Every advertiser on Amazon knows the challenge that Identify the right target group (search terms, placements, interests, etc.). However, identifying the target group is only the first step towards a successful campaign with a positive impact. Advertising Sales of Cost (AcoS) and Return on ad spend (ROAS). The second challenge is the correct scaling of the campaigns.
Once we have identified the appropriate search terms and placements that will generate a positive ROAS we naturally want to reach more people in this target group. In many cases, the performance of the campaign then deteriorates so that the ROI is no longer positive. In the following, I will show you how you can scale your campaigns without worsening your performance.
I look at three standard Amazon advertising products: Sponsored Products Ads, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display Ads.
Initial situation before scaling your Amazon PPC campaigns
Let's take the rainfall at the Amazon PPC campaign placement on: You are currently running some manual Sponsored Product campaigns and have also activated automatic campaigns. As a rule, you are guided by the search terms you have researched yourself and the search terms suggested by Amazon.
Differences in the scaling of manual and automatic campaigns
Before we look at ways of scaling Amazon PPC campaigns we have to think about the Differences in scaling from automatic and manual campaigns speak. In a manual campaign, we tell Amazon where and when our ads should be displayed. With an automatic campaign, on the other hand, Amazon decides where and when the ads are displayed. For this reason, scaling the advertising budget in an automatic campaign is possible quickly and without additional research. However, there is often the problem of too broad a display, which leads to comparatively high advertising costs. Due to these suboptimal results when scaling automatic campaigns, I will only talk about the scaling of manual campaigns in the following.
What scaling options are there?
Basically we have three possibilitiesto scale our Amazon campaign:
- Vertical scaling: You increase your daily budget.
- Horizontal scaling: You expand your target group.
- Mixed form: You duplicate the current playout for additional advertising products (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display).
Vertical scaling of advertising campaigns
The first step in the Scaling of advertising campaigns on Amazon should always be the vertical scaling of already successful campaigns. With vertical scaling, we increase the current daily budget of an advertising campaign without booking additional placements and keywords.
However, vertical scaling cannot always be implemented, as the display of advertisements is largely dependent on the current search volume. This also means that if potential customers are no longer actively searching for your products, we can increase the budget with manual scaling. Search term campaign do not generate additional sales.
How do you find out if you can scale a campaign vertically without adding additional placements?
The quickest way to recognize this is that your Daily budget is already used up in advance and Amazon suggests a new daily budget. This information can be ignored for automatic campaigns. For manual campaigns, however, it is a helpful indication that we can generate additional sales by increasing the daily budget.
Two points should be noted here:
- For manual campaigns where you select the alignment type "Product orientation" and select playout via categories without restrictions (price, brands, etc.), the increase in budget can lead to an increase in AcoS or a reduction in ROAS.
- Before you increase the daily budget of a manual campaign, you should take a closer look at the spend and conversions at ad group level and ask yourself the following questions:
- If the budget is distributed roughly evenly over the different ad groups distributed?
- Is it expedient for the ad groups with the currently highest advertising cost share of the campaign to receive additional budget or should the budget be distributed to other ad groups that currently only receive a fraction? It is very likely that the ad groups with the currently highest advertising cost share will also account for the largest share of the additional budget. For this reason, it could be worth considering bundling the ad group with the lowest ad spend in a new campaign and allocating it a separate daily budget.
Horizontal scaling of advertising campaigns
At the Horizontal scaling of Amazon PPC campaigns we are focusing on expanding the targeting options. In addition to adding additional search terms, this also includes expanding the keyword options (Exact, Phrase and Broad) as well as display on product detail pages that have not yet been used (product targeting) and addressing additional interest groups (sponsored display ads).
Below we present two examples of horizontal scaling of Amazon PPC campaigns.
A manual search term campaign with an ad group (match type: Exact)
The following measures are suitable for scaling the campaign set-up:
→ The most obvious step here is to add an additional ad group with the match type Broad.
→ We can also create another ad group or campaign for the advertised products that only contains keywords with a competitor designation.
→ You should also check whether English keywords have already been entered in the campaign.
A manual product targeting campaign with one ad group (category playout)
The following measures are suitable for scaling the campaign set-up:
→ Extension of the playout to Complementary goods (e.g. print cartridges can also be displayed on detailed pages of printers)
→ Extension of the playout to imperfect Substitute goods (e.g. suitcases can also be displayed on detailed pages of travel bags)
→ Expansion of the display into related categories (e.g. pillows can also be displayed on product detail pages for mattresses)
→ Extension of display to competitors without category fit (e.g. Adidas could book all product detail pages of Puma as display)
3. mixed form of scaling advertising campaigns
The final option of the Campaign scaling Within the Amazon advertising system, for the sake of simplicity, I refer to this as a hybrid. In this type of scaling, we use existing advertising campaign insights to duplicate additional ad placements on already proven search terms and product detail pages.
By evaluating the search term report of the Sponsored Product Ads, we can identify relevant search terms and book these into our Sponsored Brand campaign, for example. Although this does not lead to an expansion of the existing target group, it does increase visibility among the relevant customer group.
Example:
As an example we take a Manual keyword campaign (Sponsored Product) with keywords such as the following:
- Children's helmet red
- Bike helmet boy red
- Helmet for children red
We could then book these search terms as keywords in our sponsored brand campaign in order to appear there with a second ad product.
Of course, the addition of advertisements not only on search term campaigns limited. The same option is also available for targeting product detail pages. By identifying relevant product detail pages, we can also include them in our Sponsored Brands campaigns (product targeting) and Sponsored Display ads (category or product targeting) and thus expand our display on relevant product detail pages.
Conclusion: Strategy for Amazon PPC campaign scaling
Scaling Amazon PPC campaigns should always be the last step in the campaign process. I follow the IES schemeIdentification, establishment and finally scaling. So before you start scaling the campaigns, you should first lay the foundations by Identification and establishment possible playout options and have a sufficient amount of data to be able to decide on the scaling steps. Once this has been ensured, the next step should be to start with vertical scaling before moving on to horizontal scaling and the mixed form.
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