In this special TACoS Tuesday episode in SSP, we dive deep into the world of Amazon PPC strategies with Melissa Davis, a Fiduciary Account Manager with Profitable Pineapple Ads. She has 8 years of experience in managing Amazon PPC. In this episode, Melissa shares her valuable insights on the main strategies for Prime Day. We also discussed the key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider when stopping a campaign based on your PPC strategy and answered other burning Amazon PPC questions that the community asked live. Melissa provides valuable tips on video ads, highlights what’s working and what’s not. Furthermore, she shares her top things to do when taking over a new account and sheds light on when it’s appropriate to consider DSP and what an acceptable minimum spend on DSP is. We wrap up the episode with Melissa’s advanced Amazon PPC tactics and her expert advice on building a solid Amazon storefront, whether you have one product or multiple. Don’t miss out on this insightful TACoS Tuesday Amazon PPC ask me anything episode!

In episode 474 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Melissa discuss:

01:59 – Melissa’s Background
04:26 – Main Strategies For Prime Day
06:23 – How To Control ACoS In A New Listing
11:05 – What KPIs Do You Use To Stop A Campaign Based On The Underlying PPC Strategy?
12:16 – Using Top Of Search Boost
13:10 – Insights On Video Ads, What’s Working And Not
16:06 – Top Things To Do When Managing A New Account
20:18 – When Should You Consider DSP?
21:58 – What Is An Acceptable Minimum Spend On DSP?
22:40 – Do We Need To Calculate Your Bid Price Or Choose Suggested Price?
23:52 – How To Determine What PPC Costs Are Going To Be
26:36 – Keyword In Exact-Match, Is It Better To Negate It From Phrase Match?
28:01 – Advanced Amazon PPC Tactics
29:54 – How To Build A Solid Amazon Storefront
33:30– Building Your Storefront If You Only Have One Product
37:40 – How To Get In Touch With Melissa Davis

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Transcript

Carrie Miller:

Today on the show, we have Melissa Davis from Profitable Pineapple. She’s a fiduciary account manager for them and has over eight years of Amazon PPC experience. Today we’re gonna be talking about Amazon Prime Day strategies for your PPC Amazon stores and the importance of running ads to them and video ads, and so much more. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

If you’re like me, maybe you were intimidated about learning how to do Amazon PPC, or maybe you think you just don’t have the hours and hours that it takes to download and sort through all of those sponsored ads reports that Amazon produces for you. Adtomic for me allowed me to learn PPC for the first time, and now I’m managing over 150 PPC campaigns across all of my accounts in only two hours a week. Find out how Adtomic can help you level up your PPC game. Visit h10.me/adtomic For more information. That’s h10.me/adtomic.

Carrie Miller:

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. My name is Carrie Miller, and I’m your host today for TACoS Tuesday, which is our monthly podcast where we talk about all things PPC and answer your questions live. So let’s go ahead and get into it. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of TACoS Tuesday. I have a very special guest who we’ve actually never had before, so I’m really excited to have her. Melissa from Profitable Pineapple, she’s the fiduciary account manager. Thanks so much for joining me, Melissa.

Melissa:

Hi, Carrie. It’s really great to meet you. I’m super excited. Yeah,

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I just wanted to kinda get into, you know, your background and, you know, see who you are so that everyone in the audience can get to know you and yeah, so

Melissa:

Definitely. So I started on the Amazon platform about eight or nine years ago as a data assistant. So I started cleaning search term reports before I even knew what a search term report was. I’ve always been really good with spreadsheets and, and admin, things like that, so awesome. I’d started there with a fairly well known Amazon guru and just cleaning data for her and saving her some time and efficiency on that kind of stuff. And then I started asking questions and I started saying, you know, what are these reports and what do you do with them and how does this tie in? And what do you do with all these other things? And she was so great. She kind of took me under her wing, taught me everything that I know to the point that at like we were building courses and teaching.

Melissa:

So some people might recognize me from that. I was very blonde then though, like in 2018-2019. I was very blonde then, so maybe they don’t recognize me. But yeah, I used to run q and as for a pretty well known course that a lot of people have taken and really started just getting into all of the aspects of running an Amazon account from advertising to inventory, to issues with support and all of that. So really have like a, a pretty unique and well-rounded experience and skillset. But advertising has always been kind of my main focus. So I would say definitely expert level advertising, but gosh, if you’ve been on working with Amazon for as long as I have, I think you’ve probably seen just about everything. So in the meantime, you know, covid hit and everything kind of went a little crazy and so I’d, I’d gone off on my own and I was managing some clients just who knew me through the course and through some other things and just recognized me and that I started working with different agencies, doing some consulting, doing some account management really just depended on what their needs were.

