Tag: amazon sales

The Amazon PPC Ad Types: What They Offer and How To Manage Them

Creating a successful Amazon PPC campaign isn’t just a matter of spending money on some keywords and then hoping to build sales. The strategy, research, and structure of a campaign are what determines its success. And even if you’ve done some thorough preparation, not keeping an eye on how well it’s doing will be a recipe for failure. 

 Every business has a specific vision of what an effective PPC campaign is. It could increase organic rank, drive sales of a seasonal product, or be consistently profitable. However you define PPC success, knowing the full scope of what’s possible within each of Amazon’s advertising channels will help you devise the ideal campaign for your brand. The keywords you target, the spending thresholds you set, and the performance metrics you use are all crucial to building a strong campaign. 

 As you juggle these different tasks, Viral Launch’s PPC tool, Kinetic, can make managing your campaigns easier and help you achieve your Amazon advertising goals. The data it provides on your ads’ performance can ensure your PPC campaign is structured effectively, targeting the right keywords, and spending efficiently. 

 Kinetic also offers automated features that will help you save time by taking bidding adjustments off your to-do list. It doesn’t force predefined rules on your campaign automation or only provide limited data. Similar to Viral Launch’s other software tools, Kinetic gives you the customization, flexibility, and data to make your ideal Amazon PPC ad strategy a working reality.

Here we’ll cover the various Amazon advertising channels—Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Product Display ads—and how Kinetic can provide benefits to each kind of PPC campaign. 

Breaking Down the Amazon PPC Ads: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands & Product Display Ads

The goal of an Amazon ad is pretty simple: convince a consumer to purchase your product. Yet making that happen is both complicated and expensive, and Amazon provides sellers with three different advertising channels for increasing brand awareness and gaining sales opportunities. Whether you choose to use one or a combination of them, each one provides different avenues for reaching consumers and specific advantages.

Sponsored Products Ads 

The first thing you’ll likely see on a search results page is a Sponsored Products ad. They appear at the top of results, as well as alongside them and at the bottom of the page. They provide an excellent means of generating visibility and enticing people to check out your product. As the name implies, these are product-focused ads meant to increase sales. 

Sponsored Products ads feature your product’s photo, your title (or part of it), the average reviews, and your price. These components alone are enough to draw a consumer’s attention and give her enough information to know if the offering is worth pursuing. When it appears next to competitors with weaker reviews or higher prices, the ad can really stand out and steal some sales from those other brands. These ads primarily target consumers who are weighing different options and are ready to make a purchase. Brand awareness can be generated here as a bonus, but the primary objective is to drive sales. 

Where a Sponsored Products ad shows up relies on a variety of different factors. It isn’t just your keywords and your bids (although you still need to target the right keywords and offer a competitive bid). The impressions and clicks it earns also play a factor. The better your ad performs and the more sales you earn, the higher your ad placements will be.

Also, an increase in sales will also help boost your organic rank. Having greater visibility in organic search results will lead to receiving more impressions, views, and conversions. Our CEO Casey Gauss has often spoken about how sales and rank create a flywheel effect in which sales help increase organic rank, which helps boost sales, and the self-perpetuating pattern builds from there. 

Sponsored Brands Ads 

Being a recognizable brand means a great deal. Promoting your products is essential, but promoting your brand can help create a personal connection with consumers that paves the way to brand loyalty. 

While Sponsored Products ads will help with product promotion, Sponsored Brands advertisements will allow you to show the personality behind your brand. Previously known as Headline ads, these ads appear as a banner ad on a search results page (at the top, middle, or bottom). They include your logo, a headline, and three featured product ads, each of which link to their product pages. By clicking the ad, a consumer will be taken to your brand’s Sales page or a customized landing page that showcases your three products and some information about your business. 

Because of their size the information they convey, Sponsored Brands is an effective way to gain attention and establish your business as a market leader. This kind of presentation conveys the legitimacy of your brand and gives people a way of learning something about your brand. By telling a little about the story behind your business, you can motivate consumers to support your brand. These ads can also be used for seasonal campaigns. If your brand’s products go through sales spikes at certain times of year, running Sponsored Brands ads can start generating some attention to help ramp up your usual sales increases.

The target audience for these ads would be top-of-funnel consumers who are learning about the possible choices within a market. The goal is to plant a seed of awareness about your business and make a strong impression that can eventually lead to a sale when a consumer is ready to make a choice. 

Product Display Ads 

If you’re looking for some widespread exposure across a number of different placements, Product Display ads can make that happen. These ads appear not only on search results pages, but on product pages, the customer reviews page, and in Amazon’s follow-up emails to customers. So they cover a lot of ground and reach people at different stages of the sales process. 

Product Display ads are essentially a combination of Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands ads. They’re used to promote a specific product, similar to Sponsored Products, but they’re similar in size and appearance to a Sponsored Brands ad. A Product Display ad will showcase one item, along with a headline, the product photo, your review count, and price. Similar to a Sponsored Products as, the aim is to gain some visibility and drive some sales. 

Unlike either of these ad types, Product Display ads don’t target keywords. Instead, they target products and consumer interests. When targeting products, you focus on competitors’ products or related products within your main category. Interests refer to the categories and subcategories a consumer has searched within. The more specific your target is, the better. Rather than just targeting “Pet Supplies” for a dog leash, you could specifically target the subcategory of “Standard dog leash” or “Retractable dog leash.” By focusing on one of these detailed subcategories, you’ll have a better chance at connecting with your ideal customers.

How Kinetic Can Help

Each of these ad choices offers effective ways of getting your products in front of consumers, but they each have various challenges, which Kinetic can help you solve. By providing you with a complete overview of all your PPC campaigns, you’ll be able to verify what’s working and discover what isn’t so you can build on your successes and make improvements where necessary. 

Keyword Targeting

Knowing the right keywords to target is vital to your ads’ visibility and performance. Otherwise, you’re wasting your budget on keywords you can’t compete for or that aren’t relevant to your product. Using Kinetic, you’ll be able to accomplish the following:

  • Find which keywords are performing the best for you and capitalize on their results. 
  • Discover new keyword opportunities that previously missed and expand your campaign’s visibility. 
  • Create automated tasks around your new targets. These customized keyword-related rules can raise or lower your bids based on your ACoS, orders, and clicks. The control is in your hands.

Controlling Spending

Once you have the right keywords targeted, you’ll need to ensure you’re spending efficiently. You might have an ad that’s getting some good exposure, but if it’s eating up your budget, you’ll be reducing your profit margin. Kinetic can help you avoid those problems in the following ways:

  • Monitor and control your bids to maximize your budget.  
  • Create a strategy for lowering, raising, or maintaining your ACoS, depending on your campaign goals. 
  • Set thresholds based around a specified number of clicks or your break-even ACoS using Kinetic’s automated rules. 

Monitoring Performance

One of the big PPC misconceptions today is that once a seller has an Amazon ad campaign underway, the hard work is over and all that’s left to do is watch the sales roll in. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple and this kind of approach will only lead to wasted spending and little to no success. Kinetic gives you the ability to view your campaigns at a broad overview perspective as well as at a deeper detailed level:

  • View a list of all your products with snapshots of each of their campaigns. Unlike any other software tool, you’ll have an easily viewable presentation of your products’ data, including total sales, organic sales, and ad performance. 
  • Monitor the metrics for each of your campaigns, such as Sponsored ad rank and keyword performance. Without knowing where your ad is showing up, you won’t have a good handle on your ad’s success, and without seeing your keyword performance, you won’t know which keyword markets are the most valuable for your campaigns. 
  • Control your campaign spending, keep tabs on sales from ads, and make adjustments when needed
  • Filter data by any date range to view specific certain timeframes. Kinetic’s search term data feature also offers ranges of search term data that’s easier and less time-consuming to access than having to create a report within Amazon.
  • Benefit from Kinetic’s recommendations on the rules you set up for your campaigns. If you choose to manually run the rules yourself, rather than automating them, you’ll receive recommendations from Kinetic that will help you better monitor what’s working and what needs improvement. The automated option will enable Kinetic to carry out its own recommendations for you, saving you time and effort. Both options will help in monitoring your campaigns and pinpointing where to make adjustments.

Learn more about how Kinetic by Viral Launch can energize your PPC campaigns and connect with your ideal consumers!

Importance of Amazon Ads Placement Data & How to Use it

Good Amazon PPC decisions can’t happen without good data. Any opportunity to gather valuable data about your Amazon ads campaigns is an opportunity to grow your business.

So if you’re struggling to build a profitable PPC campaign, analyzing the right data will help you develop some effective solutions. Or if you’re hitting your PPC goals, your data will be a crucial resource in keeping that success going. You may even find that your ads are missing some growth potential you weren’t aware of.

