Amazon Marketing Cloud: Optimize Your Campaigns and Boost Sales
To boost visibility and increase sales, sellers often run advertising campaigns across different platforms. However, collecting and analyzing data from multiple channels to develop an effective strategy can be challenging. This is where Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) comes in, as it provides a streamlined solution to simplify the process.
In this article, we’ll help you gain an understanding of AMC and illustrate how the AMZScout toolkit can support your marketing analysis, so you can refine and elevate your Amazon strategy.
Table of contents
What is Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Amazon Marketing Cloud is a set of tools that tracks customer behavior both on and off Amazon. It collects data on shoppers' interactions with ads, such as clicks and engagement patterns. While personal information like first and last names is encrypted, AMC generates detailed reports with key statistics on audience demographics, ad performance, and more.
Sellers can use this data to help them optimize factors influencing ad reach, targeting, and customer engagement. This helps them refine their advertising strategies and ultimately boost sales.
Benefits of Using AMC for Amazon Sellers
AMC might seem complex at first, leaving sellers wondering if it’s worth the effort. To help you decide, check out the key benefits:
Time-saving: AMC consolidates reports into one platform, which streamlines cross-platform testing and eliminates the need for multiple sources.
Cost-effective: It’s a free tool provided by Amazon, with optional premium features available for advanced users.
Deeper analytics: Integrates cross-channel data to provide a clear understanding of the market and help you optimize budget allocation.
Customized approach: Offers tailored queries aligned with your specific marketing goals and objectives.
These insights are essential for crafting a marketing strategy that promotes your brand and products effectively. Now let’s explore how to get started with Amazon Marketing Cloud.
Setting Up and Getting Started with Amazon Marketing Cloud
Using AMC can be challenging due to its technical nature and the skills required to set it up effectively. If you find the process overwhelming, consider involving developers or technical experts to ensure seamless integration. Below is a brief overview of the setup process to help you understand the general steps involved:
Step 1: Request Access to AMC
To start using Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), you need to meet the following eligibility criteria:
Location: Be based in one of the 17 countries supported by AMC (list available on Amazon’s site).
Agreement: Have an Amazon DSP Master Service Agreement (MSA) in place.
Active campaigns: Have campaigns live or planned on Amazon DSP within the past 28 days.
AWS account: For API use, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account is required.
Once you confirm your eligibility, log in to your Amazon Ads account and complete the registration form by providing basic personal and business information. After submission, a team member from Amazon will contact you within a few business days to finalize the setup.
Step 2: Connect Your Data Sources
Integrate your key data sources, such as CRM, website analytics, email marketing platforms, and others. This step centralizes all your data within AMC, enabling seamless analysis and comprehensive reporting. By unifying data, you gain a clearer picture of customer behavior across various touchpoints, which enhances the accuracy of your insights and strategy.
Step 3: Build Your First Query
You can use a pre-built template or craft a custom SQL query to tailor the analytics to your specific business goals. Templates provide a straightforward option for common analyses, while custom queries allow for flexibility in exploring unique insights relevant to your strategy.
Step 4: Export Insights
After completing your analysis, export the generated reports for deeper evaluation and actionable insights. These reports can help you refine your marketing campaigns by enhancing performance and aligning them with your business goals more effectively.
When applied strategically, AMC transforms data into actionable insights, helping sellers analyze their audience. However, audience analysis is just one piece of a comprehensive marketing strategy. To achieve long-term success, sellers should also focus on other critical aspects. Let's explore how to research these below.
Amazon Marketing Analysis Strategy
To increase your sales, you need to align your business with current market trends and position your brand effectively. This involves analyzing several key aspects, with important areas of focus, including:
Ad and Audience Insights
In order to craft marketing strategies that resonate with your buyers’ preferences and needs, and ultimately drive higher engagement, understanding your audience is critical. AMC enables you to gather data on customer demographics and behavior across various platforms related to your product. This helps you assess if you’re reaching the right audience, and experiment with new strategies more effectively.
AMC provides insights on customers’ gender and age, allowing you to tailor your ads. For example, if most customers are young male adults, you can focus on tech features to boost engagement.
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is commonly conducted during the product research phase to assess whether a product is worth selling and aligns with your business objectives. However, it’s equally important to revisit this analysis periodically, as market dynamics and consumer preferences can evolve over time.
Performing a SWOT analysis regularly helps you reassess your product’s market position, adapt to shifts in demand, and identify new opportunities for growth. With the AI Product Analysis feature in the AMZScout PRO AI Extension, this process becomes quick and effortless. The tool not only evaluates your product's current potential, but also identifies areas where you can enhance your marketing strategy.
For instance, your skincare cream may have initially stood out for its anti-aging benefits. Over time, as eco-friendly trends grow, a repeated SWOT analysis could highlight the need to emphasize its natural, sustainable ingredients.
Competitor Analysis
Studying your competitors' strategies, including their ads, pricing, and product offerings, ensures that you stay competitive while maintaining profitability. Additionally, analyzing their customer engagement tactics can reveal valuable approaches to help you attract and retain your own audience. These insights allow you to improve your performance and identify areas for differentiation.
Competitor analysis helps you identify areas where competitors excel and strategies that may be worth adopting. For example, if a competitor has fast customer service, you could implement a chatbot to improve response times and enhance customer satisfaction.
Keyword Analysis
When running sponsored ads, analyzing the effectiveness of your current keywords is crucial in order to connect with your target audience and optimize ad performance. Over time, keywords that once worked well may become less effective due to market trends or increased competition. Regular keyword analysis helps you identify underperforming terms and reveals opportunities to refine your strategy.
With Amazon Marketing Cloud, you can determine if your keywords are ineffective (such as having low click-through rates, high costs, or poor conversion rates). If this is the case, you can use AMZScout's Keyword Search to identify new, high-performing keywords that better align with customer behavior and your product’s niche. Explore this article for quick tips on selecting impactful keywords that align with customer needs.
For instance, if you sell yellow sneakers and you notice your existing keywords aren't driving results, finding fresh, relevant terms (e.g. "yellow sports shoes") can help improve targeting, reduce wasted spend, and boost ROI.
Customer Review Analysis
Analyzing customer reviews for your products and competitors’ helps you identify common pain points and preferences. This feedback guides improvements to meet customer expectations more effectively and stand out in the market. However, it’s better to focus on identifying patterns rather than relying on individual opinions.
Customer review analysis helps identify features that customers praise and common complaints. For example, if there's frequent feedback about sizing issues, you can address this by updating the product description or offering a size guide.
Applying these strategies consistently provides a comprehensive market overview, enabling you to refine your approach, enhance brand visibility, and boost sales.
Conclusion
With the help of AMC, you can gain insights to help you enhance your ads’ performance. Consider using the AMZScout toolkit to streamline various tasks and enhance your marketing strategy effectively. This approach can boost your conversion rates significantly and help you manage your budget more efficiently.
