Laurie-Ève
SEO expert
GAFAM is the acronym for the five web giants at the moment: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. To stand out with a good web marketing strategy, you are likely to use of one or another of the advertising services of one of these giants: Google Shopping, Bing Ads, Sponsored Stories on Instagram and many more.
Although several thousand transactions are completed every day on Amazon, Quebec small and medium-sized enterprises are often cautious about the idea of getting into e-commerce with Amazon. Even less do they think of using the Amazon Ads service to consolidate their digital marketing efforts! You’re curious to learn about Amazon Ads? Is this an avenue that could grow your e-commerce? Find out more about this web marketing tool!
First, let’s try to better locate Amazon Ads in the web marketing ecosystem: how does this platform compare to a Google Adwords (SEM) strategy or a Facebook or Instagram advertising campaign (SMM)?
SEM (SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING)
Does buying keywords mean anything to you? SEM is essentially that! From an auction system, the top 3-4 results spots on Google are taken by the ads of advertisers who bought the keyword you typed.
The search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) displays as a result a personalized advertisement according to the keyword searched by the user. The cost of an SEM campaign depends on the number of clicks generated from the ads. This advertising channel is accurate and maximizes your presence where there is a demand for a product or service that you offer.
The core principle of SEM is the auction, which necessarily involves competition. A good keyword buying strategy should position you where there is already a demand, not create one.
SMM (SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING)
It doesn’t make us any younger to say this, but many of us have known Youtube, Facebook and other social media platforms before the appearance of advertising content in the news feeds! It’s now common for sponsored content to be posted on our social media. No offense to all those who wanted to boycott Youtube when advertisements appeared on this network, but 15 years later marketing via social media is booming and is not at all neglected by users, on the contrary!
Social media campaigns use general profile information (such as location, age, profession or gender) as well as interests to target an audience that may need the product and service offered. The concept is similar to SEM since there is also an auction system that governs the placement and appearance of advertisements. However, the difference with SEM is in audience targeting. The SEM captures existing requests from users. As for SMM, it is possible to capture existing requests, but the advantage of using this channel is precise targeting based on demographic data or by interests. It is also a better channel to promote new products or services and create demand.
AMAZON ADS
Amazon is a market place, which makes it a fundamental difference in our way of seeing it as an acquisition channel for e-commerce. This is because unlike a search engine or social media, the intent of a person who visits Amazon is to make a purchase, as there is hardly any content designed to entertain or inform.
Unlike SEM or SMM, Amazon ads are not displayed “outside” of the platform. Mainly there are 3 types of ads on this platform, and they will never show up anywhere other than Amazon unlike, a keyword campaign where you are directed to a third party site for example.
HOW TO ADVERTISE ON AMAZON?
As it is not possible to display Amazon ads elsewhere than on this site, an Amazon Seller account is the first step in order to be able to display in this market. Creating an account is quite challenging and requires an initial investment of just under $ 1,000. The process is not too complex, but can be long, depending on the number of products you want to sell on the platform.
Additionally, while Amazon is a platform where one can find just about anything and everything, not all products will bring good business. This is because Amazon does not necessarily recommend using its platform for complex mechanized objects, for very niche products, or products at very low prices (less than $ 5).
3 TYPES OF ADVERTISEMENTS ON AMAZON
- Sponsored Products
Sponsored products ads are visible when a user starts a search for a product. This type of advertising is quite subtle, we can see above the title the mention “Sponsored”. The advantage of this type of advertising is that it ranks first in search results.
To create ads like this, the campaign either targets keywords used by users, or you can target products similar to yours and configure the campaign to appear when users search for an equivalent product.
- Sponsored Diplay
Sponsored display ads are advertisements that appear on a side panel when people search for these types of products. The advantage of Amazon is how quickly the campaign implementation is. Like the example here, there is no need to create custom banners in different formats.
Just select the product to promote, a budget and a type of targeting, that’s it! The background and the button are created automatically by Amazon.
- Sponsored Brand
Sponsored brand ads are presented as a banner above the first search results. Targeting is done according to user interests. The other type of targeting is more interesting, because it offers the possibility of targeting complementary products. For example, if you sell dog leashes, you could set your targeting based on products such as dog food, grooming accessories, pet treats, etc. The sponsored brand is also interesting to increase the visibility of the brand, a new brand on Amazon could use the Sponsored brand to become known more quickly than with a Sponsored product campaign.
So, are you curious to test Amazon for your e-commerce? Submit your project, we are here to help!