Scaling Amazon PPC: How to Combine Keyword & Product Targeting for Maximum Growth

Your Amazon ad campaigns are stuck in neutral. You’re getting sales, but you know you could be doing more. You’ve heard about the power of combining keyword and product targeting, but you’re not sure where to start or how to do it effectively.

A lot of Amazon sellers treat keyword and product targeting as separate strategies, but the reality is they work best together. When you combine them strategically, you can unlock new growth opportunities, lower your ACOS, and scale your campaigns faster.

In this article, we’ll break down exactly how to combine keyword and product targeting to maximize your Amazon PPC performance. Let’s dive in.

Understanding the Power of Combined Targeting

Most sellers focus on either keyword targeting OR product targeting. They’re missing out on a synergistic effect.

Keyword Targeting: Reaching Customers Actively Searching

Keyword targeting focuses on showing your ads to customers who are actively searching for specific terms related to your products. This is great for capturing direct demand and driving sales for established products.

Think of it like this: someone types “organic cotton baby blanket” into the Amazon search bar. If you’re targeting that keyword, your ad has a good chance of showing up.

Product Targeting: How it Works

Many people think that Product Targeting means that you will show up on the detail page of your competitor’s products and that is true but it’s not the full story.

When you target a competitor ASIN you are basically following that ASIN around Amazon. That’s why you will still see terms (not ASINs) in your search term report from product targeting campaigns.

The Synergistic Effect: Why Both Are Essential

Using both keyword and product targeting allows you to cover more ground and reach customers at different stages of the buying journey.

• Increased Visibility: You’re showing up in search results and on product pages.
• Broader Reach: You’re targeting both direct demand (keywords) and potential customers (product pages).
• Better ACOS: Strategic product targeting can often lead to a lower ACOS than broad keyword campaigns.

Step-by-Step: Implementing a Combined Targeting Strategy

Here’s a process you can use to implement a combined keyword and product targeting strategy. It focuses on identifying opportunities and testing effectively.

Step 1: Keyword Research and Identification

Start by identifying relevant keywords for your products. Use tools like Helium 10, Jungle Scout, or even Amazon’s own search term report to find high-converting keywords.

Focus on both:

• Branded keywords: Terms that include your brand name (use sparingly).
• Generic keywords: Terms that describe your product category.
• Long-tail keywords: More specific phrases that indicate higher intent.

Step 2: Analyze Competitor Listings and Identify Targets

Next, analyze your top competitors and identify their best-selling products. These are prime targets for your product targeting campaigns.

Look for:

• Products with high ratings and reviews.
• Products with strong sales velocity (indicated by “Best Seller” badges).
• Products that are similar to yours but have a higher price point.

Step 3: Launch Separate Keyword and Product Targeting Campaigns

Create separate campaigns for keyword and product targeting to maintain control and easily track performance.

• Keyword Campaigns: Use a mix of broad, phrase, and exact match keywords.
• Product Targeting Campaigns: Target specific ASINs of your competitor products.

Step 4: Monitor Performance and Optimize

This is where the magic happens. Closely monitor the performance of both campaigns and make adjustments based on the data.

• Keyword Campaigns: Negate low-performing keywords, adjust bids for high-converting terms, and add new relevant keywords.
• Product Targeting Campaigns: Negate ASINs that aren’t driving sales, adjust bids for high-performing targets, and test new competitor products.

Step 5: Refine Your Strategy Based on Search Term Data

The key to combining these strategies lies in analyzing your search term reports. See which search terms are converting well in your keyword campaigns and then use that data to refine your product targeting.

Example: You find that the search term “bamboo baby swaddle” is converting at a high rate in your keyword campaign. Now, target product pages of competitors selling bamboo baby swaddles.

Real-World Examples and Results

Let’s look at a couple of examples of how this combined strategy can drive results.

