We love to get creative with Amazon ads strategies at Amazonia PPC. Since there’s no lack of content on the web on setting up basic ads or doing the keyword research and harvesting targets, we thought we’d share with you a couple of strategies that don’t get talked about enough.
We are going to discuss the so-called cheap campaigns. They’re very easy to set up, don’t cost much, and can yield wonderful results. Let’s get into cheap Amazon ads strategies.
What Are Cheap Campaigns on Amazon?
The main purpose of cheap campaigns is to cover some non-essential, rest of the search placements. We set them up to get some ad sales that we wouldn’t otherwise get. For example, if you sell a curly hair product, the ad might be placed on the 5th page of “mascara” results. The connection is the word “curl” or “beauty” category.
Subscribe to our newsletter
How to Set Them Up?
The idea behind cheap ads is to create either a wide-range campaign:
- Automatic campaign,
- Category targeting campaign,
- Manual Broad match type campaign;
Or a very specific campaign that will target low search volume keywords:
- Exact match type campaign targeting long-tail keywords or misspellings
Cheap campaigns have a low CPC, inconsistent traffic, sporadic sales, and very low ACoS.
4 Proven Cheap Amazon Ads Strategies
The bids should be very low, at least half of the lowest suggested, while the budget, on the other hand, should be very high (at least $50 or $100).
Catch-All Automatic Cheap Campaign
You need to set up a regular Sponsored Products automatic campaign (we suggest creating a separate ad group for each match type for better insights) but with bids not higher than 0.15 c. The campaign will progress rather slowly, but it will be worth it in the end. You will get a significant amount of sales, virtually for free. Whatsmore, the deals you get using this strategy you most likely wouldn’t get otherwise, as this campaign aims to cover the rest of the search placements.
Low Bid Category Targeting Cheap Campaign
You can use any of the three ad types available to set up this campaign. The principle is similar to the previous campaign. Namely, you should set up a category targeting campaigns with low bids and high budgets. Try to choose the category that best fits your product, and only once it is proven to work, move on to wider category options.
Pro Tip: Sponsored Brands ads have a way bigger reach than Sponsored Products or Sponsored Display. So set up this type of category targeting using Sponsored Brands if your goal is brand awareness rather than profitability.
Low Bid Broad Match Type Cheap Campaigns
You can get very creative with broad match-type campaigns. Here are a few most common strategies we suggest you try:
Broad Match-Type 1
Take the best performing KWs from regular campaigns, put them in this one, and set bids to very low. You can do this for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, or Sponsored Brands Video ad types. The idea is to cover the rest of the search placements for your main converting terms.
Broad Match-Type 2
Find a few relevant search terms with great search volumes (such as “glove,” “magnesium,” etc.) and add them to the campaigns as a broad match type. Bids should be very low, at least 50% lower than the lower suggested bid. Make sure you go through search terms every 3-4 weeks. Negate those with lots of clicks and no sales and those with very little to no relation to your product, such as “glove compartment organizer” if the keyword was “glove.”
Broad Match-Type 3
Pick the best performing and relevant search terms, set extremely low bids, and boost the top of the search placement by at least 200-300%. The idea is to get occasional top of the search placements while simultaneously aiming for the rest of the search placements.
Exact Match Type Super Long-Tail Keywords Campaign
To set up this campaign, you will have to download your search term reports for all available ad types and find a few most relevant search terms that closely describe your product. You don’t need to focus solely on the search terms with sales but base your keyword collection on relevancy.
Create a new campaign, and add these keywords as an exact match type. However, when it comes to bids, you should set them up like you normally would. These keywords don’t have high search volume anyway, so they won’t get much traffic no matter how high the bids are.
This campaign can be quite fruitful for products compatible with other products that have different makes and models, such as iPad cases. So your normal long-tail keywords would sound something like “pink case for iPad 7”, whereas these super long-tail keywords would sound more like “light pink case for iPad 7 10.2 inches”.
Bottom Line
Cheap campaigns are a great way to attain new sales, improve brand awareness, and achieve the rest of the search placements, especially if your product’s category is highly competitive.
The Amazon ads strategies we listed are just a few of our favorite ones, but the possibilities are endless. Our main advice is to get creative and experiment, as there are plenty of opportunities out there that can help you minimize the cost while simultaneously increasing profits on Amazon.
About the author
Aleksandra Živadinović is a very talented Senior PPC Strategist at Amazonia PPC who joined the world of Amazon PPC back in 2020. Before joining the company, Aleksandra worked as a Sales and Customer support agent for a local company from New York, making her a subject matter expert on the local culture and marketplace.
