Amazon is the leading book retailer in the United States and continues to grow in several international markets. Because they are an essential channel for independent publishers, I wanted to share some of the successful actions we have found at Galaxy Press to sell books.
According to WordsRated, a research and data analytic group, Amazon makes up 50% of the Big Five publisher sales, selling over 300 million print books and 487 million e-books each year.
Here is how you can benefit from this massive channel.
What Are Amazon Ads?
In 2012, Amazon launched Amazon Marketing Services to allow retailers on the site to reach shoppers already there. Below is a description of various Amazon ads:
- Sponsored Products Ad: This is the longest-running ad type and the one Amazon considers it has perfected. Therefore, it usually performs best. They are used to increase sales and send traffic to product pages. The ads appear in relevant search results and on product detail pages. While the listing is marked “sponsored,” it looks like the organic results, and often customers give it the same consideration when scrolling through the list of titles.
- Sponsored Brands Ad (formerly known as the Headline Search Ad): These ads boost brand awareness and increase sales across your entire catalog. They are placed at the top and bottom of the search results, along with a custom headline. While these ads will convert to sales, they perform better when run with a sponsored products ad.
- Sponsored Display Ad: These ads reach customers on and off Amazon across their partnered websites. They have the broadest reach—the top of the sales funnel—introducing your books to potential new customers that have expressed interest in your category.
- Lockscreen Ad: These ads are for Kindle readers and show up on Kindle devices. The ads target shoppers’ interests, and readers see the ad when they unlock their Kindle to read or shop for books.
An example of a sponsored brand ad at the top of the search results.
Why Should You Use Amazon Ads?
With millions of shoppers actively searching for books on Amazon every day, advertising on this platform will help you reach readers who are already in a buying mindset. When someone searches for a product on Amazon, they are actively looking to make a purchase.
The various ads are easy to create and allow you to target specific keywords or customer interests based on their browsing history and purchase behavior. You can control ads to reach the readers most likely to buy your books.
Amazon provides advanced analytics tools and valuable insights into your ads’ performance. You can track click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS) to measure the success of your campaigns, which you can use to improve your results over time.
How to Set up Amazon Ads
Here are some simple steps to help you set up Amazon ads successfully.
First, you need to set up an advertising account. The main site is advertising.amazon.com. If you have an Amazon Seller account or Kindle Direct Publishing account, you will find access to the ad dashboard on the home page navigation bar.
I suggest you start with a sponsored product ad. As I mentioned earlier, this is the ad product Amazon has had the longest and is known to get the best conversions.
I will walk you through the steps to set up an ad. However, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the dashboard and tools before starting. There is a great free course on setting up Amazon ads created by Dave Chesson of the Kindlepreneur with detailed steps on how to research keywords for your ads. The Amazon advertising site itself also offers guidance for each ad type and answers to common questions. The URLs for these resources are at the end.
Take these steps to set up your first ad:
- Click the “Create campaign” button.
- Select the “Sponsored Products” ad type from the available campaign types:
- Choose your ad format. If this is your first ad or you are not yet comfortable using the ad dashboard, I suggest using the “Standard Ad” option, which will pull the sales copy from your detail page.
- Enter the name for your Ad Group. Use a naming convention to help quickly identify your ads from the dashboard. As you run multiple ads, you will want to see at a glance which is which. For instance, we use the name of the book (or ASIN – the Amazon Standard Identification Number), the target category, and the ad type as the ad name (e.g., Battlefield Earth Classic Sci-Fi Auto – for automated targeting).
- Search for and select the book(s) you want the ad to promote. You can also choose multiple formats of the same book.
- Select the targeting type. If you choose “Automatic Targeting,” Amazon will target readers using their advanced algorithms. Auto targeting is a great way to find keywords that convert to sales that you can use in highly targeted ads in the future. It is a great place to start.
- Enter the amount you are willing to spend for each click.
- Enter the negative keywords. Negative keywords prevent your book from being promoted in searches that are not relevant. Include words like “free,” so you don’t show your ad to readers looking for free books.
- You can also add specific negative products so your ads won’t show on the product pages of unrelated books.
- Campaign level bid setting. Select how you want your bids to work: Dynamic bids - up and down: your bids (by a maximum of 100%) will go up when more likely to convert to a sale and lower your bids when less likely to convert. Dynamic bids - down only: your bids will be automatically lowered when your ad may be less likely to convert to a sale. Fixed bids: your exact bid and any manual adjustments you set won’t be changed. For a new campaign on a small budget, I recommend that you select “Dynamic bids - down.” It will take a little while for Amazon’s algorithm to learn what works best for your ads.
