Amazon Advertising is growing fast and becoming more diverse. In the meantime, Amazon is increasingly competing with Google and Facebook. This is because Amazon has many data about customer behavior. Sellers and vendors can place ads in Amazon Product Search (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display) or you can place bids for ad space on other websites with Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform).
Amazon Marketing Cloud allows you to analyze the effectiveness of your advertising efforts across campaigns and channels. The analysis tool provides you with insights to optimize the performance of campaigns, for example. You learn which combination of media generates the highest sales for the target group via corresponding evaluations. In addition, you understand how campaigns affect the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel describes the most critical points of the customer journey, from seeing the product for the first time to making the purchase. This knowledge will help you plan, measure, and optimize advertising investments.
This article explains how to use Amazon Marketing Cloud and what benefits it can offer you.
What is Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Amazon Marketing Cloud is a reporting and analytics tool based on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. With the help of Amazon Marketing Cloud, you can access different customer behavior data. You get access to a database to which you can make further queries. The database contains various metrics about your campaigns. Thus, it is a so-called query-based system. You enter SQL queries into the database, and Amazon returns the requested values. You are provided an interface (API) to integrate the data into your database.
With Amazon Marketing Cloud, you can perform different analyses of the data sets to get aggregated reports. Over 1,000 metrics are queryable.
Examples:
- How many products were sold in the last x days based on the ad?
- How many users have interacted with the ad?
- At what times do most purchases and ad clicks take place?
- What is the purchase rate?
With knowledge, you can accurately evaluate DSP and PPC campaigns:
- You understand which impact a campaign achieves at which point of the marketing funnel
- You can see the reach of your campaign
- You see the effectiveness and interaction of different media channels. You see which channels are preferred by which target group, how often they are used, and which actions are carried out on the channels
Who can use the Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Amazon Marketing Cloud is available to advertisers on Amazon for free via the Amazon API.
Requirements to use AMC:
- You need a signed Amazon DSP MSA (Master Service Agreement).
- You are planning campaigns or have data on campaigns that have been live on Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform) in the last 28 days
- You need someone who has SQL skills. SQL (Structured Query Language) is a database language that allows you to make queries to databases
Marketing Cloud is available in Europe as of March 2022 on marketplaces in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. It is helpful for merchants who invest in Amazon DSP and Sponsored Ads (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands).
How do I register for the Amazon Marketing Cloud?
Click here (opens new window) to enter the Amazon Ads console and start registering. First, Amazon asks you to select the country where you want to advertise. Then you will fill out a contact form:
Once submitted, an account manager from the AMC team will contact you to create and set up the Marketing Cloud for you. The typical turnaround time is three to five days.
How does the Amazon Marketing Cloud work?
The Amazon Marketing Cloud works with instances. An instance contains the data of one advertiser at a time. You can use one or more IDs within the Advertising Console. You use multiple IDs, for example, to distinguish different business units or brands from each other. One advantage of AMC is that even if you have different advertiser IDs, you can still evaluate your data bundled in one AMC instance.
You initially see the advertising data for the past 28 days in the AMC console. From then on, the data is stored for up to a year, and you can access the data.
You use SQL queries to search the database for specific information. You can make various queries to get the data from Amazon Marketing Cloud. If you know SQL queries, you can make the queries yourself. Otherwise, hire a developer.
Since all customer information can only be handled according to Amazon's privacy policy, Amazon provides the data anonymously. Amazon Marketing Cloud only performs aggregated analytics to protect customer privacy. That is why you cannot export data sets, and individual information is lost. For example, if only one customer performs a conversion, Amazon will show you that no conversion was performed because otherwise, you would be able to trace the customer. All aggregations must have at least 100 users. This ensures, on the one hand, that the reports are meaningful and, on the other hand, that the customer's privacy is protected.
Advantages of Amazon Marketing Cloud
As described earlier, Amazon Marketing Cloud lets you perform analytics across multiple data sets to create aggregated reports. With the help of the reports, you can take some actions to make your advertising efforts more efficient and targeted.
Understanding the target groups
One advantage of AMC is developing a better understanding of your target groups. You can analyze the buyers of your products and their (click and buy) behavior down to the smallest detail. For example, you can see what percentage of buyers are male or female, their age, income, or when customers are online or make a purchase. If more women buy your products, you should advertise more to women and consider this knowledge, for example, when designing the ad. If your customers are more likely to be online in the evening, you should adapt your campaigns to the time of day.
Likewise, you can see how many consumers have seen your ad in different phases of the marketing funnel. This will tell you which campaigns lead to brand awareness and which are crucial for purchasing.
Development of new attribution models
Attribution models analyze a customer's touch points to conversion. For example, each attribution model assigns a value proposition to a marketing channel.
You can create new attribution models in the AMC console to see how different advertising investments contribute to conversions. For example, you can see how your investments in display or sponsored ad campaigns contribute to achieving your goals to optimize your campaign investments.
A key benefit of AMC is that you can measure the impact of advertising on your Amazon store and campaigns on your online store. You use Amazon's customer data to send customers to your website.
Leverage new reporting capabilities
Amazon Attribution lets you capture and evaluate the impact of your marketing campaigns outside of Amazon. The advantage of Marketing Cloud over Amazon Attribution is the flexibility of data retrieval.
The main advantage of Amazon Marketing Cloud is the quality of the reports and the comprehensive and detailed data you provide. The better informed you are about how customers become aware of your products, the more efficiently you can design your advertising measures. When customers see your ads before your competitors' ads, you stand out from the competition and stay one step ahead of them.
Conclusion
With the help of Amazon Marketing Cloud, you can access various customer data. The advantage of Marketing Cloud is that you get data across all channels. Use the data to understand your customers' behavior better. Knowing when customers shop, how old customers are, or whether they are high- or low-spenders, you can target your advertising more effectively, optimizing your investment.
