by Jessica Dahlquist, Director of Operations | PPC
What does it take to successfully manage your PPC Ads on Amazon? It seems like there’s no clear answer, and that’s why so many sellers do it incorrectly. They overspend on keywords that don’t convert or they don’t have the ad budget to make an impact because they can’t generate the sales. While there can be some uncertainty with Amazon PPC, we’ve had some incredible results with our clients, as we manage PPC the TurnKey way. Today, let’s look at one of these clients.
A client came to us in early 2019 struggling with their PPC. They knew they wanted different results, but didn’t know how to achieve them on their own. They hired TurnKey to help them identify the holes in their PPC management and alleviate that stress in their business.
The first thing we did was pull the data from 2018. From January to October of 2018, they spent $203,000 in ad dollars. In return, they were generating $871,000 in ad-related sales. Their ACOS was at 23% when we started with them. So, we had our baseline and a very healthy budget to work with and gather data from. Please note that while this particular client had a large amount of capital to dedicate to PPC, you don’t have to have a massive budget in order to see real results. It’s a matter of using your budget wisely.
Next, we analyzed the campaigns they had been running and began generating a plan. At TurnKey we build campaigns according to the following tenets:
- Start with low risk keywords
- Strive for easy optimizations
- Run multiple types of campaigns (automatic, manual, branded, etc…)
- Add negative keywords into campaigns
A huge pitfall we see with sellers is that they set up campaigns once, and then never revisit them. They don’t have the time to devote to monitoring the success of the campaigns, analyze the data, and make ongoing adjustments. But, that is what truly makes the difference between throwing money at ads that might work and strategically utilizing your ad spend.
When we work with PPC clients, we are doing the following on a regular basis:
- Optimize ads on a weekly basis
- Harvest new keywords, including negative keywords
- Adjust bids and budgets to build PPC profits
- Continuously expand and build new campaigns
There are some things about Amazon that are incredibly predictable and other things that are unexpected. When a seller fails to analyze the data that Amazon provides, especially the analytics related to PPC, they are leaving so much on the table when it comes to revenue and maximizing their ad budget.
So, how did TurnKey change the game for this client? Well, in 2019 in the same timeframe of January to October, this client increased their ad budget by just $40,000 and raised their ad-related sales to $1.2M. That’s $350,000 in growth, and that is JUST in ad-related sales. Not only that, but their ACOS was reduced to 20%, a number our client felt really good about.
It might seem like PPC is something that you can figure out, or you can set up automatic campaigns that will be “good enough.” Let this case study be a lesson to all sellers out there who are winging it. When you hire someone who specifically manages PPC full-time and is an expert at doing it the right way, you will see the benefits.
If you’re uncertain about what kind of results you can expect from Turnkey, you can try us month to month and just see. We bet that after a couple of months, you’ll never trust yourself to do it on your own again. Stick to the tasks you are truly gifted at and trust us with your PPC.
We’d love for you to be our next case study and success story. To learn more about our PPC Management and apply for our services you can head over here to chat with a member of our Client Success team. Let’s see some big numbers from you in 2020!
by Jessica Dahlquist, Director of Operations | Accelerators, Coaching, Motivation Monday
A Quick Note From TurnKey:
As of October 10, 2019, Amazon Giveaways is no longer a feature hosted by Amazon. We loved this strategy so much and are sad to see it go. That being said, the principles that made the giveaway effective still apply:
- Leverage social media, email lists, etc. in order to send people over to a landing page to collect even more customer email addresses.
- Use squeeze pages to share more information and connect with customers. Video is a fantastic medium to include on the landing page because it gives you the unique opportunity to talk to your customers and pitch to them as if you were in the same room.
- Offer a discount code to people who watch the video.
So don’t worry just because Amazon isn’t offering this feature anymore. You can still find ways to incorporate the aspects of this strategy in order to impress your customers and increase sales! If you need more support, we have lots of other strategies to help you grow your sales, so don’t hesitate to reach out.
On a scale of 1-10, how nervous do you get when it comes to staying compliant while trying to get reviews? I know…it can literally leave you feeling helpless as your niche is getting more and more saturated and you don’t want to overstep with any shady strategies that will get you slapped on the wrist. The rules surrounding customer reviews and giving away products have definitely changed in the Amazon world over the years, so how do you know what’s okay and what is not?
While there’s a whole list of terms you must adhere to on Amazon’s website, at TurnKey we try to focus on what you CAN do to get results, and not just what you can’t do. One of our favorite strategies is utilizing Amazon Giveaways. The giveaway is literally hosted BY AMAZON, and as long as you follow their rules, you are good to go. Our clients have seen huge returns by running Amazon Giveaways. We are talking $1k in product for $10k in trackable revenue from a Giveaway.
