Mastering Amazon Sponsored Brand Ads – Tips on Getting the Most Out of Amazon’s Powerful Ad Product
Updated: Jan 18
Winning on Amazon necessitates that you engage shoppers with your brand from the start of their buying journey. Amazon Sponsored Brand ads are designed to help sellers with that.
One of Amazon’s most powerful ad products, Sponsored Brand ads burst with advertising potential. Advertisers who launched Sponsored Brand Ads after Sponsored Products saw a 12.2% increase in ROAS.
However, you need to master Sponsored Brand Ads to leverage this potential. In this blog, we are telling you how with some top tips and best practices to help you set your Sponsored Brand campaigns up for success.
Understanding Sponsored Brand Ads
Sponsored Brand ads are built to help advertisers run top-of-the-funnel advertising campaigns.
When executed right, sponsored brand ad campaigns can help drive brand awareness, reach new customers, and grow your audience base.
Sponsored brand ads feature a unique ad creative that includes images, a headline, and products. Brands can include at least three different clickable products within their brand creatives and link them to the respective product pages.
All these elements are customizable, allowing advertisers greater control over their ad creatives and campaign customization.
Sponsored Brand ads are keyword targeted and appear as a banner within Amazon SERPs and relevant product listings.
Tips On Upping Your Sponsored Brand Ads Game
Sponsored Brand Ads are designed to help you break through the competition on Amazon. Using these ads, you can get to your prospects when they are in the awareness phase, looking for brands to interact with, and tell them you exist to solve their problem.
But that’s only possible with a strong Sponsored Brand campaign. Here are some tips to help build one:
1- Discover and Use Quality Keywords
Sponsored Brands are keyword targeted. So, the success of your campaign partially depends on the quality of your keyword selection.
Selecting the right keywords can maximize the chances of your ads being served to the right audience. Since you are trying to reach top-of-the-funnel customers, it might be a good idea to go with generic keywords. This will help drive brand awareness by enabling your brand to reach people who only know what product they are looking for and have not yet decided on a brand they will shop with.
Amazon recommends including at least 25 keywords. Therefore, you can also search for your competitor’s branded keywords and target them. This will help you reach prospects interested in what you sell and drive consideration.
Notice how Altec’s Brand ad appears for Sony-related keyword:
Don’t forget to include some negative keywords as well to make sure your ad doesn’t rank for an irrelevant audience.
Now, where do you find all these keywords? Amazon Search Term report might help.
If you are running Sponsored Product ads, your Search Term report will give insight into the terms your customers use to get to your or your competitor’s products.
Use this report to find high search volume keywords and target them.
Finally, use all three match types – broad, phrase, and exact match keywords – to maximize your chances of gaining visibility.
2- Run Always-on Campaigns
Another best practice for Sponsored Brand success is ensuring your campaign keeps running continuously. This ensures your brand never misses an exposure opportunity, is visible as much as possible, and stays on top of the customer’s mind.
If your budget doesn’t allow you to run an always-on campaign with high search volume keywords, consider going for the more affordable, low-volume keywords. The ideal goal is to get to a relevant audience every time. And we have to work to get as close as we can to this goal.
Pringles (needs no introduction) adopted the same approach. They ran their Sponsored Brand campaign all year round instead of launching them in bursts. As a result, this always-on campaign generated a 200% higher CTR compared to the brand’s historical Brand Ads average.
3- Write Powerful Ad Copies
Sponsored Brands allow custom headlines. Your job as an advertiser is to leverage this opportunity to multiply your ad CTR.
Think of the Sponsored Brand ad as your brand’s first meeting with its prospects. So, avoid talking about your products and their features. Your listing will do that. Instead, use this space to introduce your brand to the customers, inform them of its value, and narrate the brand story.
Check out how these brands have successfully written powerful headlines:
Be succinct and deliver your message in as few words as possible. Use simple words. Ad copy is not for you to unleash your creativity. And make sure the headline aligns with your brand’s personality.
4- Work on the Brand Ad’s Creative
Besides writing a powerful ad headline, you also need to ensure your ad creatives are built to garner attention and drive clicks.
Since 75% of people recognize a brand through its logo, every Sponsored Brand ad must include a brand logo. Make sure your logo aligns with Amazon’s guidelines.
Try and include a CTA in your ad to get the prospects to click on it. Write a CTA copy that clearly tells the prospects what you want them to do, like “visit store” to get them to click.
Check out L’Oreal’s CTA:
Images form an essential part of Sponsored Brand ads. Use high-quality product or lifestyle images that show your products in the best light.
Advertisers who use the Sponsored Brand video ad format saw a 108.1% increase in CTR compared to advertisers who stuck to the product collection format.
So, if you really want to win it with Sponsored Brands, consider creating Sponsored Brand video ads.
Yes, video ads may be harder to create as compared to product collection ads. However, Amazon released a solution for that earlier this year.
You can now use Amazon’s video builder to easily create engaging Sponsored Brand video ads that can help you get closer to your advertising goals.
5- Keep Tracking, Testing, and Optimizing
ACOS or advertising cost of sales, DPV or detail page view, and CTR (everyone knows that abbreviation) are some of the most important metrics you should track when measuring your Sponsored Brand campaigns.
Tracking these metrics may help discover and rectify underlying problems.
A low CTR may be a sign that your ad headline or creatives are not compelling enough. A high CTR but low DPV may indicate that the landing page is failing to get customers through to the product listing.
Knowing these areas of improvement can help you build better campaigns progressively.
Since Brand Ad creatives are customizable, A/B test your ads to create high-impact ads.
Remember only to change one ad element at a time. Run the test for at least two weeks before analyzing the results and define your success based on your brand goals. For example, see which ad creative is getting you closer to your goal of increasing conversions, the one with reviews or the one without them, and work with that.
Conclusion
A strong Sponsored Brand campaign can help drive brand awareness. These ads can help you stay on top of your customers minds and win sales when the shopper is ready to buy.
However, Sponsored Brands are mostly focused on top-of-the-funnel customers. And true marketplace success comes from implementing full-funnel strategies. Therefore, don’t cease your Sponsored Product campaigns and consider investing in Sponsored Display as well to reach and influence prospects across the customer journey.
Accrue helps brands build marketplace success by implementing powerful, full-funnel advertising campaigns. We guide our customers towards Amazon’s latest products and help them capitalize on them to stay ahead of the curve.
Need help with Amazon Ads? Let’s talk.