Each Amazon ads placement—top of search, rest of search, or product pages—will deliver different amounts of traffic and could require different amounts of spending. The traffic you get on page 1 will be much different than on page 5. Understanding how your ad’s placement is paying off (literally) will help you know how well your campaigns are increasing your visibility.

Whether you’re keeping a close eye on your ad placement or unsure of how to start, Viral Launch’s software tool Kinetic will give you the data you need to monitor your performance. It provides a simplified and agile means of managing your Amazon ads campaigns, allowing you to make improvements or adjustments quickly. Whatever your PPC goals, Kinetic will help you pinpoint the most effective placements for your ads and create sales-driving campaigns for your brand.

Why Amazon Ad Placement Data Matters

When you’ve got a good ACoS, you might consider your PPC campaign a success and want to leave everything exactly as it is. Why fix what isn’t broken? All you need is some automation so you can set it and forget it.

The trouble is that what’s successful on Amazon now won’t deliver the same results a month, a week, or even a day from now. Taking a hands-off approach will inevitably lead to a loss in visibility and be a gift to your competitors. Monitoring, analyzing, and adjusting are all necessary tasks in a successful PPC campaign, and you’ll need to know which placements are giving you the best outcome and which keywords or ASINs are your best targets.

Know Which Placement Leads to the Best Results

After some effort, your Amazon ads are now finally appearing at the top of page one. You’ve taken a step up from the middle of search and expect to see a boost in visibility. As it turns out, you unexpectedly find that the middle of the page was better for your campaign, as it consumed less of your budget and led to a greater number of impressions.

Your ideal ad placement will be dictated by your budget and PPC goals, as well as the data you collect. You’ll need to examine your ACoS and click-through rates, and determine which placement will deliver the best performance. An ad at the top of search will increase your product’s visibility, but the cost per click (CPC) will be more expensive. With lower placements, you’ll drive a lesser amount of traffic, but the clicks will be less expensive. Without knowing what each ad placement can deliver, you’ll be missing opportunities to connect with customers and narrow down your best placement spot.

Know the Keywords or ASINs That Deliver the Best Performance

Keywords aren’t just important to your products’ organic ranking. They’re also vital to getting your ads in front of your target audience. Your Amazon ads placement data can convey which search terms you’re competing the best for. You can then focus on those that will deliver the best return while pausing those that might not be very effective.

Let’s say your ad is targeting three different search terms: 

  • Garlic press

  • Garlic press stainless steel

  • Garlic press and slicer in one

For “garlic press,” your Sponsored Products are showing up on the middle of page 5 and not getting many impressions. “Garlic press stainless steel” is giving you some visibility the middle of page 3, and “Garlic press and slicer in one” is the best of all on page 1. By knowing what’s getting the best performance, you can focus on maintaining that success and start creating plans to make improvements for campaigns that are struggling.

 In addition to Amazon ads placement data, other performance metrics will be crucial to growing the success of your campaigns, and Viral Launch’s Kinetic provides all of those metrics in an easily accessible format. This PPC software tool will allow you to gain insights into your campaigns to help you continue to meet your goals and pinpoint where any adjustments should be made.

Kinetic: Simplified and Efficient PPC Campaign Management

Your ad’s placement will tell you a lot about your campaign, but it’s up to you to unpack the data behind it. Our PPC tool, Kinetic, provides an efficient and in-depth way to evaluate your keywords, budget, structure and overall performance. By providing a full range of data no other tool provides, Kinetic will give you better control over your campaigns and strengthen their performance.

Sales, Spending & Placement Data

Knowing your best opportunities for growth should be an underlying goal for all your PPC campaigns. By telling you exactly where your ads are showing up, Kinetic can determine which placements are giving you the best performance.

You can also learn whether product pages or search results are giving you the most visibility. If product pages are best, you can devise a strategy for targeting competitors’ products with a more expensive price than yours. With your ad running next to them, you could potentially steal sales from those brands. By using Kinetic in combination with Viral Launch’s Competitor Intelligence, you can research your competitors’ products and locate some untapped opportunities for growth.

Kinetic also provides organic sales data, so you’ll be able to determine how your ads are helping boost your organic search rankings. The greater visibility your ads provide, the greater your sales will be, and an increase in sales will help improve your organic rank. Making improvements to your PPC campaigns will help increase your products’ visibility, and monitoring your ad placement data will be important to knowing where and how to make adjustments.

Manage and Maximize Your Bids and Budget

You can’t have a discussion about PPC management without talking about bids and budget. Keeping your spending as efficient as possible is an ongoing challenge, and Kinetic can help you tackle your budget challenges.

 Kinetic’s customized automated rules will enable you to create thresholds for each campaign based around ACoS, clicks, orders, and ad rank. This customization isn’t limited to a few predefined functions. The flexibility it provides is unique to PPC software and puts all the control in your hands.

You can set your bids to increase or decrease based on specified conditions, such as if your ACoS is less than your breakeven ACoS and the click rate is larger than a certain amount. Or you can pause keywords that aren’t performing over a certain target. You can also add bid modifiers to target top or bottom of search and make adjustments to improve or maintain your PPC campaigns.

 All of these automation features will help you reach your PPC goal, whether that’s a profitable campaign, a lower ACoS, increased organic rank, or all of the above. Kinetic gives you an endless amount of possibilities in the automation you can create to use your budget more efficiently and strengthen your ROI.

Monitor the Performance of Your Keywords

Targeting the right keywords is absolutely essential for your ad campaigns. Keyword research is an indispensable task and one that shouldn’t be thought of as something you only use at the beginning of a product launch. Making sure you’re targeting the right keywords for your products and ads should be an ongoing process.

 The data Kinetic provides will tell you how well your ads’ keywords are performing and their profitability. You’ll be able to make decisions on which keywords should be paused, set as negatives, or broken out into their own campaigns. Any keywords driving a large amount of sales or consuming the majority of your budget are good candidates for having their own campaigns. By breaking them out, you can then increase your visibility and conversions, and Kinetic can help you manage those new campaigns.

Kinetic also offers search term reports you can view, so you don’t have to rely completely on Seller Central. Unlike Seller Central, you can easily compare and flip between different date ranges within the tool, instead of having to download one report at a time. Whenever you need to compare your seasonal data to previous months or years, Kinetic is an ideal solution. The tool also enables you to more easily aggregate your campaign’s performance by search term, which is more complicated in Seller Central.

Improving and Refining Your Amazon PPC Campaigns

Making the right decisions about your PPC ads depends on your ability to evaluate your keywords, budget, and performance. It’s vital to know how many impressions, views, or conversions your ad receives at different placements, whether top of search, rest of search, or product pages. By analyzing your spending data, click-through rates, and impressions, you can have a clear idea of how well your ads are performing.

 Whatever challenges you may be facing with your PPC campaigns, Kinetic will help you develop customized and effective solutions. In addition to ad placement data, the tool provides quality data on keywords, campaign performance, spending, and Sponsored ad rank. Designed to make your PPC management more efficient, it will help you find weaknesses, develop improvements, and put them in action.

The team here at Viral Launch is committed to providing Amazon sellers of all sizes with the resources for attaining long-term success. Our expertise has been built on tens of thousands of product launches, and Kinetic’s sophisticated but easy-to-use capabilities will help your brand achieve their PPC goals and simplify the challenges of advertising on Amazon.

 

 

Improve Your Amazon PPC Bid Strategy & Campaigns

Landing an Amazon PPC ad at the top of page one of organic search results is no small accomplishment, and it’s the result of a series of smaller accomplishments. Targeting the right keyword, knowing the best placement, having a strong sales history, and making a winning bid are all essential to creating a successful Amazon PPC Bid Strategy.

And even after making those accomplishments, your work isn’t over. When it comes to bidding for Sponsored Products ads, you have to continually monitor your bids to ensure you’re not missing good opportunities or overspending for the conversions you’re getting.

Avoiding the PPC pitfalls that will drain your budget and lead to a weak performance depends on following the right bidding strategy. Navigating Amazon’s PPC ecosystem is both complicated and expensive, so It’s important to have a complete understanding of the bidding capabilities Amazon provides and how you can take advantage of them.

Amazon PPC Bid Strategy: Dynamic Bidding

Earlier this year, Amazon made news when it released three new ad bidding features that enable Amazon sellers to place bids on their Sponsored Products ad placements. These “dynamic” bidding capabilities take place in real time and will raise or lower your bids for you, based on a variety of factors, including your sales history and review count. These features help sellers compete in auctions where they’re likely to win or avoid spending budget where they’re not competitive.

The three options are as follows:

  • Dynamic bids – down only: Your bids will be decreased when Amazon determines your bid won’t likely win the auction. This is based on historical campaign data.
  • Dynamic bids – up and down: Amazon will raise or lower your bid, depending on the competitors’ bids and whether you have the likelihood of winning.
  • Fixed bids: Here your bid remains static without changing.

Making the best choice depends on your PPC goals. What you plan to achieve will guide your choice, such as if you’re looking to boost your sales or to run a profitable campaign.

