The majority of the strategy talk in the Amazon world is centered around being offensive. This includes getting aggressive to build organic rank and owning the search results for your target keywords.
But offense is only half of the equation… no strategy is complete without a killer defense. ⚽️
It’s no surprise that Amazon caters to ‘their customer.’ They want to show the most relevant options so a buyer can shop around and choose the product that‘s right for them.
What do we want? For the customer to buy ours! 🎉
Good defense is essentially smart Branded ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) Targeting.
👉 The goal is to ensure that our own listings take up as many ad placements on our listings!! This prevents potential customers from jumping to a competitor listing and helps secure a sale for our brand.
Chances are, your brand has already paid for the click to get the customer to your listing, so keeping them on page helps both revenue and efficiency.
Smart branded ASIN targeting is a fantastic opportunity to cross-sell or upsell your other products! When possible, tailor your ad space to feature your most relevant complimentary items or substitutes. ✅
However, taking up screen real estate is the initial goal, so these campaigns don’t actually have to drive a lot of revenue. Their sole purpose is to prevent the competition from moving in. The only place a customer should be able to go from your listing is to their cart, to your store, or to another listing from your brand.
🧐 How exactly do you defend your product page effectively on Amazon?
There are two main ad types that do this job:
- Sponsored products
- Sponsored display
1️⃣ Sponsored Product ads on the product page are typically shown within carousels (with a very small “Sponsored” in the top left corner). 👇
Want in on a huge key about using branded ASIN targeting that most advertisers don’t know? Product targeting ads can follow a product around the website.
For example: if you target the ASIN of Lululemon Align Pants, your ad may now show in search results for the keyword “Lululemon”, and any other search results those pants display in! This is a massive deal because these campaigns only give ASINs as matched search terms, so you’re in the dark about what keywords you’re spending on.
The Pilothouse secret tip is to ensure your ASIN targeting campaigns stay on product pages and ONLY product pages.
Set your bids at ¼ of what you think they should be set at, and change your Product Page multiplier (found under “Placements” in the ad group) to 300% or more.
This means a bid of $1 can go as high as $4 when displaying on a product page. This way, you can set bids low enough to never win an auction for search results but still cover the product pages you’re targeting.
2️⃣ Sponsored Display ads can take many different forms (a few examples shown below) and can now have a headline and custom image.
If you want to take it up a notch, segment out your branded ASIN campaigns so your cross targeting Sponsored Display headlines do the job of upselling that customer on your other product.
Typically you are very relevant to your own brand, so these campaigns will be relatively efficient and won’t jack up your spend too much.
🚨 The Pilothouse suggestion? Test it out, play some defense, and see if you can track a bump in listing conversion rate or in pay-per-click performance. 🔥
