Amazon PPC - Product Targeting Deep Dive

hi everyone today I'm going to talk to you about product targeting product targeting is one of the most common Amazon PPC features and we get a lot of questions about them so I wanted to create a very comprehensive tutorial and share my knowledge around this topic and some strategies that have worked for our own brand and also for our clients brands so to start off product targeting in general is a feature that amazon has launched in 2018 almost a year ago that allows you to use other competitors products to target for your on PPC to bring that traffic to your listings so if you target on a category level then Amazon's going to trigger your ad and show your ad anytime that users search for something that's very relevant for your category or entire category or something that's relevant for your product however if you target the specification that's a competitor's Aysen then your products will be triggered to show up any time when someone searches for these competitors listings and visits their product detail page their product listing page so you should really understand the difference between those two levels of targeting competi Gori targeting being a lot more comprehensive and having a lot more ad inventory coverage in terms of placements and when it comes to a some level targeting then you get a lot more you know narrow targeting which is always good because you know exactly where each of your advertising dollars is being spent but at the same time you get a little bit more limited with placements by only not by only appearing on your on your competitors listings but let's say 90% of the times that will be your placement so when we when I just touch based on the placements let me show you where exactly these product targeting placements are so first of all I did a search on Blanco sinks as a phrase as a sample product for tutorial purposes and the first thing we see over here is a sponsor brands ads so that's not a topic of this video is just going to skip that and the first thing is the top of the search placement for product targeting this could easily be also keyword targeting because Amazon groups together all sponsor products placements so what we see here could easily be all product targeting results but it can also be a combination of someone who used keyword targeting and someone who used product targeting so top of the placement then in the middle somewhere we can find probably additional sponsored results like this one over here that's the middle of the search and then at the bottom of the search I believe we'll find some more sponsored products product targeting results like this one over here so additionally if someone is you're targeting on a sea level then probably if you click on any of these organic results over here we will find additional sponsored results at the product detail page so let's just give it a couple of seconds to load and here it is sponsored products related to this item so this could also be you know either automated campaign targeting results or it could be keyword targeting results and this could also be product targeting results so this is one of the things that I wanted to let you know that in case that you want to know exactly which placement works best for you and test the placements then by all means use a sand level product targeting basically if you see that some products aren't really working out for you you can always use product exclusions which is something very very similar to negative keywords which means if you see that certain product targeting for one specific Aysen is driving you extremely high is us or something that generating unprofitable results then make sure to use that in product exclusions so now that I've shown you placements let's go directly into interface I'm going to show you how to build your first product targeting campaign so I went to advertising and then campaign manager and then I went to create a new campaign now in this interface here you will see three options and the one you need is the sponsor product so let's just go ahead and continue to create a sponsor products campaign here under these options you can choose whatever the campaign you want to have and the daily budget so all of these details are fulfilled by you and under the targeting options you want to choose manual targeting manual targeting is product targeting is basically manual targeting which is why we want to use that on their bidding strategy you can choose whichever works best for you if you are tight on a cause then I suggest you use fixed beds to make maintain more manual control over what ad spend you're going to have so our group name you will assign a name to an ad group and then under products here we have different options to target so ideally if Amazon already has a good understanding of your product of your brand of your category if your listings are optimized and have been for a while you will also receive suggested lists list of suggested either categories either a since that Amazon will suggest for you to target and this is usually your first option that you really want to go for I recommend that but if we don't have such a thing and we know exactly you know what we want to target then we can use some more manual options but this is recommended for more advanced advertisers so first of all let's go ahead and add one product here like a sample product like we want to know you know exactly which product we want to drive this traffic to and we choose the listing so after we go to the through the listing and ad that we will go targeting now you have two options on there manual targeting which is keyword targeting and product targeting basically we need a product targeting option you need to choose that because we know that this is a campaign type that we need and move forward to product targeting okay so here I can't exactly show you what this product is to protect my clients privacy but under the suggested categories we usually receive something like if you already select one product and you will usually get one suggested category or maybe even two you know but when it comes to choosing more products at the same time that you want to you know expand your entire portfolio and you want to try product targeting in traffic to it to them usually you get more suggestions so you can either use this option that Amazon gives you to target this suggested category but at the same time you can choose to refine it so by refining targeting options you get various categories and various conditions that you can use so if you want to drill down to a specific brand you can select them