- Create the campaign level settings. Name your campaign using a naming convention that will make it easy to see which books (or series) you are promoting at a glance.
- Portfolio. As you create many campaigns and ads, you can file these into portfolios (folders to help organize the ad dashboard into authors, categories, and imprints).
- Set the start and end dates. You can start the ad immediately or schedule it for a future date. You can also leave it open-ended or put an end date.
- Set your daily budget. Amazon recommends at least $10 a day. Amazon is authorized to spend whatever amount you enter each day. For instance, if your budget is $500, at $10 a day, it will run for 50 days. Either set the end date or keep an eye on it to stay within your budget.
To maximize the effectiveness of your ads, monitor their performance regularly. Specifically keep an eye on impressions, clicks, conversions, and your return on investment. This data will help you optimize future campaigns for better results. Don’t “set it and forget it.” The ads will continue to run and charge you whether they convert to sales or not. Running successful Amazon ads requires ongoing optimization and tweaking based on data analysis.
Insider Tip: After placing the automatic targeting ad, the second ad should use keywords that include the book title and various versions of the title with typos that readers might accidentally type when searching for your book. You want to reach the readers looking for your book; otherwise, they may buy someone else’s book.
How to Measure the Success of Your Amazon Ad
Measure the success of your Amazon ads by tracking key metrics so that you can make data-driven decisions for future campaigns.
Track these as a priority:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measures the percentage of people who clicked on your ad. A high CTR indicates that your ad is engaging and creating interest with your readers, while a low CTR means that the ad is targeting the wrong readers or it needs to be more compelling.
- Conversion Rate: Shows the percentage of users who clicked on your ad and made a purchase. It shows how effective your ad is at driving sales.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): This allows you to monitor whether your ad is within budget while maximizing clicks. If your CPC starts to rise significantly without an increase in conversions, it may be necessary to refine targeting or adjust bid strategies.
- Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS): Compares revenue generated from ads against the cost spent on them.
- Sales: This shows the value of the sales generated attributable to customers who clicked on your ad within the previous two weeks.
By regularly assessing these metrics and making informed optimizations based on results, you can fine-tune your Amazon ads for success.
Warning: In analyzing your ads, one common mistake is not to consider that readers of your books will go on to read more books by your authors, not just the book they bought after seeing your ad.
In addition to your dashboard sales, you must include their other book sales through Amazon (in the series or as a natural follow-up when readers discover a new author they love), which is called “read-through.”
Why Your Ads Don’t Work
When reviewing your ads, you may find some that don’t convert to sales. While this is not a complete list of potential problems, these are the two most common to check first:
- Your ad is reaching the wrong reader. Possibly you are promoting a book on gardening to fantasy readers. Review your ad’s targeting and adjust it to reach the reader you know will love your book.
- Your book detail page is not converting. Your ad is driving traffic, but readers are not buying. If this is the case, I suggest you update your copy. Author Brian Meeks wrote the book Mastering Amazon Descriptions. In addition to providing many book description examples before and after, he always uses the acid test: Does the description convert to sales.
Amazon Branded Stores
You can create your own branded store on Amazon to maximize engagement through a tailor-made brand experience and build customer loyalty. The URL for the Amazon Educational Guide below includes a section to help you set this up.
Conclusion
Mastering successful Amazon ads will benefit your publishing business by increasing visibility and boosting sales through the leading book retailer.
Take advantage of the different types of Amazon Ads, including Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display to reach a wider audience. With all three running simultaneously, you will make the most of your promotional campaign on Amazon.
Once your ads are live, closely monitor their performance and adjust as needed to optimize your campaigns continuously.
Take the Kindlepreneur free Amazon Ad Course and use their Publisher Rocket keyword tool as you start to create and test more ads. I also recommend using a website like Samurai Seller to help you monitor your ads, find profitable keywords for highly targeted ads of their own, and uncover costly words that don’t convert (and make them negative keywords).
Use Amazon ads to reach many new readers who will be just as happy as you that they found your books.
Resources
- Amazon educational guides: advertising.amazon.com/library/guides/basics-of-success-sponsored-ads
- Free Amazon Ads Course: kindlepreneur.com/free-amazon-ads-course
- A website with an automated platform using advanced techniques to manage Amazon ads: samuraiseller.com
Juliet Wills is the vice president of sales and rights at Galaxy Press. She is a certified Amazon Ads specialist.