Guest Post by Ritu Java, CEO of PPC Ninja
Having a well translated, culturally acceptable listing in the native language of your shoppers, is the first step to succeeding in expanding your Amazon business to international markets.
But, without ongoing refinements and listing enhancements, our job would be incomplete.
Put another way, the only way to stand out from the competition is to constantly improve the way we describe and showcase our Amazon products, based on what the market is teaching us about what’s resonating and what’s not.
That’s exactly where Amazon advertising comes in.
The Treasure Trove of Amazon’s Search Data
Amazon’s AI-based algorithms are excellent at matching buyer search terms to keywords present on our Amazon product listings. In fact, they will even find and match buyer searches based on closely related words, synonyms and alternative variants of our original word choices.
We sure want to know what those are, so that we can incorporate them back into our product listings, and get even more shoppers interested. This is the way to set up a positive feedback loop that propels the cycle of Amazon’s flywheels.
The way to access this treasure trove of keyword data is to simply pay for it – through ads.
Amazon Sponsored Ads not only help you ‘buy’ page 1 visibility compliantly, but they also tell you exactly what a shopper typed when they clicked on your ad into your listing.
This data is contained in the Search Terms reports that can be downloaded from Amazon.
How To Read the Data From Your Amazon Search Term Reports
If the language of the listing is not one you are familiar with, harvesting keywords could be a challenge.
Using an Amazon PPC tool (like ours- PPC Ninja) can help you automatically discover new keywords that convert well on an ongoing basis while eliminating words that are already being bid on. This is a huge advantage especially if you are not the language expert.
For those that do not have access to a good PPC tool, you could use metrics such as click-through-rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR) at the search terms level to gauge their effectiveness.
Ideally, you’d want to expand the date range of your analysis to significantly long durations of time, so that you can find buyer search terms with great CTRs that profitably convert to sales, below your target ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale).
These are good candidates for new keyword discovery for your Amazon PPC.
A good rule of thumb is to identify search terms with CTRs that are close to or above 0.5%, which is Amazon’s average, and CRs that are close to or better than 10%, which again is Amazon’s average.
Your goal then is to weave these keywords back into the listing, perhaps with the help of a language specialist from YLT translations. You also want to add these keywords to your sponsored product campaigns so that you can start building some good keyword relevancy with Amazon’s search algorithms.
Why Keyword Variants Matter
Brand Analytics is a great tool provided by Amazon to brand registered sellers. It provides Search Frequency Rank, a measure of how popular a search term is on a given marketplace.
Take a look at the screenshot below from the Japanese market.
The search term I picked roughly translates to ‘Made in Japan Mask 50 pack’.
Notice the two rows, one with and one without a space separating two words.
Now look at the Search Frequency Rank column. Notice how the presence or absence of a single space between words can change the popularity of a keyword from rank 5700 to rank 2931.
Those familiar with the Japanese language will know that words are not separated by spaces in written materials. But as keywords that distinction matters.
How can we use this piece of data? Two ways:
- We can bid on both as exact match keywords to gain greater keyword market share
- We can prioritize the one with the smaller search frequency rank (more popular) over the other on our listing
Reuse and Repurpose Keywords for Your New Amazon Ads
If you are already offering an ASIN in another language you probably already have a substantial collection of good keywords.
Let’s say your original ASIN was in English, and you are now diversifying to Spain. Be sure to include your best performing English keywords to bid on in the Spanish market. This is because shoppers might search for products in multiple languages. Again, using a PPC tool to easily transfer your keywords from one market to another can save you a lot of work.
Don’t Forget to Leverage Product Targeting Ads
While keyword-based ads can help you reach search audiences in another language, Product Targeting ads can place your ads in front of shoppers who are looking for similar or related products.
With limited language skills it may be hard for you to research competitors and target them, but that’s where you want to leverage the power of Amazon’s target based ads.
Examples of such ad types include Category Targeting, Automatic campaigns with Substitutes and Complements targeting, and Sponsored Display ads.
Product targeting ads are displayed on detail pages, and can help you steal traffic from your competitors.
A Video is Worth a Million Words
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth way more. Whatever your product might be, showcasing it in use through a video ad can help convince and convert shoppers quickly.
Even if a foreign language is not your strength, a video ad with some simple motion graphics can do the trick.
Don’t overthink video ads. They don’t need to be expensive investments that require studio-level production.
Even panning and zooming on still photos can do the trick. Right now there is very low competition for video ads and you may be able to get great conversions at very favorable ACoS.
Get an early mover advantage while you can.
Make Advertising Work for you in Foreign Geographies
Advertising and listing improvements go hand in hand.
Especially when language is a barrier, your Sponsored ads can work wonders for you, help drive traffic and provide valuable keyword data, which you can feed back into listing for a flywheel effect of success in new and upcoming markets.
About PPC NINJA
PPC Ninja offers Software Enabled PPC Management Services for Amazon sellers. Our self-serve software tools are used by sellers and agencies who require analytics and bid management solutions that keep them in charge of their PPC management.
For more info: https://www.ppcninja.com/