Melissa:

And then most recently jumped on with profitable Pineapple. So I know that you guys have had Adam and Travis on before, so working with them and their team, and they are absolutely fantastic. So

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I’m so excited. Yeah, they’re great. We’ve we’ve had Dr. Travis on here before, so yes I know lots of people really like his teachings. He’s been in our elite group too. So I wanna get started though, because today is Prime Day. So I wanted to you know, just see if you had any tips or anything that you wanted to talk about in regards to Prime Day. And if you guys have any questions in the audience about Prime Day let us know what PPC questions you have in regards to, you know, what kind of strategies you should be using, or if you have any questions of something that’s going on right now, go ahead and drop those in the chat.

Melissa:

Yeah, definitely. So first of all, everybody breathe because I know that Prime Day is like very, very exciting and nerve wracking and oh my gosh, it’s this big thing. Take a breath, everybody’s gonna be okay. The day is here and tomorrow will come too. Main strategies for Prime Day are really just manage what you’ve already got going. I really do tell a lot of people, you know, look at the history of your campaigns. Look at how they’ve done in the previous 30 or 60 days. Not necessarily not necessarily when they’ve announced Prime Day, cuz then you start to get into the, the shoppers are clicking, they’re adding to cart, but they’re waiting for Prime Day to purchase cuz they wanna see that, that discount bar pop up when they go into their cart this morning. I know I’m guilty of the same thing.

Melissa:

I do avoid ads though, you know, business ethics and things like that. But I, I looked in my cart this morning to see kind of what was on sale and what was going on with that. So I, I think that’s becoming a lot more popular than it had been previously. So one thing that we did see quite a bit across the board was a lot of clicks, higher ACoS with these weeks coming up to Prime Day because everybody’s just shopping and they’re looking to see, you know, what that deal’s gonna be then. So I like to base performance on like I would say like May 1st to the end of June. So looking at that, is your ACoS okay? Is it a, is a campaign that’s converting or a target that’s converting for you? Generally on Prime Day you know, you’re gonna see the same kind of thing. You’re gonna be able to convert then and get those sales coming through at that point. So that’s how I kind of trust my metrics in the system and trust my decision making in increasing budgets or, you know, increasing bids because that attribution’s so delayed, you’re not seeing exactly what’s coming in and those numbers look really, really scary right off the bat. So really looking at that history that history to see where you should be increasing those budgets and increasing those bids at to see where you’ve already won.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. So do you have like a calculation of how much you should increase the budget or do you think it’s a good idea to do it quite a bit?

Melissa:

Usually the well-performing campaigns, I do about 20 to 30% increase right off the bat. Like, I’ve got it ready to go. I know that I wanna spend more there because they are say 5%, 10%, 15% under the ACoS that I’m comfortable with. I already know that they perform well on their own. And then I just really watch ’em throughout the day. I log in, you know, every hour, every couple hours, what’s still in budget, what’s almost outta budget? Is it one of those really well performing campaigns or is it not? What are the metrics? It’s, it’s so many things. What are the metrics look like today? Is it something that’s never performed before? If it’s something that’s never performed well before, I generally don’t give it more budget than I’ve already had because then you’re gonna just see a higher a cost, you’re gonna see more spend come in on something that you don’t have any, you know history or data that’s gonna come convert. You’re just really testing on a day that has the highest traffic, you know, that Amazon has. And it can be a reward, but it’s a huge risk to try to get there and it’s certainly not guaranteed.

Carrie Miller:

Do you think there’s a certain placement, like do you think video ads do better on Prime Day? Is there a certain kind of strategy with just placement too or do you just go with what you already have?

Melissa:

I usually just go with what I already have except for maybe not necessarily video, but sponsored display. So one of the strategies that we’ve really kind of leaned heavy in for for Prime Day is sponsored display remarketing for views remarketing in the last seven and 14 days because so many people have been shopping lately and they’re viewing, they might be adding to cart, but maybe they didn’t, they just looked at it remarketing to them right now and showing them that you have a deal on it, they’ve already seen it, it’ll get that light bulb in their head to say, oh, I recognize that I was looking at that and now it’s 25% off or 50% off. Awesome. That’s what I wanna do. So for these two days, I, I really lean heavily into that seven and 14 day remarketing. And then the post Prime Day strategy that I’ve been using is to also run that same kind of remarketing, but only down to seven days and then keep a coupon on it.

Melissa:

It can be a little coupon, five, 10%, but show the customer that even if they didn’t purchase on Prime Day, they’re not totally missing out on a deal. So that’s something too that we are I’ve seen it work, but we’re testing it in a few different categories now. But you know, a lot of people are going after those really high ticket items on Prime Day whether they get ’em or not, they might feel like they’ve really missed out the days after, but they’re looking if you can get them on those remarketing cuz they’ve looked and not purchased, that’s usually where I like to go.

