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selling on Amazon -
the most important briefly explained

We explain all the important questions about Amazon. ICONIC's Amazon FAQs are the ideal companion for sellers, manufacturers, retailers, marketing managers and agencies.
We explain all the important questions about Amazon. ICONIC's Amazon FAQs are the ideal companion for sellers, manufacturers, retailers, marketing managers and agencies.
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Campaign budget

Amazon advertising runs according to the cost-per-click (CPC) principle. Cost-per-click means that costs are only incurred when the user clicks on their own Amazon Ads. The costs can be self-regulated, as these arise from a bidding process. The higher the bid, the more likely it is that the own Amazon Ads will be displayed on a top position of the search results page. Likewise, higher bids mean that the Amazon ads are displayed more frequently.

Yes, there are minimum amounts. Minimums apply to the following ad formats: Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Products, Product Display Ads.

For all three ad formats on Amazon, the minimum daily budget is €1.

For a campaign investment on Amazon, the minimum campaign budget is 100€ with a minimum CPC bid of 0.02€."

The Cost-Per-Click (i.e. the click price) is a variable price that is determined in a bidding process. It is not possible to set an exact click price. However, it is possible to define the maximum amount per click.

For a search query on Amazon that is relevant to your ad, your defined click price range competes with other ads and their click price range. This "auction" decides which ad will be played. The ad that offers the better bid is played. If the bid is successful, the own ad will be played. Up to this point, no costs have been incurred.


What are the CPC costs and when are costs incurred?

Costs are incurred only when an interested party clicks on the ad played. A click incurs costs of 0.01€ above the next highest bid. This amount can be significantly lower than your maximum bid.

The daily budget is then not completely used up, if advertisements were not clicked sufficiently often.

The reasons for this can be too low a bid for the click price, irrelevant keywords with little search volume and low relevance, or targeting that is too specific. As a countermeasure, these triggers should be adjusted by increasing bids on more relevant keywords with more search volume.

Yes, the daily budget can be increased or decreased at any time. Additionally, via the budget rules in an ad, the daily budget can be increased on certain days or automatically with the goal of increasing profitability so that important traffic can be used.
After your budget is used up, the message "Budget used up" appears. Nevertheless, the budget can still be managed by adjusting or increasing it.

The runtime of the campaigns can be set individually. Basically, when creating the campaign, a distinction can be made between a continuous campaign and a user-defined campaign.

A continuous campaign has no end date and is played out constantly.

A custom campaign can be given a specified end date.

No, it is not possible to play ads only at certain times.

However, since the introduction of the DSP advertising platform on Amazon, it has been possible to limit these ads to specific time periods (both days and times).

Sponsored Products & Brands

The ad type "Exact match" or "Exact" for sponsored products means that the search query or search term of the potential customer must match the stored keyword 1:1 for the ad to be played. The ad will not be played if the spelling of the customer's search query is different from the stored spelling. There are rare exceptions only in the case of very similar spelling variants.

Examples: for the keyword "coffee capsules".

Search terms related to match: coffee capsule, coffee capsule, coffee capsules

Search terms without match: coffee capsules cheap, coffee capsule for capsule machines, coffee capsules 50er Set

With the phrase match, the search query of the Amazon user must contain the exact phrase or at least the word group. Unlike the "Exact" ad type, with the "Phrase match" ad type even very similar variants of the word group lead to a match and thus to the ad being played out. This filter option of the search queries is more specific and more pointed than the "largely matching match", whereby as a rule a more relevant placement of the ad can take place.

Examples: for the keyword "coffee capsules".

Search terms that match: "coffee capsules for capsule machines", "coffee capsules barista", "coffee capsules 100 pieces advantage pack".

Search terms without match: "delicious coffee in capsule form", "coffee in capsules", coffee for coffee capsule machines".

The "largely matching" ad type promises that ads can be played out for a particularly large number of search queries. The search term of an Amazon user shows a match if all keywords or similar variants and spellings of the keyword are included. Included are plural spellings, abbreviations, acronyms, word-stem variants, and common abbreviations. The order of the words is irrelevant for the match.

Example: for the keyword "coffee capsules"

Search terms with match: "cheap coffee capsules", "capsule coffee", "coffee for capsule machines"

Search terms without match: Nespresso Pads, Lungo Forte Capsule

Auto-targeting campaigns are campaigns where Amazon chooses keywords and match type automatically. This means that the manual creation of a campaign (including maintenance of keywords and determination of the match type) is not necessary.

When using auto-targeting in Sponsored Products campaigns, the Amazon algorithm independently searches and recognizes product-specific and relevant keywords for the product to be promoted.

This feature is especially useful when you want to increase the probability of additional sales. With the setting "Adjust bids by rankings", the competitiveness of your sponsored products ads can be significantly improved. With this function you can set that the bids for the keywords of your ad are automatically increased by the maximum of a set percentage when it is then played on the first search results page or on a product detail page.

