Spin Amazon’s Flywheel With a Combination of Human + Machine
Marketers live in a world of (and it pains me to use such a beaten-to-death buzzword) “Big Data”. And while, yes, Amazon marketers have access to more information and data points around customers, their actions cross an ever-increasing mix of views, clicks, and orders; it won’t matter much if Amazon marketers cannot effectively analyze and take action on all that data.
Enter a partnership as old as the wheel: human + machine. Let’s review how Rise uses this partnership to proactively optimize campaigns, while also keeping a pulse on what’s changing in Amazon’s ever-evolving product mix.
Bid Automation
When we talk about performance-based marketing, it is mandatory to talk about bid automation platforms—as they are the front line technology that can help brands push performance while simultaneously saving time.
Algorithmic Automation
Brands with a little extra budget can always test into one of the best ways to automate their ad spend: algorithmic bid automation. By stacking statistical models at different levels of an account’s granularity (i.e. Campaign →Ad Group → Keyword), this automation method should be able to help you get your efficiency up to almost any ROAS. (Although, spend may decrease the higher you go.) Outside of a bumpy test learning period, algorithmic bidders are one of the best ways to improve revenue across the entirety of an Amazon Sponsored Ad account.
Rule-Based Automation
While it is nice to have an algorithmic bid automation platform, it is not necessarily a requirement. While not as proactive and well “learned” as an algorithmic bid solution, setting-up rules are still a solid way to optimize an account by generating what we call a “cycle of bidding”.
You can do this by setting up a few rules that incrementally adjust bids upwards for top-performing keywords, incrementally adjust bids downwards for low-performing keywords, and incrementally adjust bids upwards for keywords with low impressions.
Answer the "Why" to Revenue Shifts with Automated Alerts
A lot of times when revenue shifts in a dramatic and significant movement, the most obvious culprits are associated around a key ASIN’s product health and the negative statuses that can affect it—for example: out of stock, lost buy box, new sellers, review aggregation, and/or price changes.
Now, if you’re only advertising a handful of products, monitoring these changes can be a simple five-minute morning check. However, for brands that have products numbering into the thousands, there is no sustainable method to do this without alerts. Rise receives daily updates on any important product health signal to ensure that we are aware of the issue and its potential impacts. Then, we can generate a solution that can help us offset any revenue implications as we work to resolve.
Just by setting up the right alerts, you can empower your team to catch issues before they become trends, and to proactively communicate potential impacts with a solution-oriented mentality!
These are just a few examples of how your team can partner with “the machine” to help you optimize and stay in front of trends. Understanding the benefits of bid automation and the correct usage of alerts for inventory health management can be important to your overall success. Contact Rise if you’d like to learn how to incorporate automation into your Amazon strategy.