Carrie Miller:

That’s really smart to do the remarketing. I, yeah, hopefully everyone was listening to that and I actually noticed just in my own sales, the sales, you know, when we kept the coupon on, they continue to be kind of Prime Day numbers,

Melissa:

The, the next two days. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely see that velocity transfer over the next I would say probably like a week, maybe even 10 days. 10 days seems like a stretch, but through the weekend for sure.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. That’s amazing. Okay. It looks like we’ve got some questions rolling in. Yay. How can we control, this is from Asim. How can we control ACoS in a new listing?

Melissa:

So controlling ACoS in a new listing is going to depend on how much you wanna spend and what those CPCs are gonna do. You really want to decide what your strategy is for that. Do you want to gain organic rank on a couple of keywords and really go really heavy into those? Or are you trying to span that out across a larger number of keywords to really just see where you can get those conversions and testing? So the ACoS is going to heavily rely on what you’re willing to pay for that traffic and whether you have any data on whether it can convert. So I guess if it’s a new listing, you probably don’t have any of that historical data for targets, unless it’s like a variation or something similar to what you’ve already done. But I would definitely say controlling that spend is going to be your best way of controlling your ACoS.

Carrie Miller:

All right. Thank you. Yeah, it says his next comment says when we start PPC and a new listing, the ACoS is much too high. So yeah, I guess it depends on,

Melissa:

Yeah, so what I generally say is, you know, if your a cost is really high, your a and it really does depend on how much you’re spending. So you can, you can have a hundred percent AC oS on a $20 product when you spent $21. The ACoS is a little misleading at that point because you really haven’t spent that much money on it. And if you have, you know, a $2 click or a $3 click, or a $2 $3 CPC, you’re only testing that on, you know, eight to 10 clicks to try to get that conversion. But you really need to look at some more things within your listing. You know, do you have any ratings? Is it possible to add it as a variation to see those ratings to gain more traffic? There’s a lot of different variations or variables within there that that you can kind of play with a little bit. But I would definitely say if you’re trying to control ACoS, definitely control that CPC and what you’re spending.

Carrie Miller:

All right. Thank you for that one. Okay. Yeah. So what KPIs do you use to stop a campaign based on the underlying PPC strategy?

Melissa:

I guess I would have a, just kind of a follow up for that. Is it a ranking campaign? Are you trying to go after organic rank or go after knocking off specific competitors to gain some B S R? There’s a few different things in there. I generally always look at tACoS. I’m, it’s tACoS Tuesday, but I’m big on tACoS. So if I have some campaigns in there that I’m really trying to rank for organically, I’m okay with those being a little bit higher on the ACoS side. Because I’m looking for overall sales and I’m looking for those organic sales to come in. If it’s a really competitive keyword, you’re gonna have to spend the money on it to get up there. And that’s really the only way that you’re gonna start getting those sales if you’re using strictly Amazon advertising.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Okay, so here’s another question. Have you ever run SP and SB campaigns for the same keyword at the same time?

Melissa:

Absolutely. A hundred percent. Yep. So essentially what you’re doing is you’re showing the consumer that you are incredibly relevant or you believe you’re incredibly relevant for this keyword that you are the best product there. So get that headline for that keyword, get those sponsored product spots. You could even do a sponsored brand video and take another spot within that page. Yeah, we’ve for sure done that for, you know, full search page domination.

Carrie Miller:

Awesome. okay. He has another one. Do you increase the bid by x percent in campaigns for TOS visibility?

Melissa:

Are we talking, I’m assuming we’re talking top of search boost or let’s see here for doing top of search boost? Yes. I, I use tap of search boost all the time. If you’re looking to try to get some more visibility, but you’re not comfortable really putting that CPC super high, the top of search boost percentage is a great way to do that.

Carrie Miller:

All right. Okay. And he said, yeah, the TACoS is the truth at the end. Very true. Yeah. The TACoS are very, very important. So I wanna talk a little bit about video campaigns, cuz I think a lot of people I, I get questions about this cuz they’re like, oh, I don’t have enough money to make a video and I don’t, you know, I don’t know how to make a video, but in my experience, very simple videos have done really well. So can you give us some insights on just video ads and what you think works best for video ads?

Melissa:

Yeah, definitely. Amazon has a video builder. If you don’t have any, any experience with it, Amazon has a video builder within campaign manager that they can do that. You can also hire it out. Amazon has their content creators and different things that you, if you wanna spend some money to do a really good one, you can certainly do that. But I really find that it’s the visual that brings everyone in and it needs to be something really quick. So you have to catch their attention right away because what they’re doing is scrolling and you wanna get ’em to stop scrolling so they could scroll right by, you know, if it’s a very, you know, blurred, there’s no words, it’s just like a product that’s like zoomed in and zoomed out. It’s probably not super interesting to what they’re looking for. But that’s why I like to say it kind of ties into the question before, if you’ve got the headline, you’ve got the sponsored product and then they see it again as a video that’s three times.

