How to Maximize Your Amazon Marketing Spend

May 23, 2021

In this guide, find six top strategies for maximizing Amazon marketing spend for FBA sellers.

Are you an FBA seller looking to transform your marketing strategy? Discover some top tactics for maximizing your Amazon advertising spend here in this guide.

When entering the world of selling on Amazon, there are dozens of marketing and advertising strategies that you can implement to get your product listings to stand out from your competition and help your brand shine.

But will the time and money spent on Amazon ads be worth it? The data points to yes. According to one of the latest reports released in early 2022, the e-commerce giant generated approximately $31 billion from ad sales in 2021. Along with Google and Meta, Amazon as a company accounted for more than 74% of global digital ad spend last year.

With more sales generated from advertising on Amazon every year, it is worth looking into a solid marketing strategy that will give your business the boost it deserves.

Amazon Advertising Strategy: How Much Should I Spend?

While it can be hard for FBA sellers to not get lost in the shuffle of campaign implementation, optimization, and so many other aspects of a successful marketing strategy, we at Mayan want to help you make the most of your hard-earned money used for ad spend and reach your Amazon advertising goals for 2022.

That being said, there are plenty of ways to maximize your ad spend and get the most bang for your marketing buck. To give you an idea on where to start, there’s a few solid winning advertising strategies to consider:

  • Place your bets: Find out the best product listings that are worth your ad spend through the product profitability strategy.
  • Lean on long-tail keywords: Optimize your Amazon PPC advertising campaigns the right way.
  • It's all about TACoS: The TACoS (also known as Total Advertising Cost of Sale) method is the best tool Amazon sellers can use for their ad spending strategy.
  • Mix it up: Use different types of Amazon ads (Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Products) to boost sales and promote your brand.
  • Use negative keywords in your optimization process to help eliminate any access ad spending on your end.
  • Take advantage of Amazon’s Sponsored Brand ads: This advertising tool is one of the best features you can use to start building your brand recognition in the e-commerce space.

6 Best Amazon Advertising Practices To Set You Up For Success

Ready to see a boost in your product sales? These marketing tools will help you to get the best return on your Amazon ad spend.

#1 - Find the best products that are worth your Amazon ad spend using the product profitability strategy

When investing money in marketing your products, you want to limit risk. This is why you should make the profits-per-product method the cornerstone of your Amazon advertising strategy. What exactly is the profits-per-product method? Let’s break it down.

Conducting a product-level profitability analysis before starting any PPC ad campaign will help you gauge which products in your Amazon store to put ad money on in the first place. You’ll see which products are the best performing for your business and lead to the highest profit margins. If you want to have a successful ad campaign, your strategy should be to invest your ad spend in the top performing products.

Go into your Amazon Seller Central and check in the Reports section. Then scroll down to the Business Reports page to get the detailed performance of your ASINs. This is a great way to start if you want to know how well your products are selling on Amazon, and which products you’ll want to invest in with some marketing and advertising.

Here's an example of a business report on Amazon, which you can use to see the detailed performance of your ASINs and therefore understand how well your products are selling.

Metrics on Amazon Seller Central can at times be difficult to understand and access. So, here's a shameless plug for Mayan's easy-to-use dashboards, which have the ability to show a time series for gross sales and units sold by child ASIN or parent ASIN. This is a piece of data which requires additional work to pull from Amazon as you usually need to pull this for each month and then aggregate.

#2 - Lean on long-tail keywords to rise above the competition

In our previous blog posts, we never fail to mention the importance of using keywords for your marketing strategy. Whether you’re a veteran FBA seller or new to Amazon, finding the right keywords for your Amazon store should always be top of mind. Customer searches are constantly evolving and so should your keyword strategy. 

And especially when it comes to an Amazon ad campaign, it’s important to focus on long-tail keywords if you want to rise above your competition. Millions of sellers are investing in Amazon ads every year, so finding your niche in that giant space has never been more important.

This is why a long-tail keyword strategy is especially helpful when selling in a competitive niche. For starters, the cost-per-click aka CPC ($$) is generally lower as there’s less competition than when you’re bidding on short and/or generic keywords. You may not see as many impressions, but your ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) will be much better.

