Core Campaign Checklist: BetterAMS Amazon Advertising Checklist – Complete Guide with Tips & More   

For one unique product, there are at least 50 different campaign strategies that can be run. This makes managing Amazon Advertising at scale exponentially more difficult.

We put together an updated list of the foundational strategies we run for every single unique product grouping, along with recommended strategies and quick callouts.

1. Brand Protection Campaigns
2. Ranking / Indexation Campaigns
3. Keyword Research Campaigns
4. Competitor Targeting Campaigns
5. Sponsored Product Auto Campaigns

Core Campaign Checklist

Brand Protection Campaigns

If someone is searching for your brand name, and you are not winning the headline search ad and the top sponsored product placements, the first listings a consumer will see will be your competitors….regardless of your organic rank.

You need to protect these placements.

Strategy

• We create specific brand defense campaigns in Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored displays. The goal is to run our SP and SB ads in tangent with each other and ensure we are winning all placements that include our brand name.
• We like to run Display product targeting ads (or ASIN targeting ads) on our own listings to showcase the rest of our brand to consumers and to protect those placements from competitor ads.
• If you are bidding on more top of the funnel brand name terms, test driving the traffic to a store page or a store spotlight page.
• Target the same keywords with different products in order to win multiple sponsored placements and to showcase your whole line of products (Like Starbucks is doing above)

Quick Callouts

• Do not combine your branded keywords and non-branded keywords in a campaign. Keep these keywords separate to better analyze performance from a high level, and to make budget allocation more precise.
• “If they are already searching for my brand name, won’t they convert on my organic listing?” – Possibly. But I don’t want to take the chance of them converting on a competitor listing if that is the first thing they see when searching for my product.

Branded campaigns are low cost, high conversion…that’s a small price to pay to maintain market share.

Ranking / Indexation Campaigns

PPC plays a role in your organic rank and indexation.

At its core, you want to drive as much traffic as financially possible to all of your high traffic, top keywords.

Strategy

• Have a separate campaign focusing on your high impression, ranking keywords in order to have better control over the bids and budget for those keywords. If you have your strongest keywords mixed in with your long-tail keywords, performance will be skewed and you won’t be able to appropriately distribute your budget to the right keywords.
• Our focus for these campaigns is less on profitability, and more on sales and keyword conversion rates. We are typically willing to break even on these campaigns in order to drive as many orders as possible for our top keywords. Ideally, we make up for the lack of profitability with our other ad strategies.

Quick Callouts

• You will hear many, MANY, different recommendations on the best way to rank through your Amazon Advertising. There is no one size fit’s all solution to ranking. Test and find out what works best for YOUR brand.
• If you have a highly competitive, top-ranking product, you can bid on more competitive keywords, and push for the top of search bid adjustments. OR if your product, or your budget, just can’t compete for those top keywords, look for longer tail keywords that you can really help drive rank at lower CPC’s and spend.

Keyword Research Campaigns

You must invest time in your keyword research. Investing in long-tail keywords allows for lower CPC’s, highly profitable conversions, and the opportunity to win more market share.

This is arguably one of the most valuable strategies in Amazon Advertising and the process is ongoing.

Strategy

• Utilize your Search Term Report, Helium 10, Merchant Words, Brand Analytics, Amazon Related keywords….you have unlimited potential for finding new keywords. You just have to put in the work. Last month alone we had 812 unique search terms drive at least one order all for the same product. Your consumer is creative, check out some of the searches that lead them to your listing!
• Test in ALL match types. And give your keywords enough time to collect data. With the correct bid and enough time, you can make the most relevant keywords profitable.
• Check out the screenshot above. Schmidt’s is able to dominate all top of the search for the long-tail keyword “natural deodorant for men”. If Schmidt’s were to attempt this for the keyword “Men’s deodorant” it would more than likely be MUCH more expensive with suggested bids upwards of $12 for that term. That may be sustainable for Old Spice, but not likely for others.

Quick Callouts

• We test in all match types from the beginning. One part due to data collection, another part due to higher impressions and more search terms.
• Just because a keyword does well in an auto campaign, or in a certain match type, DOES NOT mean it will do well if you move it or try to replicate those results elsewhere. It is almost impossible to directly replicate the variables that lead to a certain keyword’s success from one placement to another. Conversion and competition are ALWAYS changing.

