Understanding the Affiliate Marketing Channel; the short guide
Jungle Scout's Million Dollar Case Study Session #13: Amazon Pay Per Click
1. Launching Amazon Ads for
your new product
Basic strategies for the marketplace in 2017
2. Keyword Research
● At this point you’ve already done some keyword research as part of your
product selection and sourcing phase along with using the Jungle Scout
toolset.
● You should have a short list of keywords you want to rank for and are
targeting in your detail page copy (aka vanity keywords).
● If those keywords will end up being the most profitable or useful to spend your
advertising dollars against is another matter.
● Those same keywords will be useful as seed keywords from which to do
further research.
3. Keyword Research Tools
FREE
● Google Keyword Planner (must have
Adwords account)
● Google Trends (related queries area)
● Keywordtool.io
● Moz Keyword Explorer
● Bing Ads Keyword Planner (must have
Bing account)
● Ahrefs Keyword Explorer (2 week free
trial)
Paid
● MerchantWords
● Keyword Inspector
● Helium10
● Sonar
● The best KW research tool of all - data
from your ad campaigns!
4. Campaign and Ad Group structure
● How are your products organized on the product detail page? Might that
same organizational structure be suitable for your advertising effort?
● What organization will provide the best experience for potential customers
looking for your products? Match search intent to your products as closely as
possible.
● What makes the most sense to you and will make managing ads as easy as
possible? Build with scale in mind.
● Consider your initial and long term goals - first campaigns are to do research
and may look different than your long term campaigns.
5. Campaign and Ad Group structure - pt 2
EXAMPLE:
Campaign Jungle snugs Hooded towels
Ad groups 1, 2 and 3 by color
Ad groups 1, 2 and 3 by match type
Ad groups broken out by both match types, themes or separate colors as
search volume necessitates
Consider building out additional campaigns if you want to more intelligently
segment spend for a given set of keywords or specific product.
6. Naming your Campaigns and Ad Groups
● Campaigns and ad groups should have descriptive and searchable names
that allow you to see what they contain without clicking into them.
● Come up with a system that suits your management style and stick to it.
FOR EXAMPLE
Campaign:
AUTO - Baby Hooded Towels
Ad Groups:
AUTO - Baby Hooded Towels - Pink Towel - 17.5.17
AUTO - Baby Hooded Towels - White Towel - 17.5.17
AUTO - Baby Hooded Towels - Blue Towel - 17.5.17
7. Naming your Campaigns and Ad Groups - pt 2
MANUAL EXAMPLE
Campaign:
MANUAL - Baby Hooded Towels
Ad Groups:
MANUAL - Baby Hooded Towels - Broad - Pink Towel - 17.5.17
MANUAL - Baby Hooded Towels - White Color - White Towel - 17.5.17
MANUAL - Baby Hooded Towels - Exact Proven Converters - Blue Towel - 17.5.17
8. Create Initial Automatic Campaign
● PURPOSE: Results from this campaign will tell us if Amazon is assessing your
product as relevant for customer searches you can then
● You’ll discover search terms related to your product along with the ASIN of
similar competitor products and brand names
● Each product in a listing with multiple child variants should have its own ad
group. This is done so data for each product is segmented properly and can
be best used to learn.
9. Automatic Campaign Bidding and Tweaks
● Start the budget at $10 - $15 a day. This can always be adjusted later so no
pressure!
● Start the bid at $0.35 and increment it by $0.10 every two days while keeping
a close eye on things. Stop when you reach a bid level that about hits your
campaign budget on a daily basis
○ Bids are easily changed at the ad group level simultaneously.
● After a 2-3 weeks you’ll get a sense of what the Average Cost Per Click is for
your products and you can adjust the ad groups to run at a slightly lower
spend level as manual campaign take over most of the heavy lifting.
10. Create Initial Manual Campaign
● PURPOSE: Think of this first Manual Campaign as your research lab for
keywords you anticipate being important to both advertise for and rank
organically, and the main method of finding keywords with repeat sales.
● Create separate ad groups for each child SKU. You may also break them out
by match type for easier bid adjustment and organization. Do not be
concerned with duplicating keywords at this stage and add 100+ keywords.
● Consider adding Amazon suggested keywords to whatever ad group contains
broad match keywords. As Amazon has had little time to crunch sales data
related to your product these may be only somewhat helpful.
11. Manual Campaign Bidding and Tweaks
● Start the budget at $20 - $25 a day. Just because it is set to a certain dollar
amount does not mean it will spend that much - it depends on keyword bids.
● Start bids in manual ad groups at higher dollars amount than those in the auto
ad groups.
● Default bids for ad groups should be at least $0.85 all the way up to $1.50
depending on marketplace competition. Amazon bid suggestions may come
in handy here as well.
● If following a “3 match types” structure stagger bids so those with more
restrictive match types have higher bids.
12. Next Steps and Conclusion
● Review progress in your new campaigns everyday and examine the STR
(search terms report) spreadsheet twice a week to assess what terms are
getting the most impressions, clicks and sales.
● Modify bids on high spenders and add negative keywords on a weekly basis.
Auto campaigns and any ad group containing broad match keywords will
require the most negative keywording.
● IMPORTANT - Amazon’s ad platform has a significant sales attribution lag so
you’ll always see spend well before you see sales - don’t panic!
● Make changes to your campaigns with “measure twice and cut once” mindset
after having enough data to make informed decisions.