out from the list and here you will see a whole list of competitors of what Amazon actually thinks that they are your competitors that's very important if you are in between the ones that are you know most familiar and that are really truly close to what you actually sell then it's really good this means that your product is in a very well defined category and Amazon has a strong understanding about what your product is so it's a very good sign so go ahead and select the brands that you want to target specifically within that's category if this is the way that you want to go usually we have this this is an option that we use if we have a client that's in a very new category of theirs that's like an innovative product and it's a new product that only you know two or three people you sell and this is most commonly in the technical categories such as IT equipment stuff like that that usually has the biggest amount of innovation within there so that's the case when we usually use brand targeting because we want to show to this specific market niche that this is also a product that we also sell so that's something that we use we use brand targeting for that also if you have like a product that is cheaper than your competition and has exactly the same or more features or some added functionalities or a better design you know just in general a better offer for less money for a lower price then by all means you can use the price range filter because you will only you know target competitors who have the worst offer than you then what you have which is usually a good advantage and this is the kind of strategy that we use for clients where we know for sure that we have that we're tight on a COS targets and we have to hear the certain target so we have to be very careful with the product targeting options that's when we use the price range filter and only target the ones that are more expensive than us on the other hand if you have a category that's like very wide and has a lot of competition and has a lot of customers too because with the higher come higher the competition usually means higher the sales velocity and you know in general impressions and clicks so if this is the case and you have built a premium brand that has something like you know some kind of luxury element to it that you will also distinguish through the price then by all means you can target the ones that are cheaper than you and show that this is a you know instead of them buying this standard product they can get the luxury option and then you kill you can kind of like make yourself a lot more different through the price when it comes to review start rate ratings this is also very powerful feature that a lot of advertisers are using review star ratings means that you can basically harvest upon the ones that were you know less fortunate than you in terms of reviews or at least less careful when they when someone you know gave them bad reviews they didn't react I didn't manage these bad reviews and they just stayed that way so they have a product in your category who that's great you know but not so great as yours so you can limit that to only show you know you can limit your products to show on the instead of products that are you know between zero and three star ratings which means very very bad ratings but usually if you narrow it down so much then you will get a very narrow reach for your campaign so if you have you know hundred impressions per month because you're targeting just one or two or three products in this case between 86 and 144 anyways if you have that narrow reach then you will collect data a lot more slowly which isn't really good for you it's a something that you need to test a little bit faster get results a little bit faster so that you know what to do the next round and then the next round the next round because PPC is more about testing you know you you should know exactly by heart all the features for targeting that are there but at the same time you know your results and your actual and results will really really depend of your creative process your thinking process and your knowledge about product about your product your products development it will also depend on the count competition and your knowledge of the some people who would actually go ahead and purchase this product so that being said with a lot of testing in place you really need to have as fast results as possible and Amazon is allowing you to do this it's a very high volume platform for advertising so you can learn fast if you see that your targeting is too narrow then you should know you should either be ready to collect your results slowly or just expand it like if we just changes to you know what is an option to zero to four it already expands like three or four times anyways shipping Prime eligible or non plot not prime eligible why is this filter so important well basically when it comes to shipping you know a lot of customers are very sensitive at least in our experience we received a lot of reviews when someone mentioned it right fast which is something that's obviously super important to them if you want to target just the customers who receive your product fast then and this is a you know like an important thing for your product if it's a time-sensitive thing if you're selling a gift on 23rd of December you know then you should definitely only filter out the ones who can receive it the next day obviously or someone who's who has any other perks available so this is the filter that we don't really use that often only in cases when we have some campaigns that are ongoing for a couple of days or just for specific dates that are very very relevant now we have upcoming Black Friday Cyber Monday so we'll probably use the stripping filter on some of our accounts so that would be the category targeting and how can you refine them let me show you how to do the individual product targeting so basically here also if your product is well optimized for SEO and Amazon and Amazon has a good understanding what your product is then they will give you a full list of products that they think you should target for some reason now be careful here some automatic strategies that Amazon suggests they might be good you know but it's very different from the strategy that you crack for yourselves so by by that I mean like you can go ahead it's easy to click talk at all and then you'll have a hundred and seventy products in your list out of the ones that they've suggested here but I would still go through them all and just like see which ones are actually aligning to the ones that I am selling through this campaign and which ones