Driving & Measuring Off-Amazon Traffic

A significant percentage of Amazon shoppers begin their purchase journey with a Google search. By running Google to Amazon campaigns, you can send this audience directly to your Amazon listings – bypassing competitors in the process.

A majority of U.S. consumers go directly to Amazon to start their purchase journey. But another popular kickoff of the process? Search engines, of course. According to eMarketer, nearly half of U.S. shoppers begin their product hunt on search engines. And here, Google reigns king.

So, what if you could strategically tie these powerful platforms together to benefit your brand on Amazon? Well, you can.

Advertising on Amazon is an increasingly competitive space – anything that can give you an edge against your competition is a welcomed weapon in your advertising arsenal. By setting up Google Search ads that direct traffic to your Amazon listing, you can capture more market share while possibly reaping a few other benefits, too.

And here’s the best part – you can then use Amazon Attribution, a tab in your ad console, to measure performance for these Google campaigns that are driving traffic to your Amazon product detail page.

Benefits of Google to Amazon Ads

The biggest question we get when talking about Google to Amazon (G2A) Search ads is “why send traffic to Amazon when I could send it to my website?”

Sure, you don’t have Amazon fees on your direct-to-consumer site, but it’s important to take a look at your conversion rate. Typically, a DTC site sees a 1-2% conversion rate, compared to Amazon that sits around 12-15%.

Then you have the Brand Referral Bonus. On average (depending on your category), Amazon offers a 10% bonus for every sale you achieve from off-Amazon traffic. Pair the Brand Referral Bonus along with the higher conversion rate on Amazon, and those Amazon fees are mostly mitigated.

There is also potential that this additional traffic from an outside source offers a bump to sales velocity and will help your organic ranking within Amazon search results.

RETARGETING SYNERGIES

But wait, there’s more! You may certainly benefit from this additional traffic, with a portion of shoppers converting from these Google Search ads, but your objective should look beyond those conversions. ROAS shouldn’t be your only guiding key performance indicator.

To truly harness the full capabilities of the Google to Amazon approach, you’ll want to have re-targeting strategies in place, whether through Amazon’s DSP or through Sponsored Display. While those who click the search ad may not all convert immediately, they viewed your detail page and now they are added to your re-targeting audience. This approach will continually grow your bottom-of-funnel audience size and help scale results of these re-targeting campaigns.

Google to Amazon Search Ads

So, how do these campaigns work and what do these ads look like?

Google Search ads show up in search results and are keyword driven. If you are familiar with Amazon Sponsored Products, Search Ads are the Google equivalent.

Here’s a snapshot at what they look like:

It’s pretty easy to set up these campaigns in your Google Ads account. We like to breakout campaigns by product group and then organize ad groups around keyword themes – category keywords, brand keywords, and Amazon keywords. Because shoppers will often intend to purchase off Amazon but out of habit will search via Google, we like to do an ad group dedicated to Amazon keywords. These shoppers want to purchase off Amazon, so let’s get them there quickly!

And here’s why this process is simple – if you have a history of advertising on Amazon, you have a wealth of information in those campaigns. A gold mine of keywords! Harvest those keywords and build out your Google Search campaigns based on keywords that have pushed volume and good conversion.

Tying it Together with Amazon Attribution

Once you have your Google Search ads sending the shopper to your product detail page, it’s time to marry the data together. Amazon Attribution is a measurement tool that already lives in your ad console. You can find it under the Measurement & Reporting tab within the left-hand navigation.  

The Amazon Attribution console looks fairly similar to your regular ad console, offering metrics like Click-throughs, Total DPV, Total Sales, and also allows you to keep track of your Brand Referral Bonus. If you aren’t working with an agency like us that has software on the backend that automatically creates Amazon Attribution campaigns connected to your Google Ads campaigns, you’ll need to create a campaign manually.

Now you can watch the data come in, allowing you to measure the impact and performance of your Google campaigns directing traffic to your Amazon products.

Harness the Potential

As advertising on Amazon becomes more and more competitive with a finite amount of ad placements on the platform itself, looking to outside traffic sources could be the competitive edge you need to level-up your brand. Have additional questions or interested in learning more? Let’s chat!