Sometimes the best ideas come unexpectedly. While doing my weekly Amazon PPC optimisation for one of my brands, I stumbled upon some valuable insights that I want to share.
Category Targeting Refined To Brands Has Been Working Well For Me
This is an ad group within a Sponsored Product or ASIN Targeting campaign that has been performing consistently well for me over the past year and continues to do so in 2024.
The best performers in the ad group are surprisingly not any specific ASINs or products that I’ve chosen and targeted, but rather the category targeting refined to specific brands.
These two brands are among the top on Amazon. One is highly focused on Amazon FBA, and the other is the most popular brand globally in my niche.
I’m pleased to see that my products resonate well with their customers. Therefore, when you create Sponsored Product Targeting campaigns, I recommend targeting the top brands on Amazon whose customers are most likely to resonate with your products.
How To Use Category Targeting to Target Specific Brands?
Below are the four simple steps.
- Create a Sponsored Product campaign.
2. Choose Product targeting instead of Keyword targeting.
3. Click in the most relevant Category in the Category targeting suggestions.
You can also add in some other criteria for the products under those brands such as Price range, Review stars rating, and Prime eligibility status. However, I normally don’t use these filter but only choose the Brands for maximum reach.
You can always test with the above criteria to see how it will turn out.
Bid Strategy Tip for Category Targeting
Tip 1: Start with a low bid for Category targeting.
Tip 2: Observe the Impressions data for a few days. If there are very few or no impressions, increase the bid by around 10%. You can adjust the bid by less or more than 10%, depending on the actual amount you’re bidding and the competition level in your niche. Conversely, decrease the bid if ACoS is becoming unmanageable.
Tip 3: Remind yourself of Tip 1. With category targeting, you should always be cautious with bidding and monitor both Clicks and Spend. Category targeting can quickly use up your budget, causing ACoS to skyrocket.
How To Leverage This in Facebook Ads, Google Ads and Other Off-Amazon Channels?
By understanding which brands resonate most with your products, you can use this information to target those brands’ followers on other platforms. For example, you can target fans of their Facebook pages or people who have shown interest in those brands with Facebook ads.
Similarly, you can target similar audiences or people who have shown interest in and visited those brands’ websites through Google Display, YouTube, or Google Search advertising. There are numerous options available for advertising outside of Amazon.
This is invaluable information because generating sales from customers of your targeted brands likely means that other customers with similar traits will also be inclined to buy your product. This presents a great opportunity to significantly grow your sales outside of Amazon.
What Are the Key Factors Impacting ACoS in Amazon PPC?
1. Listing Quality
If you’re spending PPC money to bring people to your listing and it’s not up to scratch, you won’t convert those people to customers. Remember that, in PPC, you pay for every click, so if your product listing isn’t convincing enough to make people buy your product, it’s a waste of your PPC spend. The effectiveness of your product listing is reflected in the listing Conversion Rate.
Your other organic acquisition efforts will also suffer if you don’t have an optimal conversion rate on your listing. That’s why I put everything I know into my book, Zero to Best Seller: How to Build a 7-Figure Amazon Listing from Day 1. In it, I shared everything I’ve applied for creating listings that became #1 New Releases and generated sales even before getting their first reviews.
Also, in the book, I shared my deep dive into the top sellers across not just one, but multiple categories. Check it out, and hopefully, it’ll help you tweak your listings and get a better conversion rate and a better return on your ad spend.
Before I do anything in terms of promotion, I always make sure my product listing is fully optimized—good photos, videos, optimal keywords, user experience, and everything set up properly before I start spending on ads.
2. Product Quality
At the end of the day, if you don’t have a good product, it will be hard to sell regardless of how much you invest in advertising or listing optimisation.
Key Takeaway
- When targeting ASINs or products in a Sponsored Product campaign, I highly recommend trying category targeting, refining it to include specific top competitor brands.
- Consider applying moderate bids for category targeting and increase them if there are not enough impressions. Conversely, decrease the bid if ACoS is becoming unmanageable.
- Utilize this bottom-of-the-funnel sales data to target similar audiences on other platforms, such as Facebook, Google Display, Google Search, YouTube, or even LinkedIn.
- The two most important factors that affect Amazon PPC ACoS performance are listing quality and product quality.
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