Amazon also provides the Adjust Bids by Placement settings, which allow you to increase your bids even further depending on the placement. Top of search on page one and Product pages are the two offered settings, so you can enter a percentage, depending on how much you want to spend. When aiming for these specific placements, these adjustments can make your bids more competitive.

Once you’ve got a strategy in place, Viral Launch’s new PPC management tool Kinetic can help you gather more data than any other software can provide and strengthen your campaigns. Being successful on Amazon requires more than just offering a great product at a competitive price. PPC ads are essential to having a profitable business in the Amazon marketplace, and Kinetic will help simplify the complexities of this challenging but vital task.

How Kinetic Can Help Your Amazon PPC Bidding Challenges

Monitoring and adjusting your Amazon PPC bid strategy can be the most time-consuming part of your entire campaign. As an in-depth PPC management solution, Kinetic can simplify your monitoring activities, locate weaknesses, and help you make improvements. The tool provides an overview of how all your campaigns are performing and gives you an efficient means of controlling your PPC spending through its customized automation, saving you both time and budget.

Working with Amazon’s Bidding Strategies

Choosing the best strategy depends on your PPC goals and which stage your campaign is in. You also need to anticipate how competitive you’ll be in the auctions you’re bidding in. Doing some research will be a necessary step, and Kinetic will provide accurate, helpful data for structuring your ads. As your campaign grows and build some history, you’ll likely move from one Amazon bidding strategy to another.

Fixed 

We recommend starting a new campaign with Fixed since you don’t have any ad history built yet. Fixed bids are a good way to prevent spending money in auctions that you won’t likely win. This strategy will keep all your bids at the same amount.

Amazon recommends using this strategy as a way of increasing product awareness, rather than conversions. The goal here would be getting your brand and products in front of as many consumers as possible in order to start earning sales later on.

Down Only

Once you’ve begun developing some ad history, the Down Only option will help you start becoming more competitive. As the name implies, Amazon will only lower your bids in auctions where you aren’t likely to win. This is a good way to prevent spending money in auctions where you’re not competitive.

As your ads begin generating some performance data, Kinetic can tell you which keywords are delivering the best performance so you can start devoting more of your budget to them in order to build on those gains.

Up and Down

Once you’ve got some keywords driving a lot of conversions, this two-dimensional strategy is the best option. An Up and Down strategy should only be used if you’ve been in the market for at least a week and have built some ad history. If you use this for a new campaign, Amazon won’t have any basis for knowing if you’re able to convert for a particular keyword.

By letting Amazon increase or decrease your bids depending on the auction, you’ll be giving the keywords a greater chance to deliver. With this kind of strategy, you’ll need to plan to increase your spending, so you’ll come closer to, or actually reach, your spending threshold.

If Up and Down is working well, you can create an automated rule in Kinetic to increase your budget to maintain the success. You may find that your cost per click (CPC) will vary, with some clicks being more expensive than others. You’ll be getting slightly fewer clicks, but for high-converting keywords, and spending more than you were at earlier stages of your campaign, but gaining more sales.

Turning Non-delivering Keywords into Delivering Ones

Running an efficient campaign requires adding any non-delivering keywords as negatives. You don’t want to devote any time or budget to anything that isn’t working. Although adding under-performing keywords as negatives is a necessary task, Kinetic can help with determining what isn’t working and if the fault is in your spending, not the keyword itself.

If you verify that you’re targeting a keyword that’s relevant to your product, any problems are likely due to your bid or budget being too low. As an example, if you have a 50-keyword set with a $20 per day budget, that means you’re spending less than a dollar for each of those keywords. By increasing your budget, you can start seeing some delivery on those keywords and use your budget more efficiently.

Also keep in mind that how much you bid determines which auction Amazon will put you in.

Using Kinetic’s automation, if the impressions or clicks your ad is getting are less than a certain amount, you can increase your bids and participate in a more valuable auction. When that occurs, you’ll likely see some improved performance. Sometimes just increasing your bid, while staying within a certain range, can help an ad’s performance for a keyword or when trying to attain a certain placement.

Eliminating Overspending and Lowering Your ACoS

Increasing your spending isn’t always the right solution, and you might discover that you’re spending way too much for the impressions or views that your ad is getting.

Kinetic’s automated functions can help you control and improve any inefficient spending, such as any keyword that’s spending but not converting. If you’re working with a 50-keyword set, you may find that only 12 are converting. Based on Kinetic’s data, you can automate Kinetic to pause the other 38 keywords that aren’t converting and then determine whether they’re relevant to your product or if you need to adjust your price.

Controlling your ACoS is a typical challenge and if it’s too high, you’re paying too much per click or your conversion rate is too low. Let’s say you were targeting the first Sponsored Products ad position and seeing a low conversion rate there. The best solution would be to lower your bid to attain a lower ad position where you can pay less per click. Once you can achieve a relatively constant conversion rate, your ACoS will decrease, but the trade-off is that you’ll get less traffic at that position. This same kind of strategy can help when trying to create a profitable PPC campaign. The result will be a lower ad position, but one at a more profitable level that still drives enough traffic to earn a strong amount of conversions.

As another example, if bidding on a keyword is getting you to the first row of ads but with a high ACoS, you can set a rule to improve your spending. In Kinetic, you would create a rule that would decrease your keyword bid by 30 or 40% whenever your ACoS is greater than your breakeven ACoS and your click rate is greater than 20. Once this rule is in place, you can begin gathering data on its performance to see how well it’s working. When your ACoS drops, you can create a rule for maintaining that level of spend.

Reducing Your Monitoring Frequency

Although Kinetic isn’t a “set it and forget it” kind of tool, it can free you up from checking your campaign’s spending, keyword performance, and placement throughout the day. Its automated rules can adjust or pause your spending based on the conditions you create, so you won’t be making manual adjustments in Seller Central.

If you usually monitor your campaigns on a weekly basis to see how certain adjustments have performed, Kinetic can provide all the data you need and enable you to download search term reports, rather than using Seller Central. However frequently you choose to monitor your campaign, Kinetic will help you optimize it with adjustments that will improve your visibility and conversion rates.

Learning Where You Can Best Compete

The keywords you target play a huge role in how successful your PPC ads are. Keeping a constant eye on the keywords your ads are targeting is one of the crucial tasks of monitoring your campaigns.

In the past, the usual Amazon PPC bid strategy was to bid for the top keywords in a product category. Since those were the main keywords, that was the most logical thing to do, but the outcome would be a low click-through rate and an even lower conversion rate. To add insult to injury, your organic ranking for that keyword would drop.

A smarter strategy is to discover which keywords you can best compete for, and Kinetic can help you verify your targets or find missing opportunities. By targeting the right keywords, you’ll be giving yourself the best chance at conversions and avoiding wasted spend on the wrong choices. You’ll then be able to achieve some visibility and sales for your products, and in turn help boost your organic rank.

Amazon’s algorithms are paying attention to every aspect of your PPC performance, so if you target keywords you can’t compete for, it will actually have a negative effect on your campaign. Instead, examine your data, find your best targets, and adjust your spending.

Streamline Your Bid Strategies, Strengthen Your PPC Campaigns

Having a huge budget at your disposal, as great as that might be, doesn’t automatically mean your PPC ads will be successful. It’s your overall PPC strategy, including your bidding decisions, keywords and placement targets, that will determine the success of your PPC campaign.

Whether you’re aiming to increase sales, boost brand awareness, or run a profitable campaign, Viral Launch’s Kinetic will help you achieve your PPC goals. Its automated features will give you greater control over your bidding tasks and help you use your budget more efficiently. You’ll also be able to quickly pinpoint weaknesses in your campaigns, make improvements, and increase your ads’ impressions, clicks, and conversions.

Amazon’s PPC advertising ecosystem is complicated, and PPC is a major challenge for any Amazon sellers, no matter the size of the business. Having a good Amazon PPC Bid Strategy is important to your success. Each of Viral Launch’s software tools can help your Amazon selling efforts, and as PPC becomes more important for business growth, Kinetic will be an indispensable asset in simplifying your advertising challenges. With this customizable tool, you can ensure your PPC campaigns are built on accurate data, an optimized structure, and competitive bidding strategies.

Click here learn more about how Kinetic can energize your PPC campaigns and connect with your ideal consumers.

Amazon PPC Advertising: The Essentials for Building Your Ad Campaign

The average Amazon consumer probably doesn’t know much about Amazon PPC advertising, but the ads themselves will be a familiar sight.