Example 1: Boosting Sales for a New Product Launch

A client launched a new line of organic baby clothing. They started with keyword campaigns targeting terms like “organic baby clothes” and “organic cotton onesie.”

They also launched product targeting campaigns targeting competitor listings selling similar organic baby clothes.

Results: Within 60 days, they saw a 35% increase in sales and a 20% reduction in ACOS compared to running keyword campaigns alone.

Example 2: Increasing Market Share for an Existing Product

Another client wanted to increase market share for their existing line of bamboo baby blankets. They combined their existing keyword campaigns with targeted product campaigns focusing on competitor listings with lower ratings.

Results: In 90 days, they saw a 15% increase in sales and a 10% increase in overall market share.

Key Takeaways and Actionable Steps

The key to scaling your Amazon PPC is to think beyond just keyword targeting. By combining it with strategic product targeting, you can reach a wider audience, capture more sales, and improve your overall campaign performance.

Here’s what to do right now:

1. Identify Your Top Competitors: Find their best-selling products.
2. Launch Product Targeting Campaigns: Target those ASINs with relevant ads.
3. Analyze Your Search Term Reports: Find high-converting terms and use them to refine your product targeting.

By implementing this combined strategy, you can take your Amazon PPC to the next level and achieve sustainable growth.

Key Discussion Points from the Episode

Here are some of the most valuable insights Andrew and Stephen shared during the full episode discussion:

That’s a good point. That’s a good point. Especially the, you know, negating everything that’s converting in there.

You’re now allowing this auto campaign to go out and find completely new searches that you have zero, or maybe have zero performance data on to actually intelligently or formulaically set the bids for performance based on those keywords. So your, your performance could vary pretty significantly after you negate all those terms and start showing up on new searches after doing that. That’s a really good point.

And just to play devil’s advocate here in this conversation, the one potential reason people might rebuttal this argument would be that they’re using the auto campaigns to find new keywords so that they can harvest new terms into their exact targeting or manual targeting. So if they continue to allow the converting terms to stay in the auto campaign without being negated, the campaign is probably and sometimes will optimize towards just the terms that are converting really well for it and not really seek to explore new search queries to show up on new terms that maybe you weren’t targeting before. So if you’re negating, then maybe you show up on, you find more relevant terms.

Now the, the counterargument to that would be that those terms that your auto campaign would pick up if it were, if you were negating all your converting terms, you’re probably just going to pick up those terms in a broad or a phrase match ad group or targeting type. So you could, you could kind of offset that. You’re going to have other research campaigns outside of just your auto campaigns that you’re going to be harvesting from.

So that’s just another point to add there to this discussion. Yeah, so certainly, you know, test it. We’re not die hards on either one.

We’ve done both. Andrew and I were working on an account together in which we were negating via keywords, and we did have that issue of how do we now optimize these bids on the auto campaigns when we’ve just negated everything that was actually driving the sales, which we were optimizing towards. So we’ve done both, but my default is to not negate.

This isn’t a question. This is just a comment from Darob Garcia. He said, I really think you guys should have a course as soon as possible.

Appreciate the value of these things that you’ve discussed. And then there was a reply from To Baraja. Baraha.

To Baraha saying, count me into for the course. So getting some interest around the course, Andrew, maybe we’ll do it. We, we played with the idea back and forth around.

Should we create an online course kind of covering all these topics, a bit more in depth, a bit more technical, a bit more premium? So maybe, yeah, we’ll keep thinking about it. That’s a lot of work, guys.

That’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of time to be put into something like that. So we’ll talk about it.

We’ll kick around the idea. So let’s transition into the topic for today. How do you grow your Amazon PPC with keyword and product targeting?

Now, before we kind of really get, get into how we’re actually going to be doing this, harvesting keywords, growing our accounts. Andrew, why don’t you walk us through the different types of targeting and, yeah, let’s just kind of define a couple terms.

This article is based on Episode 8 of That Amazon Ads Podcast. Subscribe for weekly Amazon PPC strategies.