According to Push-pull’s report, approximately 90% of the UK population uses Amazon to buy products. Wouldn’t it be a shame if you don’t leverage this percentage for your online business? We’re talking about widespread brand awareness, overflowing pound notes, and increasing profits. Just imagine that.
But you need to know how to advertise on Amazon UK for that. And this is exactly what we’ll discuss in this article. In a clear and defined way. Let’s start.
TL;DR – How to Advertise on Amazon UK
In this article, we’ll discuss the 7-step process for advertising on Amazon UK. The steps are shown below, and their details are discussed in the rest of the article.
- Step 1: Set up an Amazon seller account
- Step 2: Create your first advertising campaign
- Step 3: Select which products to advertise
- Step 4: Execute keyword research and targeting
- Step 5: Place your bids
- Step 6: Launch your campaign
- Step 7: Monitor and update your campaign
This may seem like a lot, so quit the guesswork and partner with IG PPC to maximise the effectiveness of your Amazon advertising – get a free audit with us today.
What is Amazon PPC Advertising?
Amazon PPC advertising is a model where advertisers (or businesses) pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way to buy visits to your product page, rather than earning them organically.
PPC for Amazon involves setting a budget, choosing a set of keywords, and creating targeted ad campaigns to reach your desired customers. Primarily, there are 3 types of ads you can use for your PPC campaigns:
- Sponsored Products: These ads appear within shopping results and on product detail pages.
- Sponsored Brands: These Amazon ads feature your brand logo, headline, and up to three of your products. They appear at the top of the search results.
- Sponsored Display: These ads appear at various places where your customers spend their time. Prominent positions include the home page, product detail pages, customer reviews, and even Amazon marketing emails.
Effective Amazon PPC optimisation would leverage all these ads by dedicating a fixed portion of their ad spend to each.
Is Amazon PPC Worth It?
The short and clear answer is yes. An optimised Amazon PPC ad campaign will increase your sales by introducing your products in visible spots while sprucing up its organic ranking as well. Not only that, you also achieve a high Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) because the PPC ads enable your products to appear in unique placements, which are inaccessible with organic strategies.
Yes, the rising PPC costs and the complexity of the Amazon Marketplace might make you doubtful of this investment. Still, if you can get yourself an experienced and result-oriented team of individuals who can implement effective bid strategies, things will almost always be in your favour. Book a free audit with us.
How to Use the Amazon Advertising Platform
Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) is Amazon’s demand-side platform that enables sellers and Amazon aggregators to advertise outside Amazon. Unlike Amazon’s marketing service (AMS), which aims to advertise on Amazon, AAP targets people on other sites based on their behaviour on your Amazon listing.
For example, a shopper looked at your mascara’s listing on Amazon but didn’t purchase it. The next day, she visited a beauty blog to read about new outfit trends and saw your ad there. She clicks on that ad and lands on your Amazon listing – that’s how you use AAP to drive more sales and brand recognition.
How to Advertise on Amazon UK
Let’s now touch base on how to sell on Amazon UK. It’s not much different than advertising in any other country—just the target market and the nature of products will vary. For example, tomato sauce was the top canned food sold in the U.S. in 2018. In comparison, baked beans were the most consumed in the UK.
Okay, now to the steps.
1. Set up an Amazon Seller Account
Register for an Amazon Seller Central account by providing your credentials. You must decide between an individual plan, where you’ll be charged per sale (75p), and a professional plan, where you’ll be charged a monthly fee (£25).
2. Create Your First Advertising Campaign
You’re finally about to click on an option that will pave the path for incoming pound notes worldwide. Okay, let’s cut to the chase.
Based on your advertising goals, you must choose between Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, or Sponsored Display Ads. We’ve mentioned where each of these ads is shown in the marketplace. After this selection, populate the following fields:
- Campaign name: Decide on a recognisable name.
- Daily budget: The daily limit on how much you spend each day on your ad campaigns.
- Start and end date: This defines the duration of your campaign.
3. Select Which Products to Advertise
If you’re a small store with 4-5 SKUs only, it’s better to select all of them. If you have a large catalogue, select them based on their price, rating, and seasonal trend. The official Amazon UK webpage explains this in more detail.
4. Execute Keyword Research and Targeting
Keyword research is as important to an Amazon PPC campaign as a heart is to the body. That’s why you should be smart and insightful in this process. Identify relevant keywords that have low competition but forecast good conversions. A good tip is balancing the broad, exact, and phrase match terms. You can target them in 2 ways:
- Manual targeting: This allows you to have complete control over which keywords or products your ads will appear for.