The average Amazon consumer probably doesn’t know much about Amazon PPC advertising, but the ads themselves will be a familiar sight. When scrolling through search results and viewing product pages, a series of product ads is always competing for the buyer’s attention

Every Amazon seller wants their products to be found as easily as possible, and Amazon pay-per-click (PPC) ads are one of the central tactics in making this happen. Optimizing a product listing is crucial to having a strong ranking, yet it requires much more than that to be competitive, and PPC will play a huge role in getting products in front of their intended audience. Knowing how to start an Amazon PPC advertising campaign can seem intimidating, but understanding the basics is the first step in learning how to take advantage of its inherent sales possibilities. Here we’ll provide an overview of Amazon PPC advertising and the advantages it can provide for increasing product exposure and sales.

Learning the PPC Facts

Let’s start with some fundamentals. The advertisements that appear on Amazon’s search results pages and on product pages are what Amazon refers to as Sponsored Products ads. “Sponsored” refers to the fact that these ads are paid for by the product’s seller.

 The ads appear based around keywords entered during a product search. As a seller, you’ll bid for a keyword related to your product, such as “thank you cards.” Whenever someone searches for that keyword, the amount of your bid will determine the position of your ad. If you have the highest bid, you’ll win the first position. The second-highest would claim the second spot, and so on. You don’t actually pay for the bid until a consumer clicks the ad to view the product page, which is why these ads are known as pay-per-click.

Another important topic is CPC or cost per click. This cost reflects the efficiency of your ad spending based on how many consumers clicked your ad. If you spent $80 on an ad, and 40 people clicked the ad, your CPC would be $2. The significance of CPC is that it indicates how well your ad is performing. To differentiate, PPC is the overall advertising plan, whereas CPC is the performance gauge of your plan. Note that Amazon PPC ads are available only to sellers on the Professional plan.

What You Can Gain from PPC

Visibility

Sponsored ads enable a great means of exposure with your target audience. PPC ads draw attention to your product, providing a photo, price, and title (or the first part of it). It also shows if you’re a Prime member, when the consumer will receive it, and your review rating. These basics all form the hook that will intrigue someone to click the ad to learn more. Consumers can then compare your offering with those of your competitors and become familiar with your brand.

Sales

Greater visibility leads directly to greater potential for sales. In some cases, sponsored ads have enabled no-name businesses to steal sales away from larger, more established brands. By doing so, a smaller business can build enough sales to compete with those large brands and take market share away from them.

Performance Monitoring

Within Amazon’s Seller Central, you can monitor your Sponsored Products performance and make adjustments depending on how well you’re doing. You can reduce or increase your bids on the keywords you’re ranking for or choose to stop bidding on keywords that aren’t going well. All this allows you to use your ad budget wisely and fine-tune your campaign.

Keyword Categories

Not everyone searches for products using the exact same keywords. Giving your ads the biggest potential for exposure requires connecting your ads with the different possibilities of search terms. Keywords are categorized in three different groups:

  • Exact: Just as it sounds, this would consist of an exact match of a keyword, such as

    “thank you cards.” In this category, your ads would only appear for searches for this exact match.

  • Phrase: This category would be a step beyond exact match but include the phrase itself in the
    same order as exact match. Many different derivations may exist, but the keywords must appear
    in the right order. Here are some phrase match examples:

    • Thank you cards with envelopes
    • Thank you cards baby shower
    • Thank you cards wedding

  • Broad: This category provides the broadest potential for your ads to appear. Keywords can
    appear out of order and include modifiers. Examples would be

    • Card thank you funny
    • Gift cards thank you
    • Cards thank you religious

By using a combination of all three categories, your ads can appear in front a wide array of consumers and increase your chances of clicks and conversions.

Using Automatic and Manual Campaigns

As you start your campaign, you have a couple of different campaign options when it comes to targeting keywords. You can either take a manual approach and choose which keywords you want your ads to target, or you can allow Amazon to do the targeting for you automatically, based on what it considers the best keywords to be for your product.

 Automatic is the best place to start and will enable you to compete in the auctions that make sense for your product. When using an automatic campaign, you’ll set your budget limits and Amazon handles the rest. After you’ve begun, Amazon will send you a report breaking down your performance, listing your keywords, clicks, and conversions. You can determine how frequently you’d like to receive the reports, which can be generated every 12 hours.

A manual campaign will put all the control in your hands, but you’ll need to do your research before choosing your keywords. It’s best to use a manual approach after you’ve had an automatic campaign under way and now you want to target specific keywords that you’re ranking well for. You’ll also be able to bid for exact, phrase, and broad matches, and you’ll be able to set your bids depending on your budget and performance.

Weeding Out Negative Keywords

As your campaigns grow and certain keywords are performing well, you can start eliminating those keywords that are no longer relevant or aren’t leading to conversions. Amazon’s algorithms will monitor any keywords that you’re bidding for that aren’t generating clicks, and your organic rankings will consequently suffer. Removing those poorly performing keywords will help your spending be as efficient as possible and help you focus on the keywords you can compete well for.

 Also, when it comes to those keywords you’re converting well for, you can devote an entire campaign to that specific keyword. In order to do so, you’ll need to remove that keyword from an existing campaign by making it a negative one. You’ll then create a manual campaign devoted to that keyword.

Putting Your PPC Campaign in Action

Now that you have an understanding of what PPC can help you achieve, you’re likely already thinking about how you can put it to use in your Amazon selling endeavors. In addition to being something any seller should put into practice, PPC can have distinct advantages when launching a new product or for getting seasonable products some attention during specific times of year. Taking advantage of the advertising channels that Amazon provides is crucial for giving your products some valuable exposure and a reliable means of increasing your chances for sales.

 As you get started learning your way around Amazon PPC advertising and get some hands-on experience, the team here at Viral Launch can answer questions and provide help when needed. Our Amazon PPC expertise and insights have been built on years of launching thousands of products. We’ve helped new brands establish themselves in the Amazon marketplace by using our sales and rank strategies to lay the groundwork for long-term success.

Are you interested in putting some of this strategy to work for you? Start your free trial of Kinetic, or learn more about how Kinetic, our Amazon PPC tool,  helps sellers automate, manage, and understand their Amazon PPC.

Importance of Accurate Amazon Sales Estimate Data

When starting your FBA business, Amazon sales estimate data is among the most important elements of your Amazon research. This type of data will inform your decisions at nearly every step of the process. From what products to source to how much inventory you’ll need and when to reorder, sales estimates will help keep you on the path to success.

As with most things in life, there’s no surefire way to assure you’ll be successful selling on Amazon. But with hard work, dedication and proper research, you can increase your likelihood of success. And luckily for sellers, there are a lot of options and tools out there that provide sales estimates, including the Viral Launch Amazon sales estimator Market Intelligence.

In this guide, we’ll go over Amazon sales estimate data and why it is so important for the future of your online business.

Why Sales Estimates are So Important

Sales estimates are one piece of the puzzle when it comes to maximizing your potential for success on Amazon. But what makes sales estimates so important?

Amazon does not disclose the number of sales that products on the platform are making each day or each month. And without knowing which products are selling well, it’s almost impossible for an Amazon seller to feel confident choosing a profitable product. But with sales estimates, sellers can eliminate the guesswork and ensure the highest probability of success.

With accurate sales numbers, sellers no longer have to randomly pick a product and hope for the sales to roll in. Instead, sellers can understand how the top products in a market are performing. With an idea of how many daily sales to project for their own products, sellers have invaluable insight into crucial questions, such as:

  • How much money do I need to invest in this product?
  • How many units of inventory do I need to order from my manufacturer?
  • How many products will I sell each month?
  • How much money will I make on this product?

Answering these questions and aligning them with your goals is the first step in your journey to success on Amazon.

Amazon sales estimate data is the cornerstone to choosing a great product to sell on Amazon. Here at Viral Launch, we understand your need for the most accurate data possible. We know that your business depends on it.

That’s why our team has invested loads of time, money, and energy into crafting a comprehensive estimation algorithm. We’ve run over 30,000 product launches, and we lead the industry when it comes to interpreting how Amazon’s algorithms work. And because of this, we are confident in our ability to provide you with the most dependable data in the industry.

When you access these sales estimates, you can be confident in your product selection and in your competitive research.

Sales estimates can also help you predict when you’ll need to order inventory, so you can always stay one step ahead.

It can also be useful when determining potential profit for a product. Couple sales estimates with your Amazon FBA fees by using an FBA Calculator and you’ll be able to get a better idea of how much money in total a product will potentially bring in.

Want to see Market Intelligence in action? Check out this tutorial:

How We Calculate Our Sales Estimates at Viral Launch

In order to produce the most accurate sales estimates as possible, we must be as thorough as possible in our estimation algorithms.

Our sales estimates, powered by Market Intelligence, are based upon historical data, which is a crucial component to the level of desired accuracy. By utilizing the billions of data points at our disposal, we’ve formulated a precise method of estimating sales. In our journey of crafting the most accurate sales estimation algorithm, we brainstormed all possible indicators of sales on Amazon’s platform.

