The basics of launching a product on Amazon

This is a quick overview for the newbies (skip this part if you’re experienced). The benefit of launching your ecommerce product on Amazon, instead of a Shopify or BigCommerce website to start, is that you gain access to customers of Amazon.com, estimated to be 300 million.

There are an estimated 2 million sellers on Amazon. For any product, there are thousands of search results.

The search term “ice cream scoop” yields 4,000 results.

At the most basic level, you have two core strategies when launching your product:

1. Try to show up on page 1 of Amazon search results
2. Try to get external traffic to come to your Amazon product listing directly and buy your product (without searching for it first)

Within those two main strategies, there are of course other strategies.

Try to show up on page 1 of Amazon search results:

• Organic ranking (optimize your listings for search terms)
• PPC traffic (spend on Amazon ads for relevant keyphrases)

Try to get external traffic to come to your Amazon product listing directly and buy your product:

• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing, including blogs, videos and webinars

And yes, within each of those strategies, things get complicated.

Your task list for a successful Amazon product launch

So which core strategy should you choose? Try to rank in Amazon search or build up external traffic?
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E-commerce Marketing means selling the products and services electronically which helps in driving action and awareness towards the business. In the past few years, E-commerce based enterprises have shown rapid growth with increasing returns. There are many ways where Amazon can attract its customers to facilitate online purchases such as digital content, search engines, social media, and email campaigns. 

ECommerce marketing services are expected to grow as internet penetration is increasing in developing markets. Nowadays, online traffic is created by smartphones and tablets also resulting in increasing e-commerce revenues. 

The latest product releases, special offers, and discount plans are tracked by consumers in real-time, and a one-touch buying choice has triggered an explosive increase in eCommerce. Amazon needs to separate its brand from rivals to raise product recognition and gain potential buyers. 

Online customers spend a lot of time searching until they make a buying decision. If Amazon offers customers the knowledge they are searching for, then the customers will have the confidence in buying products from Amazon and this will eventually help in becoming a more effective Amazon seller. 

Top eCommerce marketing services

In today’s digital era, it’s simple to set up an online store but it’s hard to catch the interest of shoppers and turn them into loyal customers. With the below top 10 marketing services, you can optimize the search scope and turn your store into an online shopping leader.

Shoppers devote more time than ever finding the items they want to purchase and these e-commerce marketing plans will strive to reach the interested consumers at any point in their research starting from product exploration to feedback and comparisons. This can be done by a cohesive e-commerce marketing approach that involves the following services: 

1. Web development services

Websites are the first interaction platform for shoppers with sellers. There are different types of shoppers, so as per the research customers’ demands for simple websites and frictionless shopping experience.  Your eCommerce website has to be immediately available by on-the-go solutions such as a handheld app or a voice assistant. 

Web development services make things appear at the click of the button and the most important factor is that the websites are secure. This enables the process of safe payment gateway and also has search functions related to products along with the product filtering options. 

2. Graphic Design Services

Graphic Design services create a series of images, visual communication design that includes producing visual elements that can express your brand narrative, establish a brand identity, and make a clear impression. This is the first step you can take when implementing your eCommerce marketing campaign. 

A detailed strategic review would define the capabilities, vulnerabilities, risks, and opportunities in the retail store from an eCommerce marketing viewpoint. The graphics provide actionable information to help you to rectify the gaps and get ahead of the competition.  

3. Content Marketing Services

Content is the most powerful business tool as your content can engage the users and this leads them to become a buyer. Content marketing has become a vital part of the eCommerce marketing campaign for any company. 

A successful eCommerce marketing strategy is a cost-efficient and reliable way to generate visitors as well as new business leads. It also has the potential to create excitement for the consumer and to develop the company into a name. Creating engaging web content is also a struggle because you have to grab the attention of web readers.  

