Most Frequently Asked Amazon PPC Questions & Answered

Did you know that over 75% of sellers consider PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising crucial for driving business growth on Amazon? If you’ve been considering Amazon PPC services for your business, you’re in the right place. 

In this blog, we will discuss on all the common questions asked about Amazon on google and will go over in depth of all questions from basic to advanced level.

What Is Amazon PPC and How Does It Work? 

Amazon PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click advertising, a powerful tool within Amazon’s advertising platform specifically designed to help sellers increase their sales. 

Here’s how it works on Amazon PPC:

• Pay Only for Clicks: Unlike traditional advertising, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This means you’re not wasting money on impressions (people simply seeing your ad) but rather on those actively interested in what you’re selling.

• Reaching the Right Audience: PPC goes beyond just getting people interested in your product. You can target specific keywords highly relevant to your product. So, when a customer searches for those terms, your ad has a higher chance of appearing at the top. 

• Bidding System: There’s an auction-like system at play. Sellers set the maximum amount they’re willing to pay for a click on their ad (bid). The higher your bid, the more likely your ad is to be shown for relevant searches. However, it’s important to find a suitable position between maximizing visibility and keeping your advertising costs under control.
  
• Campaign Management: Amazon Ads provides a platform for sellers to manage their PPC campaigns. Here, you can define your budget, target audience, and bidding strategies, and even track the performance of your campaigns. 

In simple terms, Amazon PPC offers a targeted and cost-effective way for sellers to significantly increase their product visibility, reach the right audience, and ultimately grow sales on the Amazon Marketplace.

Is Amazon PPC Right For My Business?

Amazon PPC is a great tool for your business, but whether it’s the right fit depends on several factors. Our specialist PPC team shares some breakdowns to help you decide:

Benefits of Amazon PPC:

• Increased Visibility: PPC puts your product front and center for potential customers actively searching for relevant items.
• Targeted Reach: Target specific keywords and demographics to ensure your ads reach the most relevant audience.
• Cost-Effective: You only pay when someone clicks your ad, focusing your budget on interested customers.
• Boosts Organic Ranking: Well-performing PPC campaigns can indirectly improve your product’s organic ranking on Amazon

Ultimately, Amazon PPC can be a powerful tool to drive sales and brand awareness on Amazon.

How Much Does Amazon Charge For PPC?

The cost of running Amazon PPC campaigns can vary significantly, depending on several factors, we are mentioning some factors based on our experience: 

• Product Category: Competitive product niches with high-demand products typically have higher PPC costs due to more competition for ad space. Less competitive niches might see lower costs per click.
• Bidding Strategy: The amount you bid for clicks on your ads directly impacts your overall campaign costs. Higher bids can increase your ad visibility but also drive up spending.
• Target Audience: Targeting a broader audience with general keywords might be cheaper initially, but may not convert into sales as effectively as targeting a narrower, more relevant audience with specific keywords, even if those clicks cost more.
• Campaign Optimization: Continuously monitoring and optimizing your Amazon PPC campaigns to target the right keywords and adjust bids can significantly impact costs. 

Here are some Resources to Help you Estimate Costs:

• Amazon Seller App: This tool provides insights into average CPCs for different product categories and keywords.
• Jungle Scout: This service offers tools to estimate PPC costs based on your target audience and keywords.
• Helium 10: This platform provides similar functionalities to Jungle Scout, helping you estimate potential PPC costs.

Pro Tips: It’s not just about the cost per click, but also about the return on investment (ROI). Effective Amazon PPC campaigns should generate sales that outweigh your advertising costs.

By carefully planning your Amazon PPC campaigns, strategically targeting your audience, and closely monitoring performance, you can optimize your Amazon PPC spending and maximize your return on investment.

Look For: Learn how to optimize your PPC campaigns and understand cost and profit margin calculations to boost your sales and profitability. Watch the video below to learn more: 

Types Of PPC Campaigns On Amazon

Amazon Advertising offers 4 main types of PPC campaigns, each suited to different marketing goals:

1. Sponsored Products: These ads appear within Amazon search results and product detail pages. They allow sellers to promote individual product listings.

2. Sponsored Brands: These ads appear at the top of Amazon search results and feature a custom headline, logo, and multiple products. They are designed to drive brand awareness and customer engagement.

3. Sponsored Display: These ads can appear both on and off Amazon, targeting shoppers who have viewed similar products or product categories. They are effective for retargeting and reaching customers who have shown interest in your products.

4. Sponsored TV (Beta): Amazon’s Sponsored TV ads allow advertisers to promote their products and brands through connected TV devices, reaching customers as they stream their favorite shows and movies.

