Do you know three common mistakes in the Amazon search marketing process?

1. Blacklist bad keywords

People often think that the best way to run search marketing campaigns is to blacklist keywords that are not performing well. The problem is that when you blacklist a keyword, it is gone for good, and that is one of the reasons why you want to avoid doing this.

A keyword may underperform for various reasons, such as seasonality or low bids. This does not necessarily mean that it is a bad keyword. Take your favorite keyword, analyze the data, and see how this keyword performs over time. Sometimes even your best keyword does not perform as you would expect.

Imagine blacklisting all underperforming keywords. This means you may also blacklist your best-performing keywords, because even these keywords may have struggled at some point. That's why automatic blacklisting is very dangerous!

It is better to lower your bids to a minimum rather than removing the keyword altogether. If the situation is really bad, set it to the absolute minimum. In the worst case, this keyword will get less traffic, but your costs will be low and it may ultimately improve your advertising costs.

Another advantage of lowering your bids is that it can help revitalize seasonal keywords and protect you from decisions based on data that typically does not take seasonal influences into account.

2. Excessive use of exact or broad search matches

If you use an exact or broad match for every high-performing keyword, you are essentially letting Amazon decide everything for you. What's more, you will always pay the highest bid.

Let's say you sell board games. Someone types in "board games for children." You may have "games" as an exact keyword and you also have "board games" as a broad match for the same product. In this case, the search term "board games for kids" will match both "games" as an exact match and "board games" as a broad match.

Amazon decides which product to display in a sponsored ad based on the highest bid between your two keywords. This means that you have traffic from different entry points and Amazon chooses the most expensive entry points. This situation always leads to much higher spending, without any guarantee of better performance.

So when you use an exact keyword, make sure it is not included in another broad or auto

Ad group. It must be linked to a search term exclusion that applies to the other entry points in which it is included.

This also applies to exact keywords. If you bid on an exact keyword, make sure it is excluded from all broad and exact keywords, as well as all automatic ad groups with which it may match. Otherwise, you will be bidding against yourself.

Another way to prevent this problem is to stop using hundreds of keywords with different search types. If you have countless keywords for the same product, consider reducing their number. It is always better to have a smaller number of well-configured keywords than hundreds of keywords that are not properly managed.

Keep this golden rule in mind: all targeted keywords must be linked to their excluded versions.

3. Bid very high and flat to guarantee a sponsored position

If you do this, you will spend too much money without achieving results. Cost Per Click (CPC) is not the only parameter Amazon takes into account when assigning a sponsored spot.

Some people think that setting a high PPC amount (let's say $5) guarantees a sponsored position. Even if your competitor bids $1, it remains very risky to bid that high. There are several reasons for this: your competitors use smarter tools whose logic gradually increases their bids to generate traffic. As a result, you pay more for the same traffic.

Another reason is that Amazon uses various parameters to estimate the value of displaying your product in a sponsored spot:

– PPC, which helps Amazon decide whether it is worthwhile to display your product,
– An estimate of your product's click-through rate,
– An estimate of the conversion rate – the likelihood that a customer will purchase your product.

Using these three key parameters, Amazon predicts the revenue they will generate from a single click. With this information, Amazon conducts its own internal auction and decides which products will be displayed in a sponsored spot.