4. Video Marketing Services

Promote your product using video marketing services. These services are the leader of eCommerce marketing services. Videos can easily engage the users for a longer time as the videos with the word “review” in the title had more than 50,000 years of smartphone playtime alone, and internet searches for “product reviews” rose by more than 35%. By 2019, the video will account for 85 percent of internet traffic in the United States. Therefore, Videos enhance the website and it has the ability to distinguish your brand.  

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services

To get more sales and repeat purchases, start the online search engine experiences. You can grow your long-term reputation in the eCommerce marketing sector and get more web visitors, leads through search engine optimization (SEO) services. 

Consumers look for the products, products related query which appears at the topmost organic search results. SEO helps in improving the organic rankings of your companies and these good rankings help your website to appear in the top results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.  

6. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) Services 

Pay per click is a perfect way to bring more buyers on the website and generate more leads. When you hire adnabu for PPC management, it will run entirely from keyword exploration to bid management, from ad creation to ad split testing, from pay per click request monitoring to landing page optimization. 

These experts help the company to make your product stand out from the others with Amazon advertising. You can get in front of the consumers with Google PPC shopping to search for ads. We take care of it and report the findings to you on a monthly basis. 

7. Affiliate Marketing Services

Affiliate Marketing is one of the cost-effective and efficient services to generate online revenue. Affiliate marketing services are a kind of referral program which gives the payout to those who refer a potential client or generate leads for your site. 

The more customers who promote the business, services, or goods digitally, the most effective your website would be. In fact, affiliate marketing is a sales force paid on the basis of their success. Creating an affiliate marketing plan will allow you to concentrate your resources on other facets of your company. 

8. Email Marketing Services

Email Marketing is another cost-effective way to expand your e-commerce business. You can email new buyers and promote your website orders and attract them to repeat the orders. This is one of the most successful types of e-commerce marketing, it has an ROI of 4.4 percent. Various promotional offers, mail, newsletter, new product launch, and much more information can be sent to the qualified customer base easily. 

9. Conversion rate optimization services

Conversion is the lifeline of an online company as it determines the ability to push customers to complete a sale. Stimulating sales will then become the prime focus of the vendors, and they must make the utmost efforts to do so. 

Conversion Rate Optimization is an internet marketing technique aimed at turning guests to customers. This includes the optimization of the company platform to improve sales. The program also includes the enhancement of user interface and functionality, as well as the creation of the trust. 

10. App Development Services

App development services create a smartphone app without getting into complex coding techniques. It’s quick to build and retain. For consumers, it provides the ability to buy quicker, social network connectivity and networking, quick payment options, provides a nice interface with the guests, and safe payment options. It also lets you pass a report providing details about the actions of your customers, what they’re looking for, how much time they waste, and many more.  

Conclusion 

In this article, we provide all the information you need to build an eCommerce marketing strategy that you can use to grow your company and achieve your goals successfully. There is no “magic solution” when it comes to creating brand recognition and boosting e-commerce revenue. 

 Additional resources on eCommerce marketing

1. What is eCommerce Marketing? and the right way of doing it!
2. Top eCommerce Marketing Automation Ideas (to use in 2020)
3. eCommerce Marketing Strategies that work (even) in 2020
4. How to do Conversion Rate Optimization to your shopify store?
5. 19 eCommerce Marketing Trends that are Dominating 2020

Guest Post by AdNabu

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Hey Amazon sellers! As you well know, there are a lot of amazing tools that can help you when it comes to FBA. From product research to keyword research…from listing optimization to inventory management…there are many software systems you can use to grow your Amazon business.

The options are overwhelming!

Not to worry. We’ve polled our customers to find out which Amazon FBA SaaS tools really make a difference. To find out what tools our customers can’t live without, keep reading.

Read our “5 Best” Series to discover more resources for Amazon sellers:

• 5 Best Podcasts
• 5 Best Books
• 5 Best Blogs
• 5 Best Conferences

And now, onto the tools!
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