Most sellers understand how important it is to have a tight, competitive supply chain strategy when selling on Amazon.
Indeed, SellerPlex helps with financial, operational, and inventory planning for your Amazon business. Getting these elements right has a huge impact on profitability on Amazon.
Moreover, this post specifically explores how Amazon PPC suffers from a poorly managed supply chain. And what you can do to minimize this. Whether you’re running ads on your own or partnering with an agency like Incrementum Digital, these all sellers should understand about their supply chain’s impact on PPC performance.
Furthermore, here’s how your supply chain impacts PPC performance on Amazon:
Sponsored Brand Buybox does not toggle ads on or off.
When a Sponsored Product ad launches, it automatically shuts off when the seller loses the buybox.
Unfortunately, for sellers with complicated supply chains, this is not the case for Sponsored Brand ads.
In addition, when a seller advertises a product in a Sponsored Brand ad while buybox splits, they should expect to split attributed sales. Amazon does not shut Sponsored Brand ads off when buybox drops.
Consider that Amazon’s DSP and Sponsored Display ads operate in the same way, only worse.
When you pay for impressions through DSP. SD ads on Amazon, nearly 90% of the traffic that ends up on your listing comes from a “view-through” action. This means customers use a search engine between seeing your ad and reaching your listing.
When a product doesn’t have buybox, or 2-day shipping. Or isn’t even visible on the page due to Georanking, sellers end up paying for visibility. That ends up benefiting their competitor.
Sponsored Product ads can run while your listing isn’t 100% back in stock…
Notably, Amazon automatically shuts Sponsored Product ads off when sellers run out of stock.
For example, here’s the caveat: before the stock reaches amazon’s warehouse your ads will go live even if the product is not inside the warehouse yet.
This is a feature which can be toggled off through Seller Central. And something Incrementum’s team encourages all clients to do as soon as the first ad launches.
Georanking can have a huge impact on organic visibility…
Did you know that organic ranking varies depending on the customer’s location? Specifically, proximity to the nearest warehouse plays a key role.
If a competitor’s product is well stocked near a customer in Minnesota and your product is not, know that Amazon’s Georanking-capable A9 algorithm will show the competitor’s product first. Additionally, this emphasizes the importance of a diverse warehouse strategy across the marketplace of your choice.
Consider the surfboard example: If you’re selling wetsuits especially designed for surfing. It makes more sense to stock warehouses near the United State’s coastlines vs. the middle of the country.
Longer delivery windows will hurt conversion rates, ultimately tanking ACoS…
Furthermore, convey, Inc.,ran a survey to explore the impact shipping speed has on conversion rates. As a result, here’s what was found: Of more than 1,500 shoppers surveyed. 98% confirm that shipping impacts brand loyalty. 84% report they are unlikely to return after just one negative experience—a 34% percent increase from 2017.
For better or worse, Jeff Bezos trained consumers to expect 2-day shipping from almost anywhere in the United States.
In fact, choosing fulfillment by Amazon is the #1 way to improve the shipping experience on Amazon.com. If FBA isn’t an option for your business. Establishing the fastest delivery times possible within your FBM network should be high-priority for your business if you’re running sponsored ads on Amazon. Sellers pay for clicks whether the customer converts or not.
In conclusion, here are three things to prevent your supply chain from hurting PPC performance:
- Only advertise products with strong buybox. If you’re running ads through an agency, bring the following question to your next checkin: “what percentage of my Sponsored Brand and/or DSP ads are advertising products with poor buybox?”
- Find your way to the stranded inventory page in Seller Central and select “edit automatic-action settings”. For listings that you don’t want automatically relisted, select Opt out of auto action in the drop-down arrows to the right of the listing.
- Partner with a provider like Seller Plex to ensure that your georanking, delivery times.
Overall supply chain strategy aligns with your brand goals.
Overall, thanks for reading! If you’re interested in a free PPC audit from Incrementum’s expert PPC team, visit our website and click “Get Started”.
Guest post
AUTHOR: Kate Bray, Incrementum Digital’s VP of Marketing
If you’re working towards selling your business, it’s important to have all of your financials, logistics. And marketing in order so that you can get the best possible SDE. Using SellerPlex is a great way to manage logistics, finances. And optimize product listings – but late-stage marketing efforts are often harder to come by. One of the best marketing efforts for seasoned sellers to scale up their products is Amazon Editorial Recommendations.