Yes, this is possible with the so-called bulk upload. This way, individual bids on keyword level as well as the campaign bids and/or the daily budget can be adjusted collectively. In addition, bid adjustments can be made directly in the advertising console. Within the campaign, a maximum of 300 bids can be changed at once. Cross-campaign bid adjustments can be made at keyword level via the Alignment tab.

Performance metrics

As soon as a visitor is shown an ad, this counts as an "impression". This means that the number of times the ad is displayed to potential buyers is counted.

If a visitor clicks on your ad, this counts as a "click".

A Detail Page View is counted when a buyer was redirected to the product detail page after clicking on the ad.

There is a possibility that DPVs are higher than the number of clicks. For example, if a user switches within the variants of the product, DPVs are counted on.

The click through rate describes the relationship between the number of clicks and the frequency of impressions. Accordingly, the CTR is an indicator of the relevance and attractiveness of your ad.

The costs are the fees incurred depending on the number of "clicks".

If an Amazon user clicks on the ad and subsequently buys an item of the advertised brand on Amazon, this sale counts as a success of the current campaign and is attributed to it.

The "Orders" metric indicates the total number of purchases made within the campaign. After the click on the ad, the purchase is still considered in the metric after 14 days. If an Amazon user clicks on an ad and buys the clicked product or another product of the same brand, but from a different provider on Amazon, within the following 14 days, the sales achieved are still attributed to the campaign.

Keywords

For an optimal shopping experience of Amazon users, Amazon attaches great importance to displaying the most relevant products and ads to the respective search queries. Relevant ads also maximize sales. Accordingly, selected search terms must always be relevant for PPC campaigns in order to perform successfully.

User search query: "coffee capsules"

Advertised product: coffee machine

Keyword: "coffee capsules"

Amazon will only display the advertised coffee machine for a short time (if at all). After a short time, the algorithm recognizes that the coffee machine has no relevance for the customer search "coffee capsules". Thus, only more relevant articles (e.g. coffee capsules or coffee pods) are broadcast for the keyword "coffee capsules".

It must be ensured that the keywords used in the ads are also included in the product detail pages. For example, no impressions are generated for the keyword "coffee capsules" if the product detail page only contains the keyword "coffee pods".

No, an evaluation of the most popular search terms by category is not possible. The only way to obtain selected information regarding the search volumes of specific keywords is in Seller Central under "Growth" -> "Product Opportunity Explorer". Here, search volumes can be determined via manual keyword entry.

This can have two causes: A too low bid and a too low keyword relevance.

Basically, the keywords must be relevant to the product. If a keyword is not relevant to the advertised product, the ads (sponsored brand and sponsored product ads) are not displayed.

A bid that is too low on certain keywords is often not competitive, as it is simply outbid by competitors bidding on the same keyword. In this case, no impression can be generated due to the lack of playout.

The maximum number of keywords for Sponsored Product Ads or Sponsored Brand Ads is 1,000 keywods. However, it is always important to remember that it is not the quantity but the quality of the keywords that is the decisive lever.

You can view the search volume of your keywords directly on Amazon via Brand Analytics. Another possibility to research the search volume is the Product Opportunity Exlorer in Seller Central. Furthermore, there are various Amazon tools on the market that facilitate keyword research on search volume on Amazon, such as Helium 10.

The keyword density on Amazon should be very high. However, repetitions of keywords can be dispensed with, as these are not weighted more heavily by the Amazon algorithm. Also, according to Amazon, the positioning of the keywords (title, bullet points, general keywords, etc.) does not play a role in terms of relevance or keyword weighting. Nevertheless, it is recommended to anchor the most relevant keywords with the highest search volumes already in the title.


Important keywords can be found via specific Amazon tools as well as on Amazon itself. The auto-suggest function always provides valuable suggestions for current keywords.

When typing a search query into the Amazon search mask, the auto-suggest function is automatically activated. This suggests further, supplementary keywords to the keyword typed in. These usually include those keywords that have a high relevance for the keyword entered.

Also products of competitors and rivals can be a target-oriented source for finding keywords. In any case, a comprehensive competitor analysis proves to be extremely useful for finding new keywords.

In addition to Amazon, it is advisable to continue the keyword research on other channels and away from Amazon. Online stores, social media and various keyword tools promise the greatest success here.

Amazon DSP

Amazon DSP can basically be used by anyone who has access to the advertising platform - this is only the responsibility of selected partners. Amazon DSP can be used even if no products are offered on Amazon.

A minimum booking volume of 30,000 euros per month is now required to commission the Amazon advertising team. Amazon currently charges a fee of 15% plus a "platform fee" of 10%.

To gain access to Amazon Self-Service, the campaigns should focus on programmatic advertising. In addition, cooperation in the managed service over a long period of time is considered a basic criterion for access to Amazon Self-Service. In any other case, it is very unlikely that Amazon will grant access.

Alternatively, some external service providers (such as ICONIC Sales) that have DSP access provide this service.