Melissa:

Now that they’ve seen it within the same search, they’re likely to click on that. So I would definitely say something that really punches out right away within the first couple seconds. You really wanna get their attention to get them looking at that. So that’s gonna be the most important part. I’ve, I’ve worked with quite a few clients that are, you know, they want the ad to tell a story and they want their ad to show them this and this. And I said, you know, the idea that people are watching 45 seconds of an Amazon ad is fairly low. I mean, some of them do, but most of them don’t. You, you really wanna just catch ’em right off the bat and go, oh yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. Have ’em click on it and then get that sale from them.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. Like maybe they put their top selling point right there or exactly

Melissa:

What

Carrie Miller:

Exactly,

Melissa:

Whatever that benefit is that your product offers that you think makes it way better than everybody else. Put it right in their face, put it bold, bright, and ready to go.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. Something I think could be a good place to look for inspiration is if they have it, TikTok is really good. Those viral videos that they have, the people who go viral, they usually have some really good attention getter right at the beginning and it’s the same idea. Just you gotta get something that, and they do a lot of product sales on TikTok. So really something to think about. Maybe add that kind of what is the best thing that my product has offer and what you know, what can I do to really stand out?

Melissa:

Yeah, definitely I feel like all of those all of those start with like, someone like yelling. They all start <laugh> somebody yelling about the issue that your product is gonna solve and then they get into how your product solves it. Yeah. I know I’ve caught myself a few times watching ’em and not even realizing that I’ve watched an ad Yeah. Until I’m like 10 seconds into it and I’m like, oh, they got me. They really did get me on that one. So yeah, they really do. Yeah. It’s something like right off the bat that really kind grabs ’em, shows them what your product can do right away. But I think you definitely see a longer viewability in TikTok than you do on an Amazon ad. People don’t quite scroll the same way on the Amazon ad as they do. But what I do love about the Amazon ad is how much space it takes up before they get to more of your competitors.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, exactly. For sure. Okay, here’s another question for you. Say you were to take over a new account. Okay. And and this new account they’ve not been doing well and they need some help to really boost their sales and their, you know, their TACoS are outta control. What are some strategies, what are the first things that you do to kind of, you know, when you take on a new account to really optimize it and just start improving upon the account?

Melissa:

Yep. So I first take a look at where they’re bleeding money. So what are they trying to spend money on where they’re not converting? What do those targets look like? Are they relevant? Are they not relevant? If they are relevant, why aren’t they converting? Tie that back to the listing. Take a look. Are they, is it in the title? Is it in the bullets? Are they indexing for it? You know, really looking at where those huge issues are right away and then stopping it. So we might need to get back to it later, but let’s make sure that for the time being, let’s run on what we know works. Rather than doing too much testing, I think that a lot of new accounts when they first get started, if they don’t have the knowledge, it is all a test, but you really need to like dial it back just a little bit because you are just throwing things out there, letting Amazon spend your money and not necessarily knowing where you’re gonna convert if you don’t have any historical data.

Melissa:

So I love using long tail keywords that are super relevant. They don’t have as much, they don’t have as high a search volume, but you can get ’em a lot cheaper. Start getting those conversions in and then expand from there to go a little bit broader with those. Get the organic rank going, get those reviews going. That’s where I like to start with maybe like a new listing. But making sure that within a new account that they’re also working on that too. I also like to look at their negatives. Have they added any negatives? Are they spending a bunch of money in auto campaigns that they ne they shouldn’t necessarily be? It’s another point that I would look at. And then I really start to optimize starting with their best seller. So everybody’s got a best seller or a number one product hero product that they have.

Melissa:

Start with that. And then really do really good keyword research, really good competitive analysis, making sure you have all the targets that you should be on and do that profitably. So if you can be a little bit more competitive where you wanna rank, put the spend there If you wanna test out some more stuff cuz they don’t have enough historical data, span it out a little bit. But I’ve had new accounts come to me, you know, with, they’re trying to go after 20, 30, 40 targets and I’ve brought it down to two or three and just said, this is where we’re focusing that money, this is where we know we convert. Let’s get that organic rank up and then let’s start expanding.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. So how quickly do you usually expand those keywords? You know, when you, you’ve narrowed it down? Do you just put them in different campaigns or how do you?

