What Is Amazon Marketing Services, and Should I Be Using It? (Part 2)

by Cyle Young @CyleYoung

Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) allows you to advertise your book utilizing a targeted keyword strategy. 

But first, you must answer two important questions.

• What type of ads do I run? 
• Where do I find the keywords to use?

1. What type of ads do I run?

There are two types of ads: 

• Sponsored Product Ads 
• Product Display Ads

I recommend running “Sponsored Product” ads. These types of ads allow you to specify up to 1000 unique keywords for your ad. When a person types keywords in the amazon search bar, your ad will be displayed in the “sponsored products” under any books you view.

The ads are displayed on an auction basis, so you must choose a high enough cost per ad ration to allow your ad to be displayed over any competition. I use $0.25 for all of my ads, and I rarely pay anything close to that amount.

2. Where do I find the keywords to use?

One of the greatest resources to search keywords is Google Adwords keyword planner. You can find it at this link. https://adwords.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

In the example below, I searched the word “romance”. The keyword planner found 701 keywords associated with the word romance. Conveniently located on the page is a “download” link so that you can export the keywords to a .csv file.

The keyword planner also tells me the average monthly searches associated with that keyword on Google, and it shares the amount of competition in the market for those keywords.

Once I have my keywords .csv file, I can import my list of keywords into my “sponsored products” ad and within minutes my ads will begin running on Amazon. Be careful to set low spending limits. With 1,000 keywords you can spend a lot of money very quickly if you are not careful.

It is also wise to insert the title of books and the names of authors on the bestselling lists in the categories, which your book is listed.

Bonus: Make sure to not overlook books and/or authors who have published with Amazon imprints, those books seem to get favorable search ratings.

Once your ad is up and running you can examine how effective each keyword is at bringing in sales and clicks.

If my keywords are not brining in at least one click per 1,000 impressions, I pause the keyword so that I don’t get charged for underperforming keywords.

How has your Amazon Marketing Services experience been? Are you getting any sales?

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Did you miss part 1? 
What is Amazon marketing services, and should I be using it, (Part 1)

Cyle Young is thankful God blessed him with the uniqueness of being an ADD-riddled…SQUIRREL!...binge writer. Not much unlike the classic video game Frogger, Cyle darts back and forth between various writing genres. He crafts princess children’s stories, how-to advice for parents, epic fantasy tales, and easy readers.