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One of the quickest and simplest Amazon Ads Campaigns to set up is an Automatic Targeting Campaign.

And on the surface, these Campaigns sound better than sliced bread.

Here's Amazon's description of Automatic Targeting Campaigns:

"Your ad is automatically matched with keywords and products that are similar to the product you're advertising. It's based on previous shopping queries and your product information."

Sounds great, right?

This is why they're often the go-to Campaign for authors new to the world of Amazon Ads.

But after testing these Campaigns on and off for the past four and a half years, I don't think they're a good choice for many authors.

Shocked?

Ok, let's discuss...

Automatic Targeting Campaigns have their place, don't get me wrong.

But the purpose of Automatic Targeting Campaigns is as a research tool.

You're tapping into Amazon's trillions of data points it has on its customers and their behavior.

They will find keywords and ASINs (other books) that you may never have thought of, which could turn into sales and/or page reads.

But herein lies the problem...

You're paying Amazon to do the research for you.

And if Amazon knows very little about your books and your readers, and you have very little sales history, Automatic Targeting Campaigns are going to be taking a stab in the dark of which keywords and ASINs to target.

Sure, you can optimize your Automatic Targeting Campaigns by telling Amazon which keywords and ASINs not to target.

But they can still go awry and waste a lot of money.

I much prefer to have more control over what I'm spending our money on.

So, what's my approach to tapping into Amazon's data, retaining control over the targeting and without wasting a ton of money?

Deep Keyword Research

Yes, I said keywords; I'm not a fan of ASIN targeting, but that's a topic for another day.

Deep Keyword Research takes time, but the results and the profits will more than pay off.

I use Publisher Rocket for my keyword research.

It's a tool I use almost weekly as it gives me so many insights about keywords and reader behavior, specifically on Amazon.

I'll use Publisher Rocket and do a search for a root keyword such as "fantasy books" and dive down the rabbit hole for a good 30-60 minutes, discovering new keywords that may or may not be relevant.

Publisher Rocket provides a lot of data for every single keyword (in a simple, easy-to-understand format), but there are 2 key metrics I'm paying attention to:

→ Estimated Monthly Searches

→ Competitive Score

If I had to pick one metric to focus on it would be Estimated Monthly Searches.

Targeting keywords with less than 100 searches per month will get you nowhere with Amazon Ads.

So, I'm looking for keywords with at least 500+ searches per month.

Once I've collected 5-10 highly relevant keywords with a reasonable amount of monthly search volume, I'll set up a new Amazon Ads campaign that targets these keywords in Broad Match.

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Broad Match is one of the 3 Amazon Ads Match Types (Broad, Phrase and Exact). We'll cover these in a future edition of the newsletter, as it's a deep topic.

But for the purposes of this newsletter, here's how Amazon themselves describe Broad Match Keywords:

A shopping query can contain the keyword terms in any order. It may include singulars, plurals, variations, synonyms, and related terms as determined by the meaning of the keyword and the context of the advertised products.

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This Broad Match Campaign is my research Campaign.

It allows me to find other highly relevant keywords that I may not have thought of (heck, even Publisher Rocket may never have thought of).

Why?

By targeting Broad Match, we're keeping our keywords very open and allowing Amazon to match up our chosen keywords with shopper's search terms (what they're searching for when they come to Amazon).

And when we start driving traffic to our books and the sales and page reads start rolling in, we're sending strong signals to Amazon that our books are relevant to the keywords we're targeting.

This will help us start to rank organically for highly relevant keywords; meaning sales and page reads that don't cost us anything.

These Broad Match Campaigns still require optimization in the form of adjusting bids and adding negative keywords.

But for us, they offer a far more efficient alternative to Automatic Targeting campaigns.

And the best part; you can launch as many Broad Match Campaigns as your budget allows.

As I covered in a recent newsletter though, keep the number of keywords in your Campaigns to 10 or below.

When you've been running Amazon Ads for 3-6+ months, and you have plenty of data in your account (sales and/or page reads, spend and clicks), then it's time to start an Automatic Targeting Campaign up.

But until then, if you want my advice, don't pay Amazon to do the research for you.

Deep Keyword Research is your new best friend.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

To Your Success
– Matt