Melissa:

So I like to put them in different campaigns. So I like to, if if a campaign is performing poorly, I’m totally fine shutting it off. If it has really good history though, I really like to try to save it. So if it’s got good history, you know, let’s say you’ve got a manual campaign, it’s got all exact keywords in there and there’s 10 keywords, there’s two in there that perform really, really, really well. Everything else is terrible. They perform at a good a cost, they bring in the most orders. That one I could save, turn everything off, pick the best seller and change that into like a single key phrase campaign. So just using that one for that I would save the history there, move the second one to its own and see how it does by itself. That’s really the best way for you to control the top of search, boost the product page, boost the budget, the CPC to determine how much you should be spending on each of those. So if you’re going for organic rank, that’s where I really like to push that in those single keyword campaigns.

Carrie Miller:

Wow. So you just have literally just one keyword in each campaign.

Melissa:

One keyword in a campaign per product. Cuz that’s really the only way that you can attribute the right sales to it or attribute the in the right metrics and decide if this is going to work for you or not.

Carrie Miller:

And when you expand out, are you doing more single word campaigns? Are you gonna add to those campaigns?

Melissa:

I’ve done both. So it really depends on how the product and how the account has taken to the single key phrase campaign. If it took a little bit to get it going, I’ll probably start another manual campaign with four or five keywords in it that I wanna test, see how those do in there and then start picking them out. One thing that I don’t do though is I’ll shut it off in there, but I never negative it. Like if it’s a good keyword okay. And it can pull from there. If you can get it cheaper in an auto campaign, get it cheaper in an auto campaign, you don’t need to put a negative in there as long as it’s still relevant.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Very good advice. So DSP, I’ve had actually some people ask me, you know, when they should dis you know, move into SDP, they’re not really sure if it’s worth it or how they can really see if it’s working for them. So can you give us some insights on, you know, when you might wanna consider DSP, how you know it’s working and you know, what, what you should?

Melissa:

DSP is a big commitment. So DSP needs, it needs a good amount of spend to work. So I will say that right away. I mean, if you can commit to you know, the thousands of dollars that it takes to get DSP running, I’ve, I’ve personally tried to, in the last couple years, tried to run some DSP campaigns with an agency that we were working with with really low budgets like 500 or a thousand dollars a month. And they don’t work, they just don’t get the traffic. They should, they don’t get the conversions they should. You really need to be in a place where you can test that and you have the commitment for that spend. If you’re confident in your product that you can use that type of placement and use that type I would definitely do it cuz we’ve, we have for sure seen it be super successful where it’s appropriate. But it’s not a, it’s not a beginner’s game. That DSP is something that you know, you really need to get into. And just speaking from previous experience if you’re working with a DSP account manager, don’t be afraid to push back a little bit.

Carrie Miller:

Okay.

Melissa:

Push back a little bit. Tell them where you want your product to be. Tell them what your competitors are. Tell them where you don’t want your product to be or what, who your competitors aren’t. I know that some of the ones that we’ve done previously, we almost did them as like an entire campaign build and a spreadsheet and sent it over and we were like, this is the only place that we want to be. Please don’t spend our money elsewhere. Okay. So that’s, I mean that’s something that we have done before. It takes a little bit of a, an edge and a little push, but it’s certainly doable.

Carrie Miller:

What do you think the minimum spend should be? Just to give people an idea? Cuz I know you said definitely not 500 to a thousand,

Melissa:

Not 500 to a thousand. I’ve heard 10 K is a minimum for most. Okay. I’ve heard that. I’ve seen it work for five, but I would not, I mean, if you’re not willing to spend like two or three K at least and be prepared to not see super awesome results at that, I would wait until you can get to the point where you can do five or 10,000.

Carrie Miller:

We just started some DSP and it seems like it’s working, but our, our budget’s 5k, so Yeah.

Melissa:

Yep. I would say, I would say right around there is a comfortable spot to start. I would be worried about, about anything a little bit less than that. Yeah.

Carrie Miller:

That makes sense. All right. So we have some more questions here. Do you calculate your bid price or just choose something in between the suggested price range mentioned by Amazon?

Melissa:

Depends on how important profitability is for you and where you’re at in your sales journey for your product. If it’s a new product and you really need the, and you really need the traffic to get going, you’re gonna have to use that suggested bid price. If your margins don’t allow for you to be within that suggested bid price, all you’re gonna do is just like slowly bleed money over a long period of time cuz you’re really not getting a lot of traffic. You really wanna push out there and get out there right away to make sure that you take advantage of that honeymoon period that Amazon gives you right off the bat. So I would say at the beginning of the product’s life, you’re definitely gonna wanna be in the higher end of that suggested bid range. After you’ve been established, you have the reviews, you’ve got organic rank, then I start to figure out the bid price based on profitability and what we can do with that. That’s how, I guess that’s where the, the different phases that I usually go with are a very easy way. If you’re not getting impressions, a very easy way to find out why is to look at that suggested bid range. And if you’re under that low piece that, that very low excuse me, the minimum suggested bid range, that’s why you’re not getting impressions am Amazon doesn’t feel like you’re bidding enough.

