New advertiser
success guide
Your step-by-step guide to getting started with Sponsored Products—and help maximize your efforts from the get-go.
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First, before you start advertising:
Check eligibility requirements
To advertise, you must have an active professional seller account, be able to ship to all CA addresses, and have products in one or more of the eligible categories.
Your products must also be eligible for the Buy Box. For additional
information on how to increase your chances of winning the Buy Box, go here.
Define your goals
Before you create your first campaign, it’s important to know what business goals you want to accomplish through advertising. Establishing your goals up front will help you choose which products to advertise, decide how to structure your campaigns, and better analyze performance. Are you trying to…
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Drive sales of a new product?
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Generate Reviews?
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Improve sales of low-performing SKUs or clear inventory?
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Increase brand visibility?
Determine which products you want to advertise
Choose the ones that can help you meet your goals, and make sure they’re winning the Buy Box at the highest rate—ideally 90% or higher. You can find this information under the ‘Reports’ tab in Seller Central. Click on ‘Business Reports,’ and
under the section labeled ‘By ASIN,’ click on ‘Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item’. Here, you can sort by ‘Buy Box Percentage’ to find your best-performing ASINs.
It's best to look for a high Buy Box percentage paired with
a high number of sessions to the product detail page. These are your most frequently-viewed ASINs.
Remember that your product must be in stock and priced competitively in order to win the Buy Box, so take into account
product pricing and availability when deciding to advertise. If your products aren’t winning the Buy Box or are out of stock, your ad will not display.
Audit your retail pages
Check your product detail pages. Do they have ...
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Accurate, descriptive titles?
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High-quality images?
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Relevant and useful product information?
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At least 5 bullet points?
Remember that shoppers who click on your ad will be taken to your product detail page, and a strong product detail page can help convert the click into a sale.
Understand Sponsored Products
Simply put, these ads let you promote individual listings to shoppers as they’re searching and browsing items to buy. Here are the key features to know:
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Sponsored Products are targeted to keywords.
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Ads appear above and within search results and on product detail pages, across desktop and mobile.
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You pay only when your ad is clicked.
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You choose how much you’re willing to spend.
Now, it’s time to get started with Sponsored Products
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go to the advertising tab within Seller Central and select “Create a campaign.”
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and set no end date for your campaign, so shoppers can discover your products any time they search on Amazon. This helps drive demand for your items year-round—which helps you drive more sales year-round. Shoppers are always on, and advertisers should be too.
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Your daily budget should be high enough so your campaigns don't stop showing in the middle of the day. We recommend a minimum of CAD $10.
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and let Amazon match relevant customer search terms to your items. These matches are based on your product detail page information.
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An ad group shares the same set of keywords and bidding so considering grouping similar products together. Choose how much you want to bid and launch your campaign.
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in ‘Advertising Reports’ under the Reports tab to see which search terms are resulting in ad clicks and sales.
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using your high-performing search terms as keywords to target. Manual campaigns allow more control over keyword optimization so you can increase bids on keywords that are performing better and decrease bids on those that are not.
Keywords play an important role in the success of your ad campaigns. The more you select, the more customers you’re likely to reach—and the more clicks you’re likely to get. This can help you increase sales. Aim for at least 30 keywords in each campaign within your first couple weeks of advertising. -
Boost the effectiveness of your campaigns by using all keyword match types. Broad match offers the widest traffic exposure and is often the best to start with. As your campaigns gather results, use phrase and exact match, which are more restrictive in order to help you drive more relevant traffic. Negative match is what you'll use to prevent your ad from showing on search results for keywords that don't contribute to sales.
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to review campaign performance and make adjustments.
Tip: We recommend running 5+ Sponsored Products campaigns within the first few weeks of advertising. The more campaigns you run, the more opportunity you have to learn what helps you drive the most sales.
Need more help?
View additional video resources in Seller University.
Key terms
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Seller
Sellers sell products directly to Amazon customers. If you manage your products in Seller Central, you are a seller.
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Vendor
Vendors sell their items directly to Amazon, who then sells them to customers. If you manage your products in Vendor Central, you are a vendor.
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Buy Box
The Buy Box is the box on a product detail page where customers begin the purchase process by adding items to their shopping carts. A key feature of the Amazon website is that multiple sellers can offer the same product, so you may compete with other merchants to appear in the Buy Box. Amazon uses performance-based criteria to determine your Buy Box eligibility and placement status. For more information, go here.
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Campaign Manager
This control panel within Seller Central enables you to manage your ads, set your advertising spend, and analyze the performance and return on investment for each of your campaigns.
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Campaign
A campaign is a framework for managing your ads so that you can accomplish your desired business goals. The essential elements of a campaign include campaign name, start date, daily budget, and ad groups.
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Ad Group
An ad group is a collection of ads within a campaign that share a group of related keywords. Ad groups allow you to further segment a campaign. A campaign is made up of one or more ad groups.
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Keywords
Keywords are used to target your ads to potential customers. You may select the keywords you’d like to target using manual targeting or let Amazon select the keywords using automatic targeting.