- Automatic targeting: You leverage Amazon’s intelligent algorithms to determine where your ads should appear.
5. Place Your Bids
This involves choosing the bid strategy between dynamic bids (up/down), fixed bids, or bid+. A fixed bid means Amazon won’t touch it, while a dynamic bid means it will change your bids in real-time if they’re likely to convert.
6. Launch Your Campaign
You’re all set to hit that ‘Launch campaign’ button now. But launching a campaign is one thing. Monitoring and improving Amazon ads is another. The latter will define your success in Amazon’s cutthroat and competitive world.
7. Monitor and Update Your Campaign
Regularly check metrics like clicks, Advertising cost of sales (ACoS), and Cost per click (CPC). Increase the bids for high-performing keywords and reduce them for underperforming ones.
IG PPC can assist you in designing effective ad campaigns for Amazon UK that increase sales. Book your free audit today.
Amazon Advertising Best Practices in the UK
Planning on how to advertise on Amazon UK the right way? Here are 5 best practices to follow:
1. Maximise Visibility by Skipping End Dates
Skip adding the end date to your Amazon ad campaigns. This helps the customers discover your products any time they search on Amazon. Remember that you’ll never spend more on an ad campaign than its daily budget, so no problems there.
2. Monitor and Target Winning Keywords Regularly
Perform regular monitoring. After every 2 weeks, check your search terms reports to find the keywords resulting in clicks and sales. Then, these keywords will be targeted manually by setting up a Sponsored Products campaign and one automatic targeting campaign. This dual approach allows you to stay on top of search trends. It’s also one of the necessary steps that the best Amazon PPC agencies take to grow the sales of their client’s brands in the marketplace.
3. Start Broad, Then Scale Winning Variations
Start selling with all variations of your products and then scale the ones that perform the best. For example, you’re selling a protein powder in different flavours and serving sizes. Make separate product listings for each and run ads on them. After 3 weeks or so, analyse which product pages are driving the most ad revenue for you and double down your Amazon advertising effort on it. Mina Elias, a renowned PPC expert, swears by this tip.
4. Comprehensive Ad Strategy Across Amazon UK
Use a combination of Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Products, and Sponsored Display ads in your Amazon UK advertising strategy. This approach targets shoppers at every stage of their buying journey. Dedicate the highest percentage of your ad spend to Sponsored Products, though (60% – 70% is a good number).
5. Optimise Listings for Promotional Badges
Optimise your product listings for Amazon’s promotional badges. This skyrockets your CTR. MetricsCart explains this perfectly.
How Much Does Amazon PPC Cost?
Although the cost of pay-per-click on Amazon UK depends on different factors, it typically varies from £0.1 – £5 per click. The cost depends on:
- Competition: Competitive products like electronics have a high CPC.
- Click-through rate (CTR): A high CTR results in lower CPCs.
- Bidding strategy: An effective bidding strategy that merges both manual and automatic targeting decreases the PPC cost.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Let’s now discuss some common questions you might have regarding Amazon advertising in the UK.
What is Amazon DSP Advertising?
Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP) advertising allows businesses to programmatically buy display, video, and audio ads both on and off Amazon. It helps target specific audiences using Amazon’s customer data, increasing brand visibility and driving sales for sellers.
What Are Some Amazon Advertising Tips?
Some powerful Amazon advertising tips experts swear by are the following:
- Download the search term report and filter out the keywords that generate zero sales or have a high ACoS to reduce underperforming keywords.
- Each ad group should contain a maximum of 5-7 keywords. After this limit, impressions and sales drop.
- Use broad match modifiers to expand the scope of ad appearance.
Can Anyone Sell on Amazon UK?
According to the official Amazon UK website, you can sell on the marketplace as an individual or as a brand. The selling plan rate (at the time of writing) was 75p for the individual plan and £25/month for the professional plan. That being said, certain products can’t be sold on Amazon, e.g., spy cameras and solutions manuals.
Conclusion
As we’ve seen, advertising on Amazon UK isn’t quite different from selling in any other country. You just have to consider the cultural trends, seasons, and purchasing inclinations of your target customers.
This article gave you an overview of how to advertise in that region effectively and profitably. However, assigning tasks to professionals is always a smart decision.
At IG PPC, we specialise in tailored Amazon advertising strategies and management for your business. Schedule a free audit to see how you can increase your conversion rate.