have lower reviews than me and stuff like that so make sure to go and review them one day about one by one to really really know exactly what you know what competitors you actually want to target so when we are talking about the strategy through product targeting basically there are a couple of basic campaigns that you should be running in case that you have this much budget to spend on product targeting first of all being brand protection campaign this is something that we recently introduced and I think it's very important for you to have to because you know that if someone when you have a product that's like a flagship product that's generating your cash flow that's working really well for you and this is the kind of base that you want to build your brand upon and expand the whole list of products into you know into a brand then you should target your own product through product targeting and you can you know search for it through a Nissen and enter your own Aysen and target your own product why is this important because when you use a sin level targeting on product targeting your products will appear on the product page on your own product page and this is super important because you will maximize your ad exposure you will maximize your presence on that listing and you will kind of like try to focus your your customers attention as much as possible on your own brand instead of letting your competitors steal away that market share from you that's the first campaign that you should test out with your with product targeting it usually doesn't spend a lot because you know it's it's just one product that you're targeting it doesn't spend a lot but it's very valuable in terms of brand protection so be sure to do that for every product that is super important to you in terms of cash flow second campaign is type is for market share stealing so at the same time if you're protecting your own product you should be targeting your competitors products only the ones that are that have a not as good offer as much as you have like I just previously explained so if there is a certain feature a certain design you know or certain functionality that you can use as an extra that you can advertise that your competitors aren't offering or if you're cheaper than them or what is it your unique selling proposition ask yourself truly what makes your product different from the rest and then identify the ones who don't have this unique selling proposition and target them this would be your best shot at having any decent h2s in the account through product targeting and we've seen it work really well for some products that are in competitive categories so that's also one thing third campaign type for product targeting is the upsell campaign what does this mean observe campaign if you have an already existing product portfolio list and you have products who already are selling the parts that are already selling then you should use product targeting to let the customers know that there is a new version new color or sizing you know another variation of the existing product Liat line so you can use product targeting to emphasize on that and use it for up cell potential for example if you have a complementary product like you used to sell shoes and now you are selling socks you can use your own you can target your own shoes through product targeting and make sure that your socks are showing up on the product detail page anytime with someone visits the shoes so basically you will let them know and this this targeting option this strategy is very good for brand exposure it's not very good if you're looking to you know get a decent eCos on this or something that's profitable for you but instead of that it's very good for an exposure and for product launches has worked really well for us so that being said there's also a fourth campaign type for product targeting which is for branding basically just recently amazon has released a sponsor grants option to run product targeting basically product are getting on sponsor brands this means that if you you know target a certain category or on an ace and it will leads your traffic to the to your storefront or a certain landing page instead of your product page so this is a new option it's in beta at this point and not available for all accounts but we have tested it and it's pretty exciting to see how you know product targeting can actually contribute to brands exposure on Amazon and to driving you to brand purchases so ideally if you're having a brand that exists outside of Amazon and you want to let your customers know that you are now available on Amazon this is something that you can use you know to build your own sponsor friends ads target your sponsor sorry target your target your brain through key words and then lead it to sponsor brands storefronts to your storefront on Amazon that would be one way of doing it also another way if you're going to add either way another way around if you're starting on Amazon FBA and then planning to expand on your e-commerce website then you can use competitors listing listings to target and through product targeting and drive the traffic to your sponsor brand to your brand on Amazon but either way if you don't have a website and you're not going to be able to run any brand registry for yourselves so first of all you need to build your e-commerce website is something that they can use to tie it to your brand and then have you use all of the branding potential that they have so that being said certain brands who are already established on and off Amazon have a certain advantage when it comes to using this option of product targeting through sponsor brands ads especially because you receive that extra placement on the top of the search results page even before the search results so this is something that if you haven't done already then make sure to first sign up for the brand registry as soon as possible because this is something that we've seen some sellers wait after three months to to do for in the USA so that being said I hope that this video was valuable for you if you have any questions for me then make sure to comment below I read every comment that I receive and I'm happy to answer any of your questions subscribe to our channel for more fresh content we upload a fresh content every Tuesday so you can expect all the newest news and strategies and tips and tricks everything related to Amazon FBA we love it which is the reason why we decided to open up this channel and create our own community around this topic thank you for watching and have a lovely day bye 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