Competitor Targeting Campaigns

Targeting your competitor’s keywords and ASINs is a great way to win market share and increase brand awareness. Like Pepsi is doing above.

Strategy

• Bid on your competitor’s brand name keywords in both Sponsored products and Sponsored brand campaigns.
• Utilize any of the available tools to pull a list of top-ranking ASINs for your major keywords, and then target those ASINs with a Display Product Targeting ad. (Pro Tip – Advertise your coupons through Product Targeting ads to increase CTR and Conversion)
• Play around with category targeting and the refine feature to target competitors in which you have a competitive advantage over.
• Run Sponsored Product competitor ASIN targeting, Sponsored Brand competitor product Targeting, Sponsored Brand competitor keyword targeting, Sponsored Display competitor product targeting, VIS competitor keyword targeting…

Quick Callouts

• Your ads may not receive impressions for your competitor’s brand names early on, but continue to let the ads run in the background and play around with bids and budgets in order to get the keywords to stick.
• If you have the option to run ads under the Advertising Console, run your Display product Targeting ad from that platform in order to gain the ability to write copy.

Auto Campaigns

Auto campaigns have the most ad inventory, typically convert really well, and act as an evergreen keyword research method.

There is really no excuse not to have at least one auto campaign running per unique product grouping.

Strategy

• We typically recommend running at least one auto campaign per unique ASIN.
• If you want to get super incremental in order to have better control over auto campaign performance, you can run four auto campaigns per unique ASIN. One auto campaign per targeting type – Close match, Loose match, Substitute match, Complements match. We often run this strategy in order to improve control over where our auto campaign budget is being distributed to and to make sure we can scale each individual targeting type.

Quick Callouts

• Close match and Loose match will drive search terms in your STR.
• Substitute match and Complements match will drive ASINs in your STR.
• Make sure you optimize your targeting groups closely. Usually one of them performs much better than the others, and you can cut wasted spend by adjusting bids or pausing the hemorrhaging targeting type.
• We do not negate keywords we pull from auto campaigns and put into manual campaigns (Why stop something that is working).
• We will negatively exact a keyword if it has ZERO relevance. For example, if you are advertising an iPhone charger, but showing for Android phones.

Metrics to Keep an Eye On 

When you run different types of campaigns, you must keep an eye on certain metrics to get an idea of what’s working and what isn’t. 

If you don’t have anything to gauge your progress, there’ll be no way to tell whether or not your strategies are working. You’ll have no idea if you have to make adjustments or if you should let things run as is. 

Some key metrics that you should always keep an eye on as a seller on Amazon include: 

Order Defect Rate (ODR) 

Your ODR is essentially a measure of the people that are unhappy with your product or service. 

This includes people who:

• Filed an A-Z guarantee claim
• Make a chargeback
• Leave a negative review on your product (1 or 2 stars) 

Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation Rate 

As a seller on Amazon, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you have the stock necessary to fulfill the orders that you take on. 

If a customer orders a product from you, but you don’t have the stock available to fulfill that order, you’ll have to cancel it. This cancellation is known as a pre-fulfillment cancellation. 

The customer is not at fault, and thus, it reflects negatively upon you as an Amazon seller. 

Late Shipment Rate (LSR) 

The late shipment rate is fairly self-explanatory. It shows how many of your shipments reached your customers late. 

Conversion Rate 

This is very important, especially regarding marketing campaigns for your product. The conversion rate is the percentage of people who bought your product compared to the number of people who saw it online. 

Naturally, the higher your conversion rate is, the more profitable your business will be. Your conversion rate is what you should be striving to keep at an all-time high.

Final Verdict

There is a LOT that can be done with your Amazon Advertising.

And we are only dusting the surface here. We didn’t even cover:

• Sponsored Display – Product Targeting, Interest Targeting, Past Purchase Targeting, Views Targeting.
• Sponsored Brand – VIS, Custom Image Beta, Store Pages, Landing Pages, Product Detail pages and more.

Check out the BetterAMS Youtube channel for more in-depth content and send your questions!

You can also take a look at our blog for more insights on amazon businesses.

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