CODE
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.

What Makes a Good Amazon PPC Management Service?

Read this article to discover what makes a good amazon PPC management service and optimise your organic traffic, rankings and direct conversions.
By
Mauro Castellana
Last updated:
May 12, 2022

Price-per-click advertising has become ferociously competitive amongst Amazon Sellers — as has the entire landscape. There are now around six million active Sellers on Amazon, and large brands with bottomless pockets continuing to enter the market.

Targeted PPC advertising is vital to reach this vast number of lucrative Amazon customers. However, it has to be admitted that Amazon advertising is notoriously convoluted and hard to manage. Sellers have to be right on top of their PPC game to succeed, and PPC management services are an excellent place to start.

These services give Sellers access to tools, technology, and expertise without incurring upfront costs by hiring in-house staff — saving both time and money. But not all Amazon PPC services are created equal.

Suggested reading: To find out more about the importance of customer analytics to seeing Seller success, check out our eBook — You Don’t Understand Your Amazon Customers and It’s Costing You!

1. Ability to tie your listings to your ad success

Amazon PPC is unique. Unlike other platforms, a well-targeted Amazon PPC strategy can have a dramatic impact on your organic rankings — in addition to optimizing your direct conversions.

However, before turning to PPC to drive organic traffic, a good PPC management service will ensure your existing listings are up to scratch. It should consider: 

  • Quality of content: Your management service should ensure your listings include compelling copy, quality photos, relevant keywords, and backend optimization. Also, they should take into account upgrades like A+ content.
  • Pricing: Ensuring competitive pricing maximizes success. Especially for resellers, Amazon pricing strategies are crucial to winning the Buy Box (and you need to be in contention for the Buy Box even to place PPC bids.)
  • Logistics: Amazon algorithms give priority to products with fast delivery times. If you aren't Prime eligible, you will lose out on visibility over products that are.

Only with these basics covered will PPC be in a position to impact outcomes and get you to the top of a listing page.

2. Expertise and insights into your campaign audits

Auditing your PPC campaigns cannot be underestimated — spending in the wrong place and missing clear opportunities are easy yet damaging mistakes to make. When a PPC campaign is audited, managed, and optimized, it can significantly boost visibility and sales. 

Your PPC management services audit should take the following into account: 

  • PPC campaigns almost always carry 'baggage' from changes in people or strategy.
  • How best to handle large campaigns, which are generally unwieldy and complex.
  • Amazon is in a near-constant change state, and you have to be nimble to take advantage of the many innovations on the Amazon platform, including new data and new targeting options, to name a few.
  • Even if you are up-to-date with all Amazon PPC developments, features will always be in danger of being adopted piecemeal and configured incorrectly. 

Given its importance, your PPC management service must regularly challenge your assumptions on how best to optimize your ad spend and keep you one step ahead of the ever-increasing competition. 

Here are some audit steps and strategies that a good PPC management service would go through:

  • Make sure you have isolated your best search terms 
  • Optimize your search terms.
  • Check your control loops.
  • Analyze your use of ad types
  • Check them against your funnel. Certain ad types (e.g. Sponsored Brands) are better for higher-funnel/awareness strategies but others (e.g. Sponsored Display) help in lower-funnel/decision situations like showing an ad to a potential customer who added to cart but hasn’t purchased.
  • Look to balance your ads.
  • Reassess your bid allocations
  • Ensure you have research and performance campaigns.
  • Check you are spending your budget wisely by identifying over-performing and underperforming products.

3. Better inform your ideal goals

Audits are only meaningful if they relate performance to strategic goals. Basically, are you meeting the business outcomes you are looking to achieve? 

Distinct goals lead to different priorities, which impacts the audit results. For example: 

  • Hitting an ACoS target.
  • Reaching new-to-brand customers.
  • Launching and establishing a new product.

Without your PPC management service helping you define and understand what you're trying to achieve, your PPC strategy can tend towards a one-size-fits-all model that isn’t prioritized with helping you grow. The sign of a good PPC management service is whether they ask right at the beginning of a campaign what your goals are. 

Once they understand how you're measuring success, they should help you create an actual number. For example, if you're ACoS focused, you should be asked to put in a target (better yet, they should help you calculate a breakeven ACoS so they can benchmark to that.)

Keeping your business and PPC goals aligned centers on understanding your data. As Amazon makes more of its vast pool of data available, it is critical that PPC management services use the best analytical audit tools available to help you make sense of that data. 

eBook banner

4. Willing to do the heavy lifting

Sellers on Amazon can quickly become swamped by the sheer volume of data, number of sources and reports on Amazon, and the need to balance short-term and long-term insights. A great PPC management service should help you address this and maximize the value of your Amazon data. 

The less time you spend number-crunching and poring over spreadsheets, the more time you have to turn those insights into tangible commercial outcomes. Running an audit report every month can save hours of sifting through Search Term reports, leaving you to focus on the strategy. 

Analytics tools can stitch together vast volumes of historical and current data horizontally across silos to provide an ideal, overall view of your customers. Advanced data analysis, typically using AI and machine learning, can find insights quickly across many customer journeys and help rationalize PPC campaigns.

5. Commitment to observe and improve

The more frequently you analyze data, the more streamlined your strategies will be in achieving better outcomes. By following an iterative, repeatable approach to PPC, a PPC management service can help spot trends and potential for further growth, seizing opportunities as they emerge. With that said, the service should also have a willingness to test new strategies and implement these tests in a structured way, such as with A/B testing. It’s also worth checking if the agency in question has access to beta products from Amazon.

Essentially, your PPC management service should look beyond reports to a more holistic approach that provides faster, better-informed solutions to enable you to focus on taking action.

6. Dedicated to you

Building a PPC team is a long-term project but one that Amazon Sellers have to consider to see growth and success. However, the hiring and orientation process can drag on long before you actually find the experts your business needs.

Partnering with a PPC management organisation should automatically grant you dedicated support and expertise. It should also prove to be more economical for your budget, and effectively help scale your management service spend as campaigns and goals shift. 

A good PPC management service should provide immediate expertise and help you build complementary in-house resources. This mix-and-match approach should be supported as it is often the perfect solution for your business.

The right analytics tool will optimize your strategies

Nozzle’s tool has the edge in PPC management due to our cutting-edge analytics technology. Our tool stitches together data across traditional silos to provide detailed insights and exceptional outcomes. Using AI and machine learning, our advanced data analysis will find insights across your campaigns that others cannot. We also have a self-serve model to help migrate from a managed service to an in-house operation. 

Adding in dedicated account management is the icing on the cake. You will see results immediately as our in-depth reports reveal wasted ad spend, missed revenue opportunities, and best keyword practices. We are also now offering two exciting pricing packages. Why not check out our Premium vs Essentials offerings to see which is right for you?

CTA banner

Get these insights straight to your mailbox:

Unleash your amazon potential

Dynamic blueprints to help you sell smarter
Explore the guides

More on this topic:

No items found.