After much testing and trial-and-error, Viral Launch landed on estimating sales based on BSR, or Best Seller Ranking. Each product’s BSR fluctuates on an hourly basis. While many sales estimators on the market will use current BSR, we know that because BSR changes frequently and sometimes drastically, this does not provide an accurate representation of sales.

For example, we watched a product’s Best Seller Rank jump from 98,000 to 38,000 in one hour due to one sale. Then in the next hour it fell back down to 76,000. This drastic fluctuation is happening across the marketplace all the time. So, if you look at a product’s BSR in the morning, it may be very different than the same product’s BSR in the afternoon or evening. Looking at the current BSR to estimate the number of sales over the last month is like trying to predict the plot of a movie based on a single still frame. Without context, it is extremely difficult to guess correctly.

In order to build an accurate sales estimation algorithm, we built our system to take into account the vast fluctuations in BSR that occur all month. Rather than simply taking the current BSR into account, Viral Launch uses historical data through complex algorithms to produce comprehensive numbers. These sales estimates give a much more holistic view into a product’s sales than a dangerous snapshot of data does.

We update our BSR-to-sales mapping algorithm each night to further ensure the highest level of accuracy. This way, our calculation remains consistent with the natural trends of the market, where other sales estimators lack.

To learn more about BSR and how we use it to estimate sales, read this Amazon BSR guide.

Because we are tracking BSR for hundreds of thousands of products on an hourly basis over days, months, and years, our tool is also the only one on the market that can show you trends across an entire market, allowing you to make the most informed decisions. Whether you’re doing inventory planning for Q4 or simply looking at the trajectory of a trending product, Market Intelligence provides a 1,000ft view of the market for maximum insight and better business decisions.

How to Find Amazon Sales Estimates

Now that you know a little bit about why sales estimates are important and how we get the data, let’s go over how to find them. First, head on over to Market Intelligence and perform a search.

For this example in the image below, we’ve searched for a random product: a first aid kit.

As you can see from the image above, after performing your search, you’ll be presented with loads of helpful information.

One of the first columns sellers look at is Monthly Sales. This metric is a product’s estimated units sold over the last 30 days. To gather this, we use a “comprehensive estimate,” estimating sales based on averaged BSR each day.

By scrolling to the right, you’ll find your sales estimates. You will also find “Next 12 Month Sales.” This number denotes the estimated units that are projected to be sold within the next 365 days. To the right of that is “Next 12 Month Revenue,” which is the product’s current price multiplied by the projected future sales.

Keep in mind, you can filter and arrange your columns to present you with only sales and revenue data. Take a look at the image below, you can see everything from Monthly Sales to Next 12M Revenue in an easy to read format.

Market Intelligence also provides market trends, which averages the sales for the top sellers in the market. Analyzing the Amazon market trends for a potential product gives insight into how the product performs throughout the year on average. If you’re looking at one product’s past sales, you can’t attribute peaks and valleys to seasonal trends with certainty.

Perhaps the product went out of stock or the seller drastically raised the price to cause a drop in sales. But by looking at the market trends as a whole, you can understand the market and what you are getting into by sourcing this product.

This historical data can give you an great idea of where a product has been, where it is currently at, and it can give insight into where the product is headed.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully you have a better understanding about what Amazon sales estimate data is and how Market Intelligence calculates them with precision. Amazon sales estimates are just one piece of the puzzle, albeit a pretty important one.

There’s a lot more to learn about becoming an Amazon seller, but one of the biggest tips we can leave you with is to do your research. Whether it’s for product sales, keywords, manufacturing or anything else, you have to make sure you’ve done your homework before jumping in.

Here at Viral Launch we’d love to be your source for all things Amazon — both in tools and information. We encourage you to subscribe to our blog, check out our Youtube channel or listen to our podcast Follow the Data.

Dispelling Myths: Diversification (Follow the Data Ep. 5)

 

Follow the Data Episode 5: Diversification

Selling your product on Amazon alone is a bad business model. Or is it? Join Viral Launch CEO Casey Gauss and Amazon Seller Coach Cameron Yoder as they discuss whether diversifying your business efforts across multiple ecommerce platforms is really worth it.

Follow the Data Show Notes

  • Amazon is the go-to online retailer today, and Prime shipping is a huge incentive for shoppers. According to RetailWire, “The average Prime program participant spends $1,300 per year,” and Prime membership is only increasing, which means the potential for third-party sellers continues to grow.
  • Check out this recap of 2016 Amazon third-party sales. With 2017 shaping up to be an even bigger year, there’s no denying that Amazon offers third-party sellers a sales opportunity like no other online retailer.
  • Another great recap from last year is this infographic by Visual Capitalist, depicting online market share.
  • Take a look at these Viral Launch Case Studies for a few examples of sellers who decided to double down on their Amazon businesses and saw huge results
  • Don’t forget to check out our redesign of Market Intelligence. With a brand new look, a built-in FBA calculator, and the most accurate sales estimates in the galaxy, Market Intelligence has everything you need to streamline your sourcing process. Check it out at viral-launch.com/newMI
  • Want to be on the show? Leave us a voicemail at (317) 721-6590

 

Podcast Transcript

Casey Gauss:                      

Approximately 55% of online shoppers start their product search on Amazon.  As an online retailer you know Amazon is the place to be.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

But is selling strictly on Amazon the most profitable approach?  I’m Cameron Yoder.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

And I’m Casey Gauss, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success.  In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 20,000 product launches and our experience working with 5,500 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to selling on Amazon, and most importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

The first four inaugural episodes of Follow the Data are all part of our Dispelling Myths series in which we explore topics that have garnered a lot of conversation among the Amazon seller community but until recently have not been proven or disproven using factual evidence.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

We’ll talk about why these Amazon theories make sense and what the data is saying about what’s actually happening.

 

Cameron Yoder:

Today we’re talking about diversification.  Now there’s this conversation happening among sellers, whether to focus solely on Amazon or whether to diversify and sell on other platforms.  We’ve heard a lot of people talk about this at conferences.  For example, some sellers are listing their products on eBay or Walmart, Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace or other big names  that others are talking about. But this is the conversation today.  The conversation is whether it’s worth it or not. Casey, you’re passionate about this.  Take it away.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, so I mean it’s pretty much like public knowledge at this point that – or general consensus:  Okay, I need to diversify away from Amazon as soon as possible because Amazon is going to ruin my business.  And I totally get it, right.  So everybody assumes it is like okay, I have a business on Amazon.  I have to diversify right away.  And there’s just a lot of issues with that.  So basically – but I get it, right.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

But why do people think that right away?

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, yeah

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Why is that?

 

Casey Gauss:                      

I mean it totally makes sense.  At the end of the day if you are amazing at Google PPC and/or Facebook ads and this is just a talent that you have, then it completely makes sense.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Sure.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

And I totally get it, right.  So the area of seller that we see this happen the most are the guys that are doing, you know, they hit that million dollar a year mark, or maybe the 1 to like 3, maybe 1 to $5 million a year mark, and then they really, really want to protect what they have.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

You’re saying diversify – like those are a lot of people that you see consider diversifying?

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  So once they get to this mark they’re like wow, I really want to protect what I have, and so what is the biggest threat?  Well, the biggest threat is that I’m on the Amazon platform.  I don’t control the customer, which is a totally valid consideration, right?  Those are definitely – I totally see where you’re coming from.  But there’s a few issues with that.  

 

So what I typically see happen is that those sellers that try to begin diversifying – one, they’re paying all this money for these courses teaching you how to diversify, which generally don’t work.  But the thing is that people forget what got them to that 1 to $5 million a year mark, and what got them to that 1 to $5 million a year mark is launching more products on Amazon and/or really just figuring out that launch process on Amazon.  If you’re doing, you know, $2 million a year, you know how to launch products on Amazon.  And so how do you go to $4 million?  How do you go to $10 million?  Well, you just launch more products through that same exact process you’ve already established.  The answer is not to go and diversify.  Anyways, so –

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Well do you think having – do you think having a presence on these other platforms does contribute to extending your – as other people would say – brand reach?

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, so I think that you should have at the very least a Shopify store.  I think that you should go and have – you should have somebody on your team go and list your products on these other platforms.  I mean just by happenstance, you know, if you are the only vitamin C serum – which isn’t the case – but if you’re the only vitamin C serum on Walmart, yeah, you’re going to get some traffic.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Sure.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Right?  But you – I don’t think that you should be consid — spending a considerable amount of time on these other platforms.  But again, we’ll get into that –

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Sure.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

– in a minute.  So basically at the high level people want to protect what they have.  I totally get it.  There’s a lot of gurus that are pushing for people to diversify.  We’ll get into that in a minute.  But again, you know, if this guru that is, you know, absolutely killing it is telling you that they’re doing this or that you should be doing this, no, you know I totally understand why you think that.  And again, logically it makes sense.  Okay, I’ve had this success on Amazon.  People like my brand or whatever.  Brand is in quotes.  Then like I will be able to go and replicate this in these other platforms.  And the answer is just no.  It just doesn’t happen that way.  So, yeah.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Let’s take a look at – so one main aspect of what other people are saying in this argument for diversifying is that a seller can control the buyer experience more, right?  So in Amazon – you touched on this at the beginning, but when a seller is on Amazon the control of the buyer experience is not – it’s not that much.  You can’t control it as much as you would in your own website, for example.  So people, again, are saying, right – and correct me if I’m wrong – but people are saying that oh, my argument for diversifying is that I can control my buyer experience.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, and I totally get what you’re saying, but my answer to that is, for how many people, right?  Oh yeah, you can go and control the conversation for 100 new customers a day.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Right.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

But I’m going to go sell 5000 units a month on Amazon, right?