Here’s a Table Highlighting the Main Differences:

Campaign Type	Goal	Targeting Options	Ad Appearance
Sponsored Products	Promote individual products	Keywords, Product Categories, Competitor Products	Search results pages, product detail pages
Sponsored Brands	Promote your brand	Keywords, Customer Segments	Top of search results pages
Sponsored Display Ads	Increase brand awareness & retargeting	Demographics, Interests, Behaviors	External websites, mobile apps, competitor product pages

Choosing the right campaign type depends on your specific marketing objectives. Here are some advanced tips from our Amazon Certified Team:

• If you want to increase product visibility and drive sales for specific products, use Sponsored Products Ads.
• If you want to build brand awareness and showcase multiple products, use Sponsored Brands Ads.
• If you want to retarget website visitors or reach a broader audience beyond Amazon search, use Sponsored Display Ads.

By understanding these different campaign types and their benefits, you can create a successful Amazon PPC strategy to achieve your desired marketing goals.

Look for: A comprehensive Amazon PPC Tutorial 2024 – Step by Step Amazon Strategy for Beginners – Unlock Amazon Ads Success. Watch this video to better understand. Don’t miss out on this valuable resource for mastering Amazon PPC in 2024!

Which PPC Ad Format Is Most Effective?

There isn’t a single most effective ad format for Amazon PPC because it depends on your specific goals. The 4 primary Amazon PPC ad formats are broken down here, along with the possible peak performance times for each:

1. Sponsored Products Ads:

• Best for: Driving traffic to specific product listings and increasing sales.
• Why: Highly targeted, reaches users actively searching for relevant keywords or browsing similar products.
• Appearance: Shown on search result pages, product detail pages (including competitor listings!), and sometimes even on Amazon Marketplace.

2. Sponsored Brands Ads:

• Best for: Building brand awareness, visibility, and showcasing multiple products.
• Why: Increases brand visibility at the top of search results, offering more creative freedom than Sponsored Products.
• Appearance: Headline search ads, product collection ads, or video ads displayed prominently on search result pages.

3. Sponsored Display Ads:

• Best for: Increasing brand awareness beyond Amazon searches, and driving product consideration.
• Why: Reaches a broader audience on competitor product pages and Amazon Marketplace.
• Appearance: Banner ads, image ads, audience ads, and video ads are displayed on various platforms beyond Amazon.

Our Ecomclips Amazon PPC Certified Team Suggests the Right Format Based on your Goal:

• If you want to focus on immediate sales? Use Sponsored Products Ads.
• Want to build Brand Awareness? Use Sponsored Brands Ads.
• Need to retarget or reach a broader audience? Use Sponsored Display Ads.

Pro Tips: Test and analyze! Run Amazon PPC campaigns with different formats and see what resonates best with your target audience.

How Do I know What Keywords To Use On Amazon?

Finding the right keywords for your Amazon PPC campaigns is crucial for the success of your advertising efforts. So, we are giving some tips on how you can find the right keywords:

1. Use Amazon’s Keyword Research Tools:
   • Utilize Amazon’s search bar to find relevant keywords. Start typing your product’s main keyword, and Amazon will suggest related search terms.
     
2. Amazon Competitor Analysis:
   • Analyze competitors’ product listings and advertising campaigns to identify relevant keywords.
   • Use tools like Helium 10, Jungle Scout to conduct keyword research and analyze competitor keywords.
     
3. Use Amazon’s Automatic Targeting:
   • Start with Amazon’s Automatic Targeting option to let Amazon determine which keywords are most relevant for your products.
   • Use the search term report to identify high-performing keywords and add them as manual targets.

We hope that following these strategies, and a combination of free and paid resources can build a strong foundation of relevant keywords to fuel your Amazon PPC campaigns and reach your target audience effectively.

Look For: You can watch this video on Amazon Keyword Research to Increase Ads Conversion. Learn how to find free keywords for Amazon PPC in 2024.

Amazon Manual V/S Automated Bidding

First, knowing when to use manual bidding versus automated bidding strategies in your Amazon PPC campaigns can significantly impact the success of your advertising efforts. 

Our PPC team, with experience managing over 500+ accounts, has some valuable tips to share based on our expertise. Here’s a table summarizing the key points:

Bidding Strategy	Best For	Considerations
Manual Bidding	Experienced Sellers, Budget Control, Specific Goals, Long Goal	Time Commitment, Budget Flexibility
Automated Bidding	New Sellers, Budget Efficiency, Basic Goals, Short Goal	Less Control, Learning Curve, Limited Goals

When considering each bidding strategy for your Amazon PPC campaigns, here are some key tips to keep in mind:

Automated Bidding:

1. Time-Saving: Use automated bidding when you want to save time managing bids and budget. Allows Amazon’s algorithm to adjust bids automatically based on performance data.

