The Direction in which amazon is headed:

Amazon has been shifting towards the type of platform where you can expect the top-selling items to be sponsored. With competition constantly increasing and markets becoming oversaturated quicker than they arrive. Sometimes the only way to stand out is by just paying for it.

That's not to say that organic results do not have a place on Amazon any longer. If anything, your sales should primarily come from organic rather than paid. But it's needed to point out that advertising on Amazon is now more crucial than ever. You need that push for the Amazon algorithm gods to pick up on your product.

A brief on how amazon's algorithm works:

The way the platform's algorithm works is by emphasizing sales conversions. Amazon is a business after all. And one that usually looks for its own best interests. And the algorithm does that by promoting listings which are more likely to result in sales as Amazon favours listings with high conversion rates and a strong sales history.

And that is the exact reason why you need to pay attention to both the organic and paid parts. The ads are what will give you that needed push to drive sales up. But focusing on using the right photos, keywords, and an accurate description is just as important to drive up the conversion rate.

Use Amazon's PPC to your advantage as it can have a dramatic indirect impact on your organic rankings.

But we do have to set a distinction and define the difference between the 2 types of results on Amazon.

Organic results:

• Amazon's search engine--Known as A9--Understanding it is key to ranking higher in the search results. Although it has its own annoyances as it's run by an algorithm that is infamous for its unpredictable and frequent updates. But, by staying on top of the updates and following up with trends you can stay ahead.
• Organic results are all about studying the ranking factors. You must think from the customer's perspective. As Amazon's customer base primarily uses search to find the products they are looking for. Meaning, that your listing should have the right keywords. Long-tail keywords can help your product rank better.
• The additional ranking factors include price, description, selection, availability, and sales history. The more successful a product is, the higher it is in search results.
• When it comes to building an audience organically that will eventually end up converting to a paying a paying customer. Utilizing social media and email lists as well as any other eye grasping platform that will help get more traffic to your products.
• SEO or search engine optimization. You might be familiar already with the term. But Amazon’s search success metrics revolve around revenue and gross margin per search. With optimization goals focusing on improving conversion rates. This means that not only do you want to rank highly on Amazon’s search results page, but you also want the traffic to convert into paying customers. Your pages would then be rewarded, as each conversion makes more money for Amazon.
• Ideally, you want your organic conversions to make the majority of your overall sales.

Paid results:

Also known as Amazon Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising is part of Amazon’s internal advertising system. Through Amazon, PPC sellers can target specific keywords, which appear in Amazon’s search results and competitor product listings. That fact, sellers can present relevant products to a ready to purchase audience, while measuring the ads. To identify which specific ads are driving conversions. It’s a highly effective marketing technique that every Amazon seller should know about and utilize. Especially knowing that with the influx of online retail traffic comes more competitors looking to capture the most sales.

Having an effective PPC advertising strategy is all but essential for Amazon businesses of all sizes. After all, there are over 350 million products on Amazon, and listings can easily get lost in the noise. And with the increase of competitors comes an increase in the PPC itself.

• So, when attempting to create a PPC advertising campaign you need to understand that the cost may vary depending on the category, the product you're listing, or how saturated the market you're breaking in is.
• Test out each type of PPC ad campaign and play around with automatic and manual keyword targeting to see what’s best for your brand.
• When starting out, set daily budgets and default bids 50-100% higher than what Amazon recommends. As you want to pay more than your competitor to win over the spot. Amazon is almost a pay to play arena. You want the best gear to stay ahead. And sometimes the only way to get that boost is by paying for it.
• Amazon only charges you when your ad is clicked, so you should focus on making your listing appeasing to the consumer by choosing the right keywords, and photos, as well as choosing the right type of PPC.

Types of paid Advertising:

Amazon offers a few Types of PPC ads for sellers to use. It's recommended that you try all of the ad types available to you when you're starting out, especially automatic-targeting ads and manually targeting Sponsored Products ads. Understanding the different ad types will help you get the best direction to your campaign and when choosing the right keywords and search terms.

1. Sponsored Products ads

Sponsored Product ads appear in search results and product listing pages, and can closely resemble organic listings. This is the most common type of Amazon PPC ad, used by 66% of third-party sellers.

2. Sponsored Brands ads

Sponsored Brands ads, allow sellers to drive awareness to more than one product at a time and catch shoppers’ eyes with more interesting visuals than with Sponsored Products.

Sellers can choose between three presented formats. It can appear at the top of search results as headline banners or it can be placed further down the page as a video.

3. Sponsored Display ads

Sponsored display ads are similar to brand ads in that you need a registered brand. It does go a step further as it allows sellers to not only target customers who have visited their products pages on Amazon, and off Amazon as well. Ads will appear on Amazon’s affiliate sites, including Google, Facebook, and even mobile apps.

Sponsored Display is the newest type of PPC and hasn’t quite reached the popularity of Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands: just 25% of third-party Amazon sellers use Sponsored Display PPC ads.

Now, the Reasons why you should use Amazon's PPC ads

As briefly mentioned above, it's become apparent now more than ever that you need to use Amazon's PPC in order to stand out more in a crowd full of competitors trying to reach the same customer base. And here are a few reasons as to why.

• Amazon's paid advertising can be used as a platform to catch more eyeballs and improve your organic visibility and ranking. PPC is used to validate the product as a way of showing Amazon that your product is relevant.
• Unlike other advertising avenues and platforms like Google and social media. Amazon's Audience has the intent to purchase the products already. Amazon is still first and foremost an online retailer, after all. In fact, some Amazon advertisers say they see conversion rates that are ten times higher than other PPC platforms. Thanks to Amazon’s purchase-ready Audience.
• Amazon is primarily a shopping hub with data and behavioral insights that other platforms simply can’t offer. Amazon has direct access to consumer habits and the purchasing process. Unlike Meta Ads which measure clicks and conversions, they can’t optimize your ads for sales based on user behavior. Although you can do that as an account manager, the process is tedious and requires research. Amazon already knows how their costumer base will interact with your ad before it even fully roles out.
• Your ads are shown outside of the platform as well. Amazon advertising is one of the best ways to build brand awareness. It doesn't only allow you to post on its main pages but through its partner sites as well as direct traffic to an offsite URL through Amazon Advertising.
• Building awareness of your brand and products is great but converting visitors to customers is even better. Another great benefit of Amazon advertising is the ability to achieve greater conversion rates. Bear in mind that Amazon’s average conversion rate is about 9.50%.

How to use profit Cyclops to your advantage when using Amazon's PPC?

Profit Cyclops keeps track of the cost of advertising per order. And it does this for every single marketplace in real-time.

Amazon ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is a key metric to measure the performance of an Amazon PPC campaign. Profit Cyclops has everything you need to know about this metric, so you always know how much you spend on advertising.

With all the campaigns and ads, you would be running you need the right tool to keep track of all the costs, so you can sell without the worry of overspending on ads and other Fees Amazon doesn't show you.

Stay ahead of the competition. Compete at the highest (and fastest) level possible with our proprietary, goal-based artificial intelligence algorithms. With your goals in mind, Profit Cyclops can handle the day-to-day management of your advertising optimization.