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Right.

 

Casey Gauss:

The problem is yeah, you get to control the buyer experience, but for how many people?

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Yeah.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

You know what I mean?  Like sure you can have control of 100 people a month that are coming and visiting your Shopify store or that you’re paying an insane amount of money to get to your Shopify store or wherever.  But I’m going to be on Amazon selling 5000 units a month while you’re selling 100 units a month on Shopify.  We’ve seen, you know, we’ve seen this happen so many times where basically sellers, they’re doing really well on Amazon.  Again, these are the guys doing that 1 to 5 million, sometimes a little bit more, but then they try to diversify.  They try to get into retail, or they try to push heavily into Shopify, and they spend all of their time or a good portion of their time not growing their Amazon business.  And so what happens is yeah, maybe you grow revenue by 5% or something, but what we see happen a lot of times is in the meantime their Amazon business starts to lose traction.  It starts to lose market share. They get out of tune with what’s working.  And they’re just, you know, out of touch.  And so competitors just start to pass them by.

 

So yeah, they started making a little bit extra money on their Shopify store or whatever, but they’ve really started to lose out on their Amazon business.  They are trying to avoid the very situation they end up creating, which is they are trying to protect their sales for the long-term by diversifying, and calculating opportunity costs they lose out on sales in the long term.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Right.  Other arguments that people have, which I think there is kind of one main answer and you already touched on it to all of these, a couple reasons that sellers opt into listing on different platforms, there’s a pretty comprehensive list.  One is a lower barrier to entry.  So again, Walmart is an example.  Walmart has a much lower barrier to entry than Amazon.  There’s less competition. There’s no monthly fees or startup fees, lower listing or product fees, and you own your own storefront, right?  But, but like you said, I feel like all of these arguments can be honestly just like crushed with the fact that all of the traffic is on Amazon.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, okay.  Lower product fees, okay, yeah.  I’ll pay – versus paying let’s say it costs $5 to ship my widget and sell on Amazon.  But it only costs $1 to sell on Walmart.  No, that’s great, but you’re still only selling 100 units.  And so –

 

Cameron Yoder:              

But dude, you don’t have a $35 monthly fee.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Those things just don’t make sense.  So really I mean we’ve worked with over 5500 brands.  I have really good relationships with guys that are doing 100 million a month.  Whoa.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Holy –

 

Casey Gauss:                      

100 million a month would be insane.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

I’d like to meet them.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, me too.  100 million a year, 50 million a year, guys that are doing – plenty of guys that are doing around 20 million a year, and everybody in between, right?  And the thing is is I do not know – I’m not aware of any seller that has successfully taken their success on Amazon and then brought or built a considerable revenue stream outside of Amazon from their private label business.  Like it just absolutely doesn’t make sense.  These guys that have a major $35 million brand, it’s the third-largest brand in their category, in the top-level category: I’m talking cell phones and accessories or beauty or health and household.  Like these guys have the third-largest brand by volume, and their sales on their website, they’re spending – they have a huge team, and they’re spending a good amount of money trying to drive those sales on their website.  And they’re just not seeing the volume.

 

So what – you know I have some friends that they do 50 million a year, and they tried pushing on their website, and they realized it just didn’t work.  And they saw a dip in revenue when this happened like two years ago.  And now they’ve just doubled down on Amazon because they know exactly how to launch products when it comes to Amazon.  So they just doubled down on that.  

 

The opportunity is on Amazon, and if you are spending, you know, a week – let’s just say a day.  You’re spending a day out of your week trying to build these other sales channels.  Well that’s a day a week that you’re not building your Amazon business.  And so for every dollar, you know – these are arbitrary numbers, but it’s something like for every dollar you spend building your Amazon business you get $10 back, let’s just say.  But for every dollar you spend building your Shopify business you’re getting like $1.50 back.  Maybe you’re getting $2.00, but probably not.  You know, net net across your Amazon sales in everything you’re seeing maybe $1.05, or you’re seeing $0.95 out of that dollar spent.

 

And so, you know, I do think that you should diversify.  Like I said at the beginning, you know, if you have the team or you have the skill set – if you have the skill set to drive an insane amount of Facebook ads or whatever, yeah, definitely check out that model.  But you still need to run the math and calculate: Do I make so much more money when I’m spending that same amount of time and that same amount of money pushing my Amazon brand?  Well, then do that.  You know, like – and again –

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Keep on going

 

Casey Gauss:                      

So the other argument for diversifying is everybody’s afraid of getting banned from the Amazon platform, and now their revenue stream dries up.  That’s what these guys that are selling $1 million, $5 million a year, that’s what they’re so afraid of.  And the thing is is we’ve worked with 5500 brands, right, and we know of a lot more, of course, right?  I only know – we only know of one brand that has actually gotten banned from the platform, and these guys were asking for it.  Like these guys had gotten suspended so many times.  They just kept doing, you know, whatever it was that was getting them suspended, and they were pushing the envelope in every direction.  And you know, eventually Amazon said no, we don’t trust you guys to reinstate you because you’re just going to keep doing this stuff.  You guys are banned.  You guys are not able to sell on the Amazon platform.

 

And so at the end of the day, again, thousands and thousands of brands – we’ve definitely seen people get suspended, but they get pushed right back up.  And so I don’t know how legit that fear of getting banned is.  I understand why you’re afraid, of course.  I totally get it.  But at the end of the day, how likely is it to happen?  Well, according to our sample size –

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Not very.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

– one in 5500, which is pretty low. I would like to think that it’s more. And again, the thing is is sure, you can go spend a ton of time trying to diversify.  But in reality will you be successful at it?  You know, I really doubt it.  The data just does not show us in the 5500 brands that we have worked with. That it is likely that you can take your Amazon success and turn it into external success.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

I like to relate, I like to relate this subject to – and Casey, you’ve heard this before – I like to relate this, the idea of diversifying, to the gold rush, right, like the classic American gold rush where once people heard that there was a ton of gold in one place they all rushed to it, right?  I feel like Amazon is that source of gold right now. More and more people are starting to hear about it, and not that – I mean there was a limited amount of gold, right, and not that Amazon is going to run out or go out of business or anything, but the game is changing as time goes on.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

And it’s getting more difficult.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

And it is getting – it is.  It is.  The gold has not run out yet at all.  If you see this huge mine of gold that you know is there, it’s Amazon, then why would you go to another gold mine, like Walmart or Etsy, that you can’t see the gold?  Like sure there’s some benefit there, and there will be benefit in the future. I think, just in terms of taking advantage of the moment, that’s the best thing.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, you know, I think maybe if you have that 1 to $5 million brand and you have a team, then maybe you can hire somebody that’s great at customer acquisition or digital advertising or whatever.  And they can try to build those sales, and you know, they can be compensated accordingly.  And you can have them focus on that, but what you need to be focused on is on what you know how to do really well, and that is selling on Amazon.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Right, right.  And opportunity cost, right?

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yes.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Like it’s going to cost something.  If you choose to focus on another platform, it’s going to cost time

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah, and again, every minute that you’re spent focused outside of Amazon, a competitor is focused on Amazon, and they’re just going to steal that opportunity or that potential from you down the road.  But I think that people are really underestimating the value of the Amazon business right now.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Yeah, I agree.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

I think that time will show us that your brand is actually more valuable than you think.  And again, going back to Cam’s comment of reviews being the currency, like this is the way to go.  Yeah.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

It is.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

So basically to sum everything up, Amazon is huge right now.  It’s still growing.  It’s supposed to be growing an insane amount. They’re just snagging such a big portion of the e-commerce sales.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Remember.  Remember what got you here, right?