2. Performance Optimization: Automated bidding strategies like Amazon’s Dynamic Bidding optimize bids in real-time to maximize performance. Automatically adjust bids based on factors such as keyword performance, competition, and conversion likelihood.

3. Budget Efficiency: You can deal with campaigns with large keyword sets or when managing multiple campaigns at the same time and ensure efficient budget allocation by automatically adjusting bids to maximize ROI.

Manual Bidding:

1. Keyword Performance Optimization: Use manual bidding to optimize bids for high-performing keywords and increase their visibility. Adjust bids based on keyword performance, conversion rates, and profitability.

2. Keyword Targeting Activeness: Ideal for campaigns with specific keyword targets or when targeting high-value keywords. Allows you to adjust bids based on the competitiveness and relevance of each keyword.

3. Campaigns Budget Flexibility: Use manual bidding when you have a set budget and want to allocate it strategically across different keywords and campaigns.

By implementing these strategies, you can define and compare Automatic and Manual campaign bidding goals and achieve your sales goal. 

How Much Should I Budget For Amazon PPC?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, as it depends on various factors specific to your business and goals. However, we’re sharing some valuable tips based on our lifetimes of experience:

• Understanding Business Goals: You might be comfortable allocating a higher budget initially to gain traction. Start with a smaller budget to focus on impressions and brand visibility.

• Analyzing Profit Margins: Ensure your product’s profit margin can comfortably cover the cost of potential PPC clicks. You’ll need a clear understanding of both your product’s cost price and advertising cost per click (CPC) to determine this.

• Budgeting Formulas: “Target Daily Sales / Estimated Conversion Rate x Average CPC = Daily Budget Estimate”

Pro Tips: Remember, your Amazon PPC advertising budget is an ongoing process. Regularly evaluate your performance and adjust your budget as needed to achieve your desired advertising goals.

You can check the following tab on budget for more details.

How To Build An Effective PPC Strategy?

There’s no single “most effective” strategy for Amazon PPC ads, but here’s a well-rounded approach to get you started and achieve success. We are sharing some valuable tips for you:

1. Set Clear Goals: First, you need to set clear goals and define your advertising goals – whether it’s increasing sales, boosting visibility, or growing your brand.

2. Understand Product Audience: Research your product target audience and identify the keywords they’re using to search for products like yours.

3. Choose the Right Campaign Type: Select the appropriate campaign type based on your goals:
   1. Sponsored Products for immediate sales.
   2. Sponsored Brands for brand awareness.
   3. Sponsored Display for retargeting and reaching a broader audience.

4. Refine PPC Strategy: Continuously review and refine your Amazon PPC strategy based on performance and goals.

5. Monitor and Optimize: Regularly monitor your campaigns and adjust your bidding strategy, keywords, and ad copy based on performance. Track key metrics such as ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales), conversion rate, and click-through rate (CTR) to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

We hope that optimizing PPC campaigns takes time and ongoing adjustments. Be patient, analyze data, and be prepared to make tweaks as you learn and refine your approach.

How Do You Measure The Success Of A PPC Campaign?

To ensure successful Amazon PPC campaigns, it’s essential to track key metrics such as impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, spend, ACoS, total sales, ROAS, conversion rate, total orders, and profit. We are exploring some potential tips below: 

PPC Performance Indicators:

• Impressions: The number of times your ad is displayed. A high number of impressions indicates good reach but doesn’t guarantee clicks or sales.
• Clicks: The number of times users click on your ad. A healthy click-through rate (CTR) is an indicator of a compelling ad and relevant targeting.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): (Clicks / Impressions) x 100. A good CTR suggests your ad is relevant and enticing users to click.
• Cost per Click (CPC): The average amount you pay each time someone clicks on your ad.

Amazon PPC Conversion Metrics:

• Conversion Rate: (Orders / Clicks) x 100. This metric shows the percentage of clicks that convert into sales. A good conversion rate indicates your product listing resonates with users who click on your ad.
• Orders: The total number of sales generated through your PPC campaigns.

Profitability Metrics:

• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Total Sales Revenue / Total Ad Spend. This metric shows how much revenue you generate for every dollar spent on PPC advertising. A positive ROAS indicates your campaign is profitable.
• Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS): (Total Ad Spend / Total Sales Revenue) x 100. This metric expresses your ad spend as a percentage of your sales revenue from PPC. A lower ACoS is preferable, indicating you’re spending less on ads to generate each sale.

Tracking these metrics will help you assess the effectiveness of your Amazon PPC campaigns and make data-driven decisions to optimize performance.

