• Advertising is an essential piece to every new product launch strategy.
• Amazon PPC can help new products with discoverability or compliment any other promotional strategies set up outside of Amazon.
• We recommend sellers be focused on sales versus minimum ad spend.
• New product launches weigh heavily on conversion rates.
• When setting up manual campaigns, utilize high converting placement settings and fixed bids while targeting your 5-20 most relevant keywords.
• If you have video assets, use Sponsored Brands video ads to gain impressions and maximize conversions.
• Auto campaigns also play an important role. It helps to help discover new search terms, which filters into the longer-term advertising strategy.

As Amazon becomes more competitive, advertising becomes more critical for new product launches. One of the common questions we get is, "What are the specifics actions one should take when advertising for a new product?" In this episode, we share our reasoning behind running ads for your new products, how advertising can help you become retail-ready, and the things you need for your launch campaigns.

1. Be Sales Focused - At this stage, we advise sellers not to be too focused on generating the lowest ACoS possible, but instead be sales-driven and focus on getting the Amazon fly wheel spinning. This means that you will be required to spend a little more to obtain sales and build social proof for your product since you're just starting out.
2. Have High-Quality Listings – Having high-quality listings can really help your conversion rate. This is one of the key factors to reducing wasted spend.
3. Keep Product Competitively Priced – When starting out, it's always a good practice to keep your products priced competitively for your category. We recommend utilizing coupons so that your products are priced lower than your competition for those initial purchases. A note of caution – be sure not to lower your price too significantly if you are in a category with a high potential for repeat purchases. It may be off putting to your customers if they go back to buy your products and find the price point to be noticeably higher.

Sponsored Products Auto Campaigns

Set up auto campaigns to help with developing your long-term strategy and discovering new search terms. While your auto campaigns won't be your main focus for launch campaigns, they help find new search terms to help build out your overall campaign funnel structure.

Sponsored Products Manual Campaigns

These campaigns will be your focus to help improve your overall ranking and drive initial sales. Here are the key things we recommend when setting up manual campaigns:

1. Keyword Targets: Allocate most of your ad spend on the first 5-20 most relevant keywords to your product. Avoid spreading your ad spend across a large number of keywords obtained from a tool, and instead focus on the ones that are most relevant to your product and will likely convert. This eliminates a lot of wasted spend and can help nail down a strategy for bidding and placement adjustments.
2. Placements: For launch campaigns, we recommend placing the ads in the highest converting placements. In our previous episodes, we mentioned that top of search placement tends to convert twice as well as other placements. For new products, utilizing top of search placement will allow you to reach your highest intent audience.
3. Bidding: We recommend using fixed bids for launch campaigns. Our main reason for using fixed bids is because we want to prevent Amazon from dynamically reducing your bids when they don't feel like your ads will convert. Since you're just starting out, fixed bids will allow you better control when you want your ads to show up. Don’t be afraid to be semi-aggressive with your bids since this shows Amazon that you're willing to pay substantially more for high-converting placements like top of search, where you'll get the highest conversion rate.

Sponsored Brands

Another Ad type that can be useful for product launches would be Sponsored Brands Video Ads. While there won't be as many placements due to bids being more competitive, with these ads having a conversion rate of 14%-15%, just a few impressions can really make a difference. Videos are helpful with differentiating your product and highlighting your product's unique attributes. Showcasing your new product with this ad can lead to substantial initial sales which will build up reviews, and social proof, which goes a long way.

How to utilize Amazon PPC when launching new products [01:52]

Should you advertise with zero reviews? [02:47]

What to consider before advertising your new product on Amazon [05:26]

Alternatives to advertising new products on Amazon [07:46]

Key things to focus on for launch campaigns [11:09]

Sponsored Brands for new product launch [17:05]

Should you utilize auto campaigns when launching new products? [19:41]