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Yeah.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Remember what got you here and triple down on it.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Right.  Yeah.  So yeah, basically at the end of the day we don’t know anybody—doesn’t matter if they’re doing 100 million a year, 50 million a year—it doesn’t matter. We don’t know anybody that has successfully gone and diversified.  Does it mean it’s not possible?  No, it’s definitely possible.  But that’s not what’s happening.  That’s not where you should be focusing.  You need to be focusing on building your Amazon business.  Are we biased in saying that?  Yes.  Is it the truth?  Is that what the data is saying? Yes.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Yes.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Does it make logical sense?  No, not really, but it’s the truth.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

Well hey, that is all for this week.  Thank you so much for joining us on Follow the Data.  For more reliable information about what’s really happening on Amazon subscribe to the podcast and check out the Viral Launch blog at Viral-Launch.com

 

Casey Gauss:                      

And don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you like the podcast.  We really appreciate your feedback.  We love, love honest feedback.  We love to hear what your thoughts are.  And if you enjoyed the podcast and want other people to hear it, please share.  Reviews also help other people to understand how good or terrible of a job we’re doing.

 

Cameron Yoder:              

We’ll link to all of the information and sources that we referenced in this episode in today’s blog post.  Check out the blog and subscribe to our email list to stay up-to-date on all the latest Amazon updates and best practices.

 

Casey Gauss:                      

Want to be featured on the show?  Leave us a voicemail and tell us your thoughts on today’s episode, or ask us any of your Amazon questions.  Our number is 317-721-6590.  Join us next week when we dispel the myth of suspension.  Until then, remember, the data is out there.

Cameron Yoder:

Hey! I wanted to let you know about a webinar that Casey and I hosted last night where we made an exciting announcement. We’ve updated our product research tool, Market Intelligence, with a brand new look, easier navigation, and a built-in FBA calculator. If you missed us last night, you can find our announcement and our walkthrough of the tool on our YouTube channel. The calculator feature is super slick, essentially calculating how much it costs to break into a market showing you upfront costs, month expenses, monthly profit, and total profitability.

 

Market Intelligence offers sellers the most accurate sales estimates in the galaxy and up to 2 years of historic sales data so you can see big market trends like price and overall sales. With the newly integrated FBA calculator, this latest version of Market Intelligence really does have everything that you need to research your next product. Visiti viral-launch.com/newMI to check it out and to start your free trial.

Dispelling Myths: Sales Velocity (Follow the Data Ep. 4)

Follow the Data Episode 4: Sales Velocity

Keep increasing your sales, and Amazon will reward you with a coveted spot on page 1. Sounds like a simple formula, but the facts say there are other factors in play. Join Viral Launch CEO Casey Gauss and Cameron Yoder for episode 2 of “Dispelling Myths” to find out why sales history, not sales velocity, is the key to maintaining high rank on Amazon.

 

Listen on iTunes . See All Episodes

Listen on Stitcher / Listen on Google Play

 

Follow the Data Show Notes

  • We’ve been busting myths since Day 1, and the misunderstanding of BSR is one we’ve been embattled with for some time. Check it out our Amazon BSR Myths blog post from December 2016.
  • If you’re just starting out as an Amazon Seller and feeling lost trying to figure out how sales velocity, sales history, ranking, and promotions all work, check out our 3 Keys to Success seller guide.
  • Here at Viral Launch, we’re just crazy about sales history. Not only is it important to maintaining rank, it is also a great indicator for how a product will perform in the future. Market Intelligence shows up to two years of sales history for a product market so you can make realistic projections about future sales. Sign up for a free Viral Launch account to get a free trial of Market Intelligence.
  • Want to be on the show? Leave us a voicemail at (317) 721-6590

 

Podcast Transcript

Casey Gauss:

Do not focus on BSR. Forget it. Only pay attention to ranking. And then really focus on building a strong sales history. Don’t go in and just give away a product over 5 days just because you want to improve your velocity and you think it’s that is going to help you maintain rank and the drive organic sales from there. Really, you need to focus on building up your average per day sales history.

Casey Gauss:

No one can find your product when it’s buried at the bottom of page 10 search results.  To climb in the rankings and capture more traffic you need sales.

Cameron Yoder:

But are all sales created equal?  I’m Cameron Yoder.

Casey Gauss:

And I’m Casey Gauss, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success.  In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 20,000 product launches and our experience working with over 5500 brands on Amazon to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon, and most importantly, what it takes to have success.

Cameron Yoder:

These first four inaugural episodes of Follow the Data are all part of our Dispelling Myths series in which we explore topics that have garnered a lot of conversation among the Amazon seller community but have not been proven or disproven using factual evidence.

Casey Gauss:

We’ll talk about why these Amazon theories make sense, where they’ve come from and what the data is saying about what is actually happening.

Cameron Yoder:

Casey, can you define – can you define sales velocity for us?

Casey Gauss:

Yeah, yeah.  So sales velocity is the rate at which you are selling.  It’s simple as that.  You know, one thing is, I think it probably just sounds like a cool term so people want to throw it around.

Cameron Yoder:

Velocity.

Casey Gauss:

Which, which, you know, I don’t blame them.

Cameron Yoder:

That’s pretty cool.

Casey Gauss:

Yeah.  Basically sales velocity is this myth that if your sales continue to increase, then Amazon will favor you with good keyword ranking.  You know, as an example, people like to set up promotions where they’re incrementally increasing because it shows that their velocity is increasing, and they think that that is what Amazon likes to see because, you know, to them it looks more organic, and they think that Amazon wants to see things that are more organic.  Also, you know, pretty much on any website or service provider’s website you’ll find the term sales velocity on there, and they are trying to tell you that it’s sales velocity Amazon cares about when it comes to keyword ranking, and it’s just not true.

Cameron Yoder:

If it’s not sales velocity, what is it?

Casey Gauss:

Yeah, it is sales history.  So it sounds –

Cameron Yoder:

Interesting.

Casey Gauss:

Yeah, not as cool of a term, but it’s a lot more accurate in how Amazon looks at your sales and then decides how to rank your products based on, yeah, sales.  One thing that we do kind of want to point out here is, you know, this myth we’ve been trying to kill it forever, and that is just BSR, the myth of BSR.  So essentially what BSR is is BSR is like a report card.  It’s basically an indicator of past sales, much like in a report card where you do some work and then your teacher grades it, and then you get a letter grade post-work, saying how well or how much work you did.  And so the same is true with BSR.  If I sell 100 units it will impact my BSR, but my BSR does not impact my bestseller rank, does not impact my future sales.  So please never try to improve your BSR.  Try to improve your sales, and then yes, of course, your BSR will improve from there, but yeah.

Cameron Yoder:

Hey guys, Cam here. I just want to break and clarify something that is–in a lot of ways–so obvious for us here at Viral Launch that we often forget to say it explicitly, and that is that BSR is not the key to visibility on Amazon. Keyword ranking is. You might have a great BSR but if you aren’t getting sales through a keyword, you aren’t going to gain keyword ranking which is how shoppers will find you in search. Got it? Not BSR, keyword ranking. Okay, now back to the show.

Casey Gauss:

You know, I think the analogy is as simple as this.  So if I’m standing on the Earth’s surface, to me it appears flat, right?  But when I take that 10,000-foot view, or that mile view, or however high you need to be to really start to see the curvature of the earth, you’re really able to get a different perspective.  You’re able to – you get in more data and are able to really start to understand, hey, it’s not actually sales velocity.  It’s actually sales history.  The perspective that we have of the space running hundreds and hundreds of promotions daily, we’re able in tracking keyword ranking for many keywords that are found in the listing or the targeted keywords.  We’re able to really get a great perspective of what is Amazon paying attention to when it comes to sales history or sales in general and driving keyword ranking.

Cameron Yoder:

All right, so we’ve talked a little bit about, again, defining sales velocity and defining sales history, and taking a look at what the myth is saying and what other people are saying.  But let’s jump into the data.  What – Casey, what have we found when it comes to sales history?

Casey Gauss:

Yeah, so both from the data that we’ve been able to aggregate, as well as indirectly from Amazon, we know that Amazon is actually tracking sales in these buckets, right?  So they’re tracking what does the average per day sales look like over the last 24 hours, 48 hours, three days, five days, and then in these seven-day increments, out until, you know I don’t know how long, but I know it’s at least 180 days.  Basically what that shows us is yes, Amazon cares about most recent sales, or they more heavily weight recent sales, which is where people are coming with the sales velocity, right?  So if your velocity is good then your most recent sales history is good.  So maybe the last day, maybe the last five days, who knows?  What the sales velocity kind of algorithm doesn’t take into account is history, which Amazon is definitely heavily weighting.

Cameron Yoder:

Right.

Casey Gauss:

So I can give a couple of examples of some promotions that we’ve run, which then give us insight into the sales history.

Cameron Yoder:

Go for it.