So what’s the secret? Well, it’s important to first know HOW to set up an Amazon Giveaway. We walk you step-by-step through how to do that on Episode 2 of our Playbook for Amazon Podcast. Then once you understand the process, how do you actually make it result in massive returns?
Our #1 tip for running a successful Amazon Giveaway is to include a promotion for customers that don’t win the giveaway. By giving them a discount for entering, you’re much more likely to have an immediate customer or a customer down the road.
And if you want a bonus tip… we love adding educational videos to the squeeze page for the Giveaway. This is your chance to connect with your customers, appeal to their emotions, and get them to buy into the “why” behind your product. Make sure your video focuses on the benefits of the product and how they will feel after they use it. That’s exactly how we 10x’d our investment for the client I mentioned above.
If you haven’t already given Amazon Giveaway a try, we HIGHLY recommend this tool for getting more sales and in turn more reviews. If you want more information on Growth Strategies, we have a course designed specifically for the seller who is looking to GROW!
Need a bit more help generating the reviews you need to gain sales? Check out our Review Generation Accelerator for step-by-step strategies to increase your review numbers!
by Jessica Dahlquist, Director of Operations | Coaching, Full-Service, Motivation Monday
We hear from budget-strapped Amazon sellers every day, who feel like they are hemorrhaging money. They are desperate to get their sales up, and they don’t know how to do so on their own. They would love an Amazon Fairy to come and sprinkle some magic fairy dust on their listings and make their products sell! But they don’t have the time or experience with Amazon necessary to make that happen on their own. Sound familiar?
The thing that many of these sellers don’t realize is that there is no shame in asking for help. In fact, behind every success story you’ve ever heard about, is a team of people supporting that successful person’s vision! The key is to recognize that you don’t know what you don’t know and seek out people who can help fill in the gaps on the road to success.
TurnKey’s founder, Jeff Lieber, saw the need in the market to offer sellers more support in growing their sales. He started by consulting for his friends who were struggling on Amazon, and sure enough… after a few months of his tips and tricks, sales started to turn around for them. In fact, those earliest consulting clients (William Painter and EcoQube) are STILL with Turnkey today.
So, if you already feel like you aren’t making enough money, when do you bring in an expert to help? Well, just like anything in business, you have to be willing to invest in the long-term vision of a product. If you know your competitors are doing $100k+/month on Amazon and you’re at $10k/month, you can feel pretty confident that if you have a good product and you’re willing to do the work, there’s room for significant sales growth and it’s worth trying to make room in the budget to hire an expert to help you to become a key player in the niche.
Hiring an expert will cost you money, but it will SAVE you in three areas:
- Time: The only thing we cannot buy more of is time and an expert can make your path to excellence so much more efficient by showing you exactly how things should be done the right way, versus you trying to figure things out the hard way.
- Optimization: If you were to hop on a call with one of our TurnKey team members, we could probably suggest 3-5 things right off the bat that we would improve about your listing, and that’s without even going into the backend. When you hire an expert they will bring things to your attention you may never have even thought of, and those details can make the difference in thousands of dollars in sales per month.
- Potential: You may not really know how your product will do on Amazon. The truth is some products crush it on Amazon while others fall flat. You could waste years trying to get your product to the top of the leaderboard not knowing that you were already close to the ceiling in your niche. When you bring in an expert, we can help manage your expectations and understand your product’s full potential on Amazon in a much shorter time frame. This will help you decide how much you should invest in developing this platform.
Now that you recognize you need an expert in your corner, the key is to be sure you are getting the level of involvement you need from that expert. At TurnKey, we offer options ranging from full-service Amazon management to one-on-one coaching, to accelerator courses, all the way down to monthly group coaching to ensure that we can meet any business where they are. We even offer PPC Management and done-for-you services.
If you’ll remember, earlier in the article I mentioned EcoQube, founded by Kevin Liang. Kevin was originally a full-service client who really valued the insights and growth we provided for his business. It allowed him to reach heights on Amazon that he always hoped were possible. Over time his needs changed, and when it made sense for him to launch an in-house Amazon management team he became a one-on-one coaching client. TurnKey is here to support sellers all along their journey. If you want to hear more about Kevin’s story and experience working with TurnKey in all our different services, tune into the Playbook for Amazon Podcast Episode 3.
If you’re considering hiring an expert, I urge you to take the plunge. Don’t sit around wishing you knew how to crack the Amazon success code when there are people who have already cracked it for you! Want to know what level of Amazon support you need? Apply today and we’ll analyze your business and come up with a plan that will meet your needs. There’s no risk and you might just get the Amazon fairy you’ve been dreaming of!