Why Aren’t My Amazon PPC Ads Showing? 

There are several reasons why your Amazon PPC ads might not be showing. We are sharing some common issues and tips:

1. Campaign Status and Budget: You should double-check that your campaign status is “Active.” Inactive campaigns won’t show your ads. Ensure your daily budget isn’t depleted. If you’ve reached your budget limit for the day, your ads won’t display until the next day.

2. Bidding Strategies: If your bids are too low compared to other advertisers targeting the same keywords, your ads might not win the auction and therefore won’t be displayed. Certain automated bidding strategies, like “Downstream Sales Targeting” might prioritize impressions over clicks, leading to fewer ad placements depending on your campaign goals.

3. Keyword Targeting Issues: Make sure your chosen keywords are highly relevant to your product and target audience. Irrelevant keywords will likely lead to low impressions and clicks. While negative keywords are crucial to excluding irrelevant searches, accidentally adding negative keywords that match your target terms can prevent your ads from showing for relevant searches.

4. Product Listing and Account Health: Ensure your product listings are optimized with high-quality images, compelling titles, detailed descriptions with relevant keywords, and positive customer reviews. Maintain a good seller account health rating by following Amazon’s policies and avoiding violations. A poor account health rating can restrict your advertising privileges.

5. Troubleshooting PPC Campaigns: You can Check Amazon Seller Central’s “Campaign Diagnostics Tool” to identify potential issues within your campaigns related to bids, keywords, or product listings. 

We hope that by following those tips and systematically checking these potential causes, you can identify the reason behind your ads not showing and take corrective action to get your Amazon PPC campaigns back on track.

Look for: You can watch this video to better understand the top 10 common mistakes when adjusting Amazon PPC ads. 

Can PPC Advertising Increase My Organic Sales?

Yes, PPC advertising can indirectly increase your organic sales on Amazon in several ways. Our expert team is sharing some potential tips that you can check out: 

• Increased Visibility and Brand Awareness: PPC ads put your product in front of a wider audience actively searching for relevant keywords. This increased visibility can lead to more organic searches for your product name or brand over time.

• Improved Search Ranking: Increased sales velocity, click-through rates (CTR), and positive conversion rates from PPC campaigns might be seen as positive signals by Amazon’s A10 algorithm, potentially giving your organic listing a slight ranking boost.

• Driving Traffic to Your Listing: PPC ads can generate more traffic to a product listing, even if users don’t click directly on the ad. When users see your product displayed in both paid and organic search results, it can build trust and credibility, leading them to click on your organic listing to learn more.

Also, PPC can be a valuable tool in your Amazon sales strategy. By increasing visibility, potentially improving ranking, and driving traffic to your listing, PPC can indirectly contribute to an increase in your organic sales. 

How Do I Reduce Amazon PPC ACoS?

To lower your Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) for Amazon PPC campaigns, you can follow these strategies, we hope these strategies will be more help your business: 

• Campaign Optimization: Identify high-performing keywords with a low ACoS and focus your budget on those keywords. Pause or adjust bids for keywords with a high ACoS or low conversion rates.

• Negative Keywords: Use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic and reduce wasted ad spend. Add irrelevant or low-converting search terms as negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for those terms.

• Bid Optimization: Optimize your keyword bids to achieve your target ACoS. You can increase bids for high-converting keywords with a low ACoS & decrease bids for low-converting keywords with a high ACoS.

• Targeting Optimization: Refine your targeting settings to reach the most relevant audience for your products.

• Use Match Types Effectively: You can use a combination of broad, phrase, and exact match types to optimize your keyword targeting and monitor the performance of each match type and adjust bids and keywords accordingly.

• Regular Monitoring and Optimization: Regularly monitor the performance of your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords. Analyze your search term reports to identify opportunities for optimization and adjust your strategy accordingly.

We hope that by implementing these strategies, you can effectively lower ACoS for your Amazon PPC campaigns, improve your advertising ROI, and maximize the profitability of your campaigns.

Insights: 

Keep in mind that the Amazon PPC platform can change, so it’s important to stay informed about the latest updates and best practices to maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Here, at Ecomclips, we have been helping many Amazon sellers boost their sales and capture the market share with both PPC and organic SEO. If you need any help boosting your Amazon sales or making growth on your brand, please don’t hesitate to mail us at our email address info@ecomclips.com. Also, if you need an Amazon store or account audit for both PPC Ads and listings SEO, you can let us know via our email address, and we will provide you with a free account audit. 

Additionally, if you need any assistance, please reach out to us in the comment box. We are here to assist you in managing PPC advertisements to improve your profit, so we offer a personalized approach to our service.