Casey Gauss:

Yeah, so, so many people have run these promotions – and it’s pretty common knowledge, I’d like to think – right now where you can’t just run a one-day promotion.  Back in, you know, 2014 you could do that.  Running a one-day promotion, a big spike in sales would help to improve your keyword ranking, but Amazon is more – more so heavily weighting sales history where if I run a one-day promotion, yes, my velocity is good.  My BSR is going to increase quite significantly.  But when Amazon goes to calculate your seven-day sales history or your 30-day sales history, it just doesn’t match up to those guys that are ranking page 1 and have been for the last six months.  Their sales history is very solid for that particular market.  So what we’ll see is maybe you’ll get a decent blip, but usually with a one-day promotion you won’t even get that nice blip anymore because there is no sales history to back it up.  What we do see if you run a 3 to 5 day promotion is generally you will get ranking because you have your most recent sales history is good.  But then it’s very short-lived because you don’t have enough sales history.  You don’t have, you know, 90-day sales history to help rank among those guys that are selling, or have been selling, again, for six months.  So we see those guys fall right back down.  

And what happens if you run a 7-day promotion and don’t see any sales right off the bat?  We see ranking sustained a bit further simply because yes, the sales velocity may end up being very bad after we’d run a 7-day promotion giving away 50 units per day, and then there is another three days after that where there are no sales at all.  Let’s just say, you know, they have terrible images, they have terrible reviews, they just don’t convert at all.  What we’ll see is that product will maintain rank for at least a little bit depending on the market, sometimes longer, sometimes indefinitely.  It really depends.  But for the majority of the time – and this is where having so much data, so much perspective really helps to reinforce these correlations or these trends, but this person will generally maintain rank for at least a week, or sometimes a lot longer, because they’ve built up that sales history.  So the more sales history they establish, the longer that rank will maintain even though their velocity is really bad because they’re not selling anymore.  Their rank will maintain because their sales history is actually pretty decent.  

A case study kind of on the other side is in terms of maximizing ranking, is we had a seller in a very, very competition-heavy beauty niche, right?  And so they’re giving away 100 units a day at a promotion, promotional price.  They’re also selling organically.  But after – it took them 30 days to get to position number three, or sorry, position number four.  This is a pretty brand-new product, and they’re maintaining this position, but they’re not increasing just by giving away 100 units a day.  Their BSR was better, so you know, assumedly their velocity was much better than the guys ranking ahead of them.  And so anyways, what they had to do was they had to start giving away 125 units a day, and they did that for another 15 days, which put them to position two.  But even still this guy in position one had probably been ranking for at least the last, you know, six months or so.  And so over the last six months, you know, he’s built up a really, really solid sales history.  And so it’s very difficult for this newer product that when Amazon is going and calculating the 90-day sales history, maybe 180-day sales history, you know they just don’t have any sales because it’s a brand-new product.  And so they’re not able to compete.  And so it took this guy 60 days of giving away – 30 days at 100 units a day, another 30 days at 125 units a day on top of now at this point they’re selling really well organically.  It took them that long in order to be able to outrank this guy in first position because the guy in first position had such a strong sales history.

Rebecca Longenecker:

Are you looking to launch a product but feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by how complicated the process seems?  Giving away inventory can be nerve-racking.  That’s why Viral Launch offers free coaching.  Talk to one of our trained Amazon seller coaches and create a custom launch strategy.  Don’t have time to talk with a coach?  Check out our How to Launch course on the Viral Launch YouTube channel.  You can have a coach walk you through the whole process at your convenience and with the option to play back all the information.

Cameron Yoder:

To summarize – and correct me if I’m wrong, Casey – but to summarize, if you have a longer history of sales with and for your product it will carry more ranking weight than sales for a product with a shorter history, right?  So longer history carries more ranking weight than shorter history when it comes to sales?

Casey Gauss:

Agreed.  At the same time, though, that’s not to say that, you know, if I’m giving away 100 units I would definitely put those 100, depending on the market, I would put those 100 units over 10 days or five days, depending on how competitive the market is.  But you know, if you’re giving away 10 units I would probably rather give away those 10 units over three days than 10 days because it’s not really going to – when Amazon is calculating your average per day sales, you know, one unit a day is not really going to be enough to move the lever.

Cameron Yoder:

Right.  You have to have – well you don’t have to, but it is more effective and efficient to have the combination of the right strategy for sales velocity combined with the presence of a sales history.

Casey Gauss:

Yeah, correct.  And you know, another example, or another almost anecdote is basically – so it’s definitely more difficult for us to rank products that have been on page 10, or you know, not selling very well for, you know, a couple years.  So products that were launched maybe in 2014, off to some initial success and now not doing so well, those products are definitely more difficult for us to rank.  And the reason being is they’ve actually built up a really poor sales history.  And so when Amazon is going and calculating the 180-day average, maybe they’re looking out to a year, maybe further.  It is definitely, you know, when Amazon goes and calculates, oh, you know, you’ve sold 1000 units over the last year, the average per day sales history is very, very poor.  

Even if your velocity is killer right now, Amazon is definitely looking at your sales history.  So maybe you’ve sold 1000 units in the last, you know, 10 days, right?  100 units a day.  That’s really awesome.  Of course, depending on your market.  But that’s really great.  But even still, Amazon is still looking at oh, how have you done over the last 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, year?  And so it just doesn’t compute, and what we see is those guys end up losing their keyword ranking much more quickly, simply because, you know, they don’t have the sales history to compete against those on page 1.

Cameron Yoder:

Right.  So launching – we talked a little bit about launching and what it takes to get to the top of page 1 for a pretty volatile or competitive market, right?  How even if you have a history of a lot of sales or a history of not too many sales, it takes a decent amount of units to get to page 1.  But talk about – talk about less volatile or less competitive markets when it comes to sales history.

Casey Gauss:

Yeah, so sales history is all relative to the market that you’re looking to enter, right?  So if you’re entering a really niche market where these guys are selling page 1, you know, top of page 1 on average.  They’re selling 300 units a month, let’s say, so that’s 10 units a day.  So you only need to build a sales history of 10 units a day.  So you don’t need to be nearly as aggressive as the guys that are selling 30,000 units a month.  It requires the same strategy, right?  Like the same metrics are involved.  The same math is involved on Amazon’s algorithm.  So you just have to put the right numbers in.  It may be a giveaway of seven units a day for 10 days at a promotional price to maintain that rank or to build a good enough sales history to maintain that rank.  Of course you need to sell well organically post-launch in order to continue –

Cameron Yoder:

Right, to maintain.

Casey Gauss:

– to build sales history so that you can continue to maintain that rank.

Cameron Yoder:

Like you said, it’s relative to the market at hand.

Casey Gauss:

Completely.

Cameron Yoder:

Completely.  So the big takeaway, what is our – what is our audience’s takeaway, Casey?

Casey Gauss:

Two things.  One, do not focus on BSR.  Forget it.  Only pay attention to ranking.  And then two, really focus on building a strong sales history.  Don’t go in and just give away product over five days just because you want to improve your velocity and you think it’s that velocity that is going to help you maintain rank and then drive organic sales from there.  Really you need to focus on building up your average per day sales history.  And so if you have older products, you know, there’s some great ways of relaunching those products within Amazon’s terms of service.  Please don’t violate Amazon’s terms of service.  We’re never advocates for that.

Cameron Yoder:

Right, right.

Casey Gauss:

But maybe you should find a way to couple it with some additional product that you throw into the packaging or something so that you can relaunch that ASIN, if you’re trying to revive an old ASIN, just because it has, you know, such a bad sales history.  The tough part is, you know, if you have a great review quantity relative to the market then you have to figure that out.  But anyways, please focus on building that sales history, not sales velocity.

Cameron Yoder:

I am an advocate for the mentality, in this case especially, that it is a marathon, and it’s not a sprint.  Gain that sales history.

Well hey, that’s all for this week.  Thank you so much for joining us on Follow the Data.  For more reliable information about what’s really happening on Amazon, subscribe to our podcast and check out the Viral Launch blog at Viral-Launch.com.

Casey Gauss:

And don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes.  Please, please.

Cameron Yoder:

Please.

Casey Gauss:

If you like the podcast, of course.  If you didn’t, please let us know how we can improve it.  

Casey Gauss:

We like honest feedback, so please send us your honest feedback. If you want to be featured on the show leave us a voicemail and tell us your thoughts on today’s episode and/or any questions you have about Amazon Viral Launch or, you know, life in general.  We’ll take them all.

Cameron Yoder:

We’d love to hear your life advice, please.

Casey Gauss:

Our number is 317-721-6590.  Join us next week as we dispel the myth of diversification.

Cameron Yoder:

Ooh.

Casey Gauss:

Until then, remember the data is out there.

 

About the Amazon FBA Seller Podcast:

Viral Launch CEO, Casey Gauss, and Amazon Seller Coach Cameron Yoder bring data-driven insights to the Seller community in their weekly discussions. 

On the show you’ll get the latest Amazon selling strategies and best practices based on the company’s experience launching over 22,000 products and working with over 5,500 brands. Casey and Cam will bring you up to speed on the latest Amazon news, share stories of success and failure, explore the difficulties of entrepreneurship, and discuss the way Amazon is changing retail. 

At the center of the show is the Viral Launch commitment to offering reliable information to today’s entrepreneurs.

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