Carrie Miller:

Here’s something a question like say somebody’s launching a new product and they’re not sure what the PPC cost is gonna be. Do you have a, you know, weight that you’re g you can kind of test that out or see what you should expect and whether or not you’ll be profitable with a product or?

Melissa:

Well, there is. So there is and there isn’t. So this is something that I have tested, but it’s not always true, but it does give you a really good idea of kind of how you can do this. If you’re brand new to Amazon and you’re saying, you know, I I just wanna figure out how much I’m gonna spend for what I’ve always said in the past, if you cap your spend, you’re gonna cap your sales. It’s always what happens if you’re gonna cap your spend, you’re gonna cap your sales. But what you can do is go into campaign builder, put the keywords in that you want to advertise on, add them to a a draft campaign, take a look at what those suggested bid ranges are, take each of those, multiply them by what you think you’re gonna convert on.

Melissa:

So are you gonna convert in 10 clicks, 15 clicks, 20 clicks? And then how much are you gonna give that per day? So looking at how much is gonna cost you per conversion based on the suggested bid range that they’re giving you. I usually just go off the mid range of that. Let’s say if I’m looking at a newish product, it’s probably gonna be like 15 to 18 because it doesn’t have a lot of reviews. It’s gonna need some more clicks to get going with that. Take whatever that is, multiply it by that and then say, okay, do I wanna give this enough to convert if this works, do I wanna give it enough to convert one time two times, three times a day? Cuz if you’re looking at 20 clicks 20 clicks for conversion, it’s a $2 CPC on average for the suggested bid range that’s gonna be $40 just to get you one conversion that that campaign is gonna have to at least have a $40 budget. Do you want more than that per day? That’s probably what it’s gonna take until that conversion rate starts to get better. So that’s kind of the formula that I use just in a, an estimation way cuz that’s gonna tell you what you’re gonna have to spend initially for those to get traffic. Yeah,

Carrie Miller:

That’s, I mean, I think, I think that’s the one thing that people forget to calculate when they’re calculating, when they’re trying to, you know start a new product or starting to sell on Amazon is they completely forget about the pay-per-click part. Agreed. And so I think

Melissa:

That’s a, and I think it’s like a, I think a lot of them come into it with a, oh, I only have to spend 10% of my sales to get there. And I’m like, but if you haven’t started yet, 10% is zero. So you’re gonna have to allot some money to get that going. Unless you have a magic genie of external traffic that’s going to build up your organic and you have an amazing email list and a lot of brand loyalty, you really need that, that Amazon PPC to help you build.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it’s an interesting, interesting thing that but that’s a really good strategy, so thank you for that. Yep. Somebody else, streets of Ontario says, if I have a keyword in exact match, is it better to negate it from phrase match? Why or why not?

Melissa:

I, if it’s a keyword that’s converted, I don’t negate it anywhere. If you’ve pulled it out of somewhere else search term report or something and you’ve put it as exact match, I always leave it because you might get it cheaper in that phrase match campaign. It might pull a little bit cheaper from there than the exact match. And you want the sales regardless of where you’re gonna get them, because the ranking is gonna help you either way. So that’s not something that I do if I am, if I have a keyword that’s an exact match that’s not converting, if it’s relevant but not converting, I might negate that as an exact match in that campaign. But if it has something within there that is not ever going to be relevant, then I would do that. Just that word as a phrase match. So I’m not negating everything else in that phrase that’s relevant for mine.

Carrie Miller:

Very good. All right. If I cannot afford the suggested lowest bid price for a keyword, even though that might be relevant for my product, I have to skip this keyword and need to find I e a cheaper long tail keyword. Yes,

Melissa:

Correct. Yes. So I would do that and then I would start going after competitors that have the same price range as you within $5 ish. And then also go after about $5 ish and a lower star rating than you have. That’s usually how I kind of niche down competitors when I’m going after product targeting.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Very nice. All right, so I wanna get into some advanced tactics. Yeah. So what are some advanced tactics or features within Amazon PPC that that experience sellers can leverage to gain some, you know, competitive advantage? They wanna just take it to the next level. What, what do you recommend there?

Melissa:

I I really do recommend these single key phrase campaigns, these single keyword campaigns that you really wanna dominate on. Give them enough budget, go after them, take it with the top of search if you know you’re converting on them. I mean, really, really go after that, really win that over and then take over multiple spots once you have the historical data. I know that a lot of people there was a, there’s a Twitter thread that went around I think about two years ago or a year ago that I swear 50 people sent it to me and they’re like, you have to see this, this thing is crazy. He shut off all his Amazon ads and I said, well, yeah, and I won’t name who it is, but

Carrie Miller:

Oh, I remember this, this thread. Oh yeah, yeah.

