Amazon PPC Part 2: Could Your Content Be Killing Your PPC?

Amazon PPC is a vital part of any successful Amazon business. But what if you’re not seeing the desired results from your PPC campaigns? You’ve done your keyword research, implemented Search Term Isolation, and optimized your campaigns — but still aren’t converting the sales you want.

The truth is, the content on your product detail page plays a huge role in your PPC. While, of course, your keywords and bids are primary indicators of your Amazon PPC ads, your content can heavily impact conversions.

If you’re not optimizing content, you can’t fully expect PPC to do all of the legwork in achieving your goals. Here, we share some indicators of when you might need to optimize your content, as well as some ways to optimize each area of your content!

Indicators of Poor Content

If you’re looking at your Amazon PPC stats and noticing that you have a high clickthrough rate but low conversions or purchases, your content could be the issue.

Clearly, you’ve piqued the interest of the consumers who are searching for a product like yours, so your keyword isn’t probably not an issue. The issue is most likely something about your product page is preventing them from clicking the “add to cart button” and actually purchasing.

Of course, there are a variety of factors outside of your content that could be affecting this, such as price, not enough reviews, or a high number of negative reviews. If you’ve been able to identify that the conversion problem isn’t the result of high price or negative reviews, here’s a list of other areas to review.

Content Improvements: Make it “Retail Ready”

Titles

If you’re experiencing high clickthrough rates, your title is likely accurate for the search terms you’re going after, so you might not need to alter much. But, it’s still a good idea to assess whether or not this aspect of your content could be killing your PPC.

Is your title accurate? Or does it just match whatever keywords you’re going after? Make sure it accurately describes the product you’re trying to sell. This will result in higher conversions. You should also be mindful of how your title and content looks on mobile, since 45% of customers only use Amazon’s mobile shopping app.

In order to comply with Amazon’s guidelines, your title should start with the brand name. Amazon crawls the first 1,000 characters of your product detail page (including the title, bullets, and description), so make sure everything is relevant to your product! In addition, you should list the product specification details and high-volume, relevant keywords in the title. But be careful to not “title” stuff your product title as this is a violation of Amazon’s terms of service.

Backend Keywords

Although no one but you will see your backend keywords, this part of your content is incredibly important for maintaining your Amazon PPC. It helps Amazon’s algorithm understand your product better and will ideally improve your organic ranking somewhat.

The search term limit is 250 characters. You shouldn’t include commas, but do include your brand name in keywords but not competition, which is against Amazon’s terms of service. Be sure to include high-volume terms that relate specifically to that individual product.

Images

Product images are probably the most important element to a product detail page after the title. Do not underestimate the impact that high-quality, informative images can have on your conversion rate — and your PPC advertising. Your primary image should clearly show your product on a white background. Subsequent photos (you should have a total of 7 per listing) should have text overlays highlighting the main features of your product, measurements, value proposition and specific parts of your product. Make sure to provide lifestyle images that show how and where your product is used. You should also include a video of your product.

No matter what, make sure you use high-quality images. And if you need to photoshop your product into an image, make sure it’s well done and doesn’t look too photoshopped. (We’ve all seen those kinds of images on Amazon.)

Bottom line when it comes to images, don’t cut corners. A lot of brands will “check the boxes” when it comes to product images and be ok with having images but if they’re the wrong images it will hurt conversion rates

Bullet Points

Bullet points are one of the first things consumers see on your Amazon product detail page once your title and images have piqued their interest. This section of your Amazon content is crucial to detailing the specific benefits and features of your product in an easy-to-read, scannable way.

Your bullet points should each start with a capital letter (sentence case) and don’t end with any punctuation. Your content here should reiterate the important information in your title and description, and you should avoid promotional pricing information.

Product Descriptions

As expert Amazon sellers know, the product description is prime real estate to contain keywords, descriptors, and key selling points. The product description should provide all the necessary information a customer 

But is your description killing your PPC? Are you highlighting the best features of your product, or the features that help solve the problem your consumer is looking to fix? Are you keyword stuffing so much that your description is unreadable?

Make sure your product descriptions provide all of the details a customer would need to know before they purchase. You can even include practical use cases for how your product can be used in daily life.

A+ Content

Last, but certainly not least, is your A+ content. While A+ content is the last piece of content to appear on your product detail page, it’s arguably one of the more important parts.

A+ content is your chance to really dive into the details of your product in whatever way you see fit. Because the content is all image-based, it doesn’t impact your Amazon SEO, so you don’t have to worry about including valuable keywords (although it doesn’t hurt). A+ content will share your brand story and increase brand awareness while informing your customer about your product. This is your space to address barriers to purchase and highlight other important information. Comparison tables are a great addition here, as they can address many concerns your customers might have.

Transforming your A+ content can mean shooting entirely new content to fit the message you want to send. You might include lifestyle shots, show your product in use, or include a breakdown of products/ingredients/etc. Be sure to include overlaid text on top of photos to make the content in this section look seamless, but not too text-heavy. Include your brand logo at the top or bottom of your A+ content.

Whatever you choose to do with your A+ content, it should still fit into your brand’s overall message, style, and voice. Your A+ content can show off different parts of your product that you weren’t able to include in your title or description. Combining high-quality imagery with informative copy is the key to successful A+ content!

Looking to up your content to improve your PPC game? Reach out to the team at Blue Wheel today.