No, there is no minimum budget for self-service access.

As a partner for your business, we at ICONIC Sales offer our Managed Service starting at 2.000€ / month. However, a minimum of 5.000€ / month has proven to be a target-oriented guideline, as only at this point meaningful data and targeted results can be achieved. In general, however, it always depends on the goals that are being pursued and the size of the product portfolio that is to be advertised.

In contrast to the CPC model, with programmatic advertising costs are incurred not only when a click is made, but per 1,0000 impressions - regardless of the number of clicks.

The campaign duration depends on various factors, such as product type, objective, etc.. Basically, it is important to know that it takes a while to collect data for display campaigns in order to make further optimization decisions based on this data. We recommend a minimum duration of 3 months.

Reviews


As a rough guideline, reviews should be at least in the double-digit range so that they have a significant impact on sales and success. However, there is no ideal value for the number of product reviews. The more positive reviews, the better the effect on sales. The more negative reviews, the worse the effect.

In principle, the number of reviews should always be at least as high as the average number of reviews of competitors to ensure the best competitiveness.

Verified reviews are those reviews that are 100% related to the purchase of the rated product.

Reviews that are not marked as "verified reviews" come from Amazon users to whom the direct purchase of the product via Amazon cannot be attributed. It is unclear whether the reviewed product is actually available to the reviewers.

Additional info: Anyone who has an Amazon account and has purchased at least one product is able to write reviews for all products on Amazon.

Yes, reviews have an effect on the ranking.

Amazon itself does not provide any conclusive information on whether reviews have an influence on the ranking position. However, it is assumed that products with a high number of positive reviews are favored by Amazon. This has the simple reason that very positively reviewed products are usually sold very well and in high numbers, whereby Amazon earns money on the one hand and offers a good buying experience on the other. Since a high sales success definitely has a positive effect on the ranking, reviews therefore have an influence - even if not directly - on the ranking behavior.

Ranking

The Amazon A9 algorithm basically evaluates two essential criteria: Relevance and Performance.

Relevance refers to the keywords used in the listing, which must be relevant to the product. So that your own product jungle does not get lost, the product detail page must be peppered with relevant keywords (= keywords that actually fit the product). This is how the A9 algorithm recognizes the connection between the customer search query and the keywords in the text. In the case of a customer search query, those products appear on the SERPs that contain the searched keyword in the listing.

Performance is largely responsible for the ranking position. Performance includes reviews, number of sales, customer satisfaction, return rate, compliance, merchant response time, and more.

If several products rank for the same keyword, the general performance decides which product is positioned on which ranking position.


No, not directly. In contrast to Google SEO, backlinks (= the links from other websites to your own page) are irrelevant. External links pointing to the Amazon product detail page of a product have no influence for Amazon search engine optimization.

Nevertheless, external links pointing to Amazon can deliver valuable traffic, increasing the chances of sales. The more sales are generated, the more visible the product becomes on Amazon.

No, images do not have a direct impact on organic ranking. But they do indirectly.

Images have an immense influence on the customer experience, clickability and conversion rate. Images, in combination with texts, are the only source of information that decides whether a product is purchased or not. Images (and texts) must therefore be so good that they compensate for or replace the missing haptic component. Successful images therefore bring about higher sales figures, as they encourage the customer to buy. Increased sales result in better ranking positions on Amazon. Thus, product images are - even if not directly - an enormously important component to optimize the ranking.

Selling price

No! The sales price does not play a direct role for the Amazon ranking in terms of search engine optimization. However, since the selling price is important for the buyer and their purchase decision, and increased purchases lead to better product placement, the price is indirectly related to the ranking. As a result, a competitive price is an indirect lever for improved ranking if sales are thus boosted.

Finding the ideal price can be achieved with competitive research. This should include not only Amazon as a marketplace, but also other marketplaces (local and digital). The more competitive the price, the more likely it is that the product will be adequately placed on Amazon.

Tip: Increased and decreased prices require good argumentation. For example, increased prices can be presented argumentatively by the special quality and/or nature of the product.

Clearly, yes! Discount promotions make for a flawless customer experience. Discount promotions are especially useful for product launches to get the first sales. Long-standing products can also be repeatedly discounted to give customers the feeling of a "bargain".

There is no "ideal discount" for Amazon products. As a rough guide, discounts of 10-25% should be planned for.

FBA

Yes, FBA can drive more sales. Sellers who participate in the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program receive the Prime badge for their products and appear more reputable to potential buyers.

Basically, the conversion rate for products that have this badge (so-called Prime items) is higher than for no Prime products. Another important factor that speaks for more sales is that Prime customers spend on average 3-4x more money than customers without Prime access.

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Glossary

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Glossary for sellers and vendors on Amazon

We explain all important Amazon terms, key figures, marketing instruments and tools in the Amazon Marketing Glossary. The ICONIC Glossary is the perfect reference book for manufacturers, retailers, marketing managers and agencies.

to the glossary

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