Melissa:

They’re in, they’re in Target and they’re in Walmart and they have their own website and they have all of this brand loyalty following where they already have the organic rank for it. They don’t need their PPC. Yeah. This is not applicable to 99.9% of sellers on Amazon. Yes. Like the fact that they put that out there. And then I had all of these, you know, there mid-age accounts, great products and everything, but I was like, this will not work for you. Everything in your account will die if we shut this off. Yeah. I, I don’t suggest going after things like that. You really need to look at when you’re taking advice or strategy advice from another buyer. Look at the level of their account, look at their category. Like if it’s something similar to that, that’s just crazy. But I really believe, you know, if you wanna take over a keyword and you want that organic rank and you wanna own it sponsored brand headline, really get the the sponsored products top spots there, sponsored brand video at the bottom. They also have the sponsored brand video that’s driving to the storefront now. Have you seen that yet? That’s taking over the headline search.

Carrie Miller:

Oh, I don’t, I don’t know if I’ve seen it. It

Melissa:

Is so sponsored brand video has opened up to storefront traffic, so you can drive to the storefront now rather than the product detail page. These are appearing in place of the headline ads. So they’re actually the first thing that you’re seeing to go to the store, which is super interesting because it’s not showing three products now, it’s just showing the one with the video, but they are going to your store so they can see your whole catalog. I really foresee Amazon starting to expand their store coverage and ads for the stores. I think it’s gonna be really, really big for brands. So another strategic thing you do is really make your storefront unique, authentic, and all about what you’re offering. I think storefronts for the most part are somewhat looked over at the beginning Yeah. Because it’s not a, they really wanna get that product out there and get that product sold. But the storefronts I think are gonna start becoming a lot bigger cuz you can drive so much more traffic to them. You can get those multi-unit purchases, you can get repeat buyers once they really like your stuff. And it’s really a good way to show your consumer that you are an authentic brand, you care about your products and really kind of portray that through your visuals and your creatives there.

Carrie Miller:

Wow. Do you, can you think of like a, a store that you’ve seen on Amazon that you think was really good example? I’m always trying to look for a good examples of of stores. Sometimes I go to the store and it’s like one little picture and maybe one tab and then others, they have this beautiful, you know, these beautiful infographics and videos and I can’t think really like a website.

Melissa:

Yeah. I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but I will tell you that if you just put I, I mean I could, I could come up with some terrible ones, but I could just give you examples of what, of how they build them. Yeah. The product grid, don’t use the product grid. The product grid is terrible unless it is at the bottom of the page. So if you’re, if, if you’re just trying to add variations to the bottom of the page, go ahead and put those down there. But what you really wanna do with your store is on that first page, highlight your hero product, highlight your number one seller, and then really give the creatives and the images like the chance to sell that. It’s like have it be used in real life. Really put the consumer in the situation where they would want or need that and they can see themselves using it. I think that’s the biggest thing, rather than just using the, the product square and it’s this, and here’s the price and that’s it. And you can scroll through the product images, but those really don’t tell you anything. I really think like expanding those lifestyle images, showing the product in use is huge for these.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. and yeah, it’s, it’s interesting because you can actually do the stores yourself and it’s pretty easy to just kind of, they have these little templates that you can literally Yeah. Drag and drop and and do it, do it yourself if you want to start trying things out. And then you can get, you know, some graphic designers from Fiverr and to help you out. But definitely it’s such a great place to really showcase your, your products and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I agree with you. I think that people have been kind of sleeping on that and a lot of brands that I’ll click on their brand name, it’s literally just either their products.

Melissa:

Or they’ve not even built storefront and it just takes you to like the, the search for their brand name

Carrie Miller:

Or it doesn’t even take you to their products. It’ll be all their competitors’ products when you click on their brand name too. Absolutely. So we haven’t done a store. Yeah. It’s not too difficult to, to put together a store, but you know, a lot of people do hire professionals to do it, but I personally did our store myself. Yeah. So it’s definitely doable.

Melissa:

I built many a store.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. And people are always like, oh, how’d you learn? I’m like, I just, you gotta get in there and just do it, you know? Yeah. It’s not,

Melissa:

The best way to do it is look at your competitors and see who you like, or even not your direct competitors, but look for a really good brand name of something that you purchase yourself. Something that you, like, a product that you trust or a brand you really trust. What does their storefront look like? Yeah. You don’t, maybe you don’t necessarily wanna copy obviously their images, but if you wanna look at their templates and the way that they’ve got it built out, and if it looks really eye appealing, it’s super easy to build with an Amazon. I mean, Amazon, yes. For as big as it is, it is very simplistic tech-wise when it comes to building out stuff.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah.

