3 Amazon advertising tips for your festive campaigns

The impact of Covid-19 on Christmas spending

Naturally, a lot of retailers might be wondering what to expect this Christmas with so much uncertainty going into the holiday season. The good news is that all the data points towards a solid Christmas in terms of consumer spending – the key differences are how and where consumers will spend their money this year.

Online spending has increased by 129% due to Covid-19 while 67% of UK shoppers say they’ll spend as much or more on Christmas this year.

The big disruptor will be foot traffic in high street stores, even if the UK exits lockdown on 2 December as planned. 71% of UK consumers say they’re reluctant to do their Christmas shopping in-store this year while 37% explicitly say they’ll avoid physical shopping locations.

So where are UK consumers going to be doing their Christmas shopping? Well, Amazon sales were up 37% in Q3 2020 and further growth is expected throughout the holiday season, so a presence on Amazon is pretty key for all retailers right now.

How to make full use of Amazon advertising this Christmas

To help retailers maximise sales on Amazon this year, here are three key tips it suggests advertisers should use on their campaigns.

1: Make sure your daily budget is high enough

Keep in mind that users spend more time on Amazon than usual during the holiday season and sales are significantly higher than other times of the year, too. This is especially true in 2020 when Amazon user figures are already much higher than in previous years. The last thing you want to do is limit Christmas sales because your budgets are too low to maximise campaign performance.

Set a daily budget that’s high enough to keep your ads showing and not miss out on potential sales. Many customers shop for and buy products on Amazon during the shopping season, so your usual daily budget might run out in the middle of the day.

- As per Amazon's guide to marketing during this festive season.

The key is to calculate predicted ROIs based on existing campaign performance and increase or redistribute your budget to maximise revenue.

2: Use dynamic bids (up and down) to maximise sales

Amazon offers several dynamic bidding options that use artificial intelligence to maximise campaign performance. For the holiday season, Amazon recommends using dynamic bids – up and down, which automatically adjusts your bids to maximise sales.

With this bidding strategy, Amazon Advertising raises your bids (by a maximum of 100%) in real time when your ad may be more likely to lead to a sale and lowers your bids when less likely to convert to a sale.

- According to Amazon's festive marketing guide.

This strategy will help you get the most out of your Christmas advertising budget without manually optimising bids throughout the day. Given the sporadic nature of holiday spending, this allows you to react to purchase intent, as it changes, without getting bogged down in campaign optimisation.

Note: We always advise using automated bidding on any platform with caution – make sure you keep an expert eye on how your campaigns are running to ensure they are fully optimised in line with your budget and wider marketing objectives.

3: Refine campaigns with keyword types

Amazon’s final tip is a three-step process for using keyword match types to refine the relevance of your campaigns:

1. Start with broad match keywords to maximise visibility while monitoring keyword performance data.
2. Then, target your best-performing keywords using phrase match, which requires your exact phrase or sequence of words to trigger your ad.
3. Finally, target the highest intent keywords with an exact match, which requires customers to type in your exact query to see your ad.

By refining keyword match types this way, you can maximise visibility at the top of the funnel (a useful audience for retargeting) but also identify which keywords are most effective, allowing you to spend more of your budget on the search terms that result in sales.

Maximise online sales this year

With Black Friday landing on 27 November this year, the holiday is fast approaching. After a difficult year, retailers need to make sure consumers can find and buy from them this holiday season and Amazon is shaping up as the key channel for them to do so.

So, if you’re already advertising on Amazon, think hard about how much budget you want to invest. If you’re not advertising on Amazon already, then now is the time to take another look at this platform. Perhaps most importantly, for retailers with little or no online presence, you need to get online now and Amazon provides an instant platform without even needing a website.

Vertical Leap is a certified Amazon Advertising Partner so if you need help with Amazon advertising, contact us on 02392 830281 or info@vertical-leap.uk.

Matthew McCullough, PPC specialist at Vertical Leap.