The value of advertising on Amazon is a lot like the value of paying to upgrade your visibility through premium placements on Google and other search platforms.
While Amazon might function as a threat to local retailers everywhere, Fast Company argued that's not enough to stop those local businesses from advertising through the retail giant.
Here are four reasons why retailers are turning to the platform to use its marketing tools.
1. Premium Placement in Product Searches
As the largest online retailer, Amazon is a good place to showcase your products. Sponsored ads guarantee your products get premium placement in relevant searches, building visibility and increasing the odds of ad clicks. And, with a built-in analytics platform to help guide insights, evenless than optimal ad performance could shed light on how to optimize your strategy to better serve your audience — and stand out among your competitors.
2. Reach an Audience With Purchase Intent
Perhaps the biggest feature separating Amazon's sponsored ads from similar products offered by Google and Facebook is the purchase intent of the general ad audience. Google and Facebook are essentially generalist search platforms: They cater to a large, diverse audience, and those consumers — even when targeted through advertising — can have a wide range of interest levels and intent to make a purchase.
When you advertise through Facebook or Google, some of your audience may be in the early stages of the sales funnel, primarily concerned with exploring their options for a certain kind of product. If you're looking to drive sales, these platforms can be trickier. But as a retail destination, Amazon's audience is typically further down into the funnel: They may still be doing research and considering their options, but they're much more likely to make a purchase in the near future.
3. Excellent Analytics Dashboard
Amazon offers a strong analytics platform that closely tracks consumer actions and can complete picture of your campaign performance by connecting to products sold on Amazon. These reporting tools offer insights that can help you optimize your sponsored content. According to Amazon, the analytics platform recently debuted new filtering tools that let you analyze data from many different angles, paving the way for better insights and faster optimization.
4. You Only Pay for Clicks on Search
Because Amazon is a retail destination aimed at driving conversions, its pricing model only charges marketers for clicks, rather than impressions. This is a big win for marketers, since they're using Amazon to try and drive sales and don't want to waste their budget on building awareness and other top-of-funnel goals. With pay per click, you get more assurance that your ad budget is being used to drive action and, hopefully, product purchases.
Some marketing platforms make it difficult to get a transparent view of performance and how you can improve, but Amazon makes it easy. If you're looking for a marketing channel that will help drive sales for your products, on or off Amazon, then advertising on Amazon is a no-brainer.
