By the end of 2016, Amazon has said it will offer Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) in all of their European markets (Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and the UK).
The expansion of AMS to Europe is great news for international brands, especially those looking to boost their discoverability in one or more of these European markets.
Why is Amazon Marketing Services Important?
As we’ve covered on the blog before, Amazon Marketing Services is a self-service, pay-per-click advertising solution for keyword-targeted ad campaigns. By using AMS, companies can increase the discoverability of their products with targeted ads that appear where shoppers are most likely to see them.
Though AMS campaigns can be automated and left to run on their own, this is not the best way to get value out of your advertising dollars. Once an AMS campaign has been launched, it needs to be monitored and adjusted to get the best possible results.
Get in On the Ground Floor of Amazon Marketing Services in Europe
There are a number of advantages to being among the first companies to effectively utilize Amazon Marketing Services in Europe. To start, there is currently little competition for AMS keyword auctions since this service is just launching.
Early adopters can use AMS reports to see which keywords are working most effectively and implement them immediately. Instead of paying steeper prices to win in tomorrow’s increasingly competitive ad auctions, vendors can identify high-performing keywords today and use them to drive traffic to product landing pages.
Additionally, product pages that feature high-performing keywords become more relevant to shoppers, which boost the page’s performance in Amazon’s organic search results. Combined with the search bump that comes from the ads themselves, effectively-run AMS campaigns can help products get discovered even after ads stop running.
By getting in on the ground floor of Amazon Marketing Services in Europe, companies can get a lockdown on branded, generic, and competitive terms while boosting their products’ organic search results, making it harder for other brands to compete.
How to Start Amazon Marketing Services in Europe
Here is some advice for companies that are interested in starting AMS Europe campaigns:
- Choose Brands Wisely: Start with your best-known products in each specific European market, preferably those that already have strong existing content on the product pages to which your ads will be directing customers. AMS campaigns work best when they are paired with optimized product page content.
- Set a Budget: The cost for AMS in each European market differs, but early prices in Germany and the UK are coming in at about half the cost per click as in the US. Expect prices initially to be low, but know that they will inevitably increase as more brands begin to take advantage of the service.
- Create Localized, Amazon-Specific Keywords: Optimizing keywords is different for Amazon than for search engines, as customers are already at the point of sale. Evaluate current product-specific keyword lists and make sure they make sense for Amazon. If you’re already running AMS US campaigns, see which keywords make sense to use in European campaigns.
- Separate Your Campaigns: Initially, campaigns should be bucketed into generic, branded, and competitive terms so that you can compare how different types of campaign approaches work for your brand. For American-based companies, it may also be useful to invest in the same keywords in both the site’s native language as well as English in various campaigns to how conversions are affected.
Combining Advertising with Content
Content26 recently became the first in the industry to successfully combine Amazon paid search with Amazon keyword-optimized product page content.
Early results show that content26-managed AMS campaigns returned a 2.22x lift in Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) over automated campaigns for our clients. Across more than 200 campaigns, cost-per-click were also down 19% with a 55% decrease in the average cost of sale of automated campaigns.
Just as content26 already handles translation and enhanced content creation for all of Amazon’s European channels, we will also be managing AMS Europe campaigns for select clients.
The Takeaway
Utilizing Amazon Marketing Services Europe early on is an inexpensive and highly effective way for brands to start establishing position in increasingly competitive European online marketplaces.