Melissa:

Fueling out one product, build out subpages for different things that you’re using for it. The other piece of this is your virtual bundles. Make sure your virtual bundles are on the appropriate pages for those products, because you can use those in sponsored brands too. As long as they’re in your storefront. They’re not in your storefront, you can’t use ’em. And that’s the only place you can get ads for those virtual bundles right now.

Carrie Miller:

Oh wow. That’s oh, somebody Shivali, she’s a Helium 10 girl that I work with. Awesome. She’s an evangelist as well. So she says, true I’m launching a new brand at the moment and looking forward to conveying brand values through the storefront, hoping it hits home with consumers. Yeah. I do think it is.

Melissa:

So, I think it’s huge and I think showing the consumer that it’s not a that it’s not necessarily Amazon that they’re buying from, because I, that’s really the general assumption of most consumers is that they’re buying from Amazon and they’re buying from, you know, Jeff Bezos and that’s what it is. But it’s a lot of small businesses, so every time, you know, I have friends and family who talk to me about Amazon and you know, they’re like, oh, Amazon did it. I’m like, you bought this from a private seller. Like, I know you don’t realize that, but this is a different company. Amazon didn’t produce this thing, they’re not running this, you are buying from like, an actual small business, whether you realize it or not most of the time. Yeah. So yeah, just trying to like, I’m always trying to like educate people and see if I can get them on board with understanding a little bit more of it.

Melissa:

Same here. But yeah, it’s it’s, it’s a different beast in Amazon and the, the overall assumption is that it is just Amazon. It’s a big store and there’s not a lot of personality to it. So if you can convey those things through your storefront and through your a plus content and all of that, yeah, it’s super helpful because I think it really makes a connection with the consumer where they trust your product and, and they know that they’re getting something of quality or they know that they’re working with people, you know, who care about what they’re doing.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. I think that’s really key. Is it, it conveys quality because when I’m, I shop a lot on Amazon. I buy most stuff off of Amazon, and when the listing doesn’t have that added kind of the a plus content or just nice photos, I don’t really trust that it’s a good supplier because, you know, really if you really care about your products, you’re gonna put effort into putting mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, into your photos, into, you know, what you’re doing on your listing and on your storefront. Yep. So

Melissa:

I usually assume, like if they haven’t put that much effort into it, I generally assume it’s mass produced and it’s probably of low quality that they’re just trying to put it out there to sell a high quality of it just to get them going. I really love, and, and working with Amazon for as long as I have, I shop a little bit differently than most. But I really think that like, you know, if you go to a, if you go to, if you’re shopping or something and you’re going to a small boutique, you’re looking for stuff of quality, you’re looking for something that you’re not gonna have to take back or send back. So I think that that’s kind of rolling over to Amazon a little bit more than it was previously where everybody used to be looking for deals. Don’t get me wrong, it’s Prime Day. Everybody’s still looking for deals, you know, you have to price competitively. But I think that you can really, you can really showcase your authenticity and the quality of your product in the different avenues and channels that Amazon is providing to you, which I think is awesome. So yeah, ABC content storefront, your video ads, they’re really giving you more opportunities to show a customer who you are.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. Well, and on this storefront, that’s where people can follow you too. For Amazon posts. So you can even, you know, reach them even more. So, that’s pretty much the end of our show, so I just wanted to say thank you again for coming on. If somebody wants to get in contact with you because they really liked what you know, you’ve been saying on here. How can somebody contact you after this?

Melissa:

So you can contact me melissa@profitablepineapple.com, so that’s my email address. It’s the best way to get ahold of me. I work with, I’ve been working with Profitable Pineapple Team for a few months and I’ve known quite a few of the members now for years. So if you wanna get ahold of me, that’s probably the best way. If you have any follow up questions, I’m always happy to offer it. One of my passions with working with Amazon is really helping consumer or helping sellers build their businesses and seeing success with it. Having all of this knowledge is no good to me. I don’t have a brand, I’ve only ever helped people build theirs. Oh, okay. So yeah, that’s, that’s really my, my passion for working with Amazon is helping people navigate all of that and learn as much as they can through what I’ve already learned.

Carrie Miller:

Very good. Well, thank you. So your email address and then are you on LinkedIn at all or?

Melissa:

I am on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. I think it’s my, the last part of it’s like melissa.davis515. But it’s Melissa Davis. You can find me on LinkedIn too.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. And thanks again everyone for joining and asking questions and and thanks again. Melissa and another person said he appreciates you too.

Melissa:

It was great to meet you. And thank you everybody else for coming on. I much appreciate the questions. Yeah.

Carrie Miller:

Nice to meet you and we’ll see you later.

Melissa:

Sounds good.

#474 - Post Amazon Prime Day PPC Strategies, Video Ads, & AMA

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