When looking at this selling strategy long-term, the improved conversion rate and product sales will naturally improve your product’s organic ranking. When your organic ranking improves, this will give you an advantage when bidding on more competitive campaign keywords.

So, how do you build a long-tail strategy? We recommend utilizing a careful automatic campaign to understand what customers are searching for. A long-tail keyword is a search topic between 3-5 words (it can be more in some cases), so this is a way to showcase your product in more detail. Keyword research tools like KWfinder.com are a great place to start if you want to find the right long-tail keywords that go with your product listings. 

#3 - It’s all about TACoS

If the product-level profitability strategy is the cornerstone of a winning Amazon advertising plan, then the secret sauce should be TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales). Many blogs about FBA selling on Amazon call TACoS a “key metric” in a seller’s advertising strategy.

To be brief, Amazon TACoS is the calculation between how much you spend on advertising and your gross product sales. All of your revenue ($) is measured with TACoS - which includes the money your business makes from your Amazon PPC ads.

One major benefit of using TACoS is that this method will allow you to get the most specific measurement of your profit margins. This will help you stay on top of the success rate of your ad spend by knowing which products benefit the most from an increase in advertising as well as your overall profitability from your Amazon marketing campaigns.

#4 - Mix up your marketing strategy with different types of Amazon PPC ads

Practicing flexibility is a good rule of thumb in life, and it also applies to a solid advertising plan. Because there are a few types of Amazon PPC ads to choose from, it’s worth learning more about the specifics of each one and trying them out to see what works best for your business. 

You can take things one step further by adapting your marketing strategy with your ad spending goals every month or so. If you’re struggling with your monthly budget, then don’t be afraid to use the product-level profitability strategy to focus on your top performing products and lower your ad spending. 

For instance, Sponsored Brands is what sellers want to use to boost brand awareness. Sponsored Products, on the other hand, is the easiest way to directly increase sales and visibility of any new products in your Amazon store. Using a blend of the ad types available to you is one of the best ways to reach your advertising goals.

#5 - Leverage negative keywords to eliminate any access ad spend

It’s no surprise that keywords are one of the most effective marketing tools for Amazon FBA sellers. But, have you ever heard of negative keywords? They are another essential tool to keep in mind when creating your Amazon ads. 

When you stop driving traffic to your products on keywords that don’t convert, you will have more ad money to spend on top converting keywords. Typically, negative keywords are too general and too short. Customers ready to make a purchase are going to be searching for something much more specific, which means that they will be more likely to type in a long-tail keyword in the Amazon search bar.  

After making a list of these keywords/search terms, you’ll want to add these terms to your negative keywords category when prepping for your next ad campaign.

#6 - Take advantage of Amazon’s Sponsored Brands ads

Our last Amazon advertising tip for you is to make sure that you take advantage of Sponsored Brand ads. This marketing feature on the platform has proven to be a successful and strategic tool for Amazon Sellers over the years. 

These powerful ads have gained popularity due to their placement at the top of the store page. Appearing above the search results can give your business a lot of benefits, such as generating brand awareness and easily promoting new product listings in your Amazon store.

This type of Amazon ad works best when it comes to top-of-the-funnel advertising. Sellers can build brand recognition by incorporating a custom logo, headline, and ASINs when creating and launching the ad. You can also leverage Sponsored Brand ads to drive customers to your online storefront and products page. It’s a perfect blend of establishing your brand name while simultaneously boosting your product sales. 

One more thing….Always make sure to optimize your product listings before starting a new ad campaign. Taking some time to tweak each of your product listings will really benefit your PPC ad campaign once it’s approved by Amazon.

When it comes to your advertising spend, sometimes a little help goes a long way

Ready for your next successful Amazon advertising campaign? Try these strategies out and let us know what works for you.

If you’re interested in seeing what Mayan can do for your Amazon FBA business, sign up today. We’re excited to show you our platform and run an audit to show you the opportunities our platform can provide. Once we’re aligned on your goals, we can get started bringing your business to the next level. Ready to see how Mayan can help?
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