Do You Need Both Amazon Sponsored Ads And Google Shopping Actions?

The Battle For Your Bucks

Amazon has three main advertising options: sponsored
products, sponsored brands (formerly known as headline search ads) and product
display ads. Product display ads are products that are related to a product
someone is searching for — e.g., if you’re shopping for a camera, you might see
a product display ad for a tripod or a bag.

Amazon continues to dominate, especially during the
holidays, so it’s crucial for brands to be where their customers are and have
clear strategies for using the channel. In fact, eMarketer predicts that Amazon Advertising will grow by 50% each year until at
least 2020. By utilizing Amazon sponsored ads, brands can take their Amazon
programs to the next level, ensuring they’re front and center on search results
pages and product pages when customers are in the research and discovery phase.

More than 37% of digital ad spending still goes to Google
for a reason, though. Shopping actions are Google’s direct attempt to take away
market share from Amazon and compete with Prime and other marketplaces. It has
been onboarding more brands over the past few months, and it expects these
product units to increase in volume during peak holiday time. Google makes a
commission on these product sales (as opposed to cost-per-click), so it stands
to reason that these units will be more profitable to Google and that it will
want to expand volume.

If a brand sees significant volume on Google Shopping, it’s
imperative that it uses the Shopping Actions program if it wants to protect
that volume and continue to dominate the Google search engine results pages.
One of the largest value adds for the Shopping Actions program versus Amazon is
that Google lets brands keep customer info and CRM data, while Amazon does not.
This enables brands to gain valuable insights into their customers and to
market to them again.

The retail space continues to get more marketplace-heavy as
users prefer the ease of going to fewer places to meet all their shopping
needs. By utilizing just Amazon or just Google, though, brands are missing out
on considerable market share.

A World For Both

Given the audience tools available from Amazon and Google,
businesses have an amazing opportunity to redefine brand marketing. The real
battle for your ad spend isn’t between Google and Amazon; it’s between
traditional media and new, measurable opportunities.

Both Google and Amazon allow you to measure your return on
investment. Traditional media — or non-measurable media — are still used for
brand-building, even though companies have no exact idea how well they’re
performing. Using both Amazon and Google will give companies the opportunity to
build their brands at a time when people need it most: when they’re actively
looking for a product.

Here are three ways to successfully integrate both
sponsored ads and Shopping Actions into your strategy in order to maximize your
advertising spend:

1. Carve a chunk out of your traditional media budget.

You should not only put
as much budget as you can toward ROI-driven activities, but you should also
carve out a portion of your brand-building budget for Google and Amazon.
Because both mediums are performance-driven, look at them as revenue drivers.
Then, examine all the opportunities you have available in these
performance-focused mediums, and use traditional metrics and more traditional
targeting to measure their success.

2. Don’t forget about SEO.

Keywords aren’t as critical to non-measurable advertising
mediums, but they’re incredibly important for Google and Amazon. Keyword-targeted
advertising plays
matchmaker, giving you an opportunity to use keywords to find shoppers by the
search terms they use. Google has a free AdWords Keyword Planner to help guide your keyword research so you can easily find
your audience. This way, your ads will be in front of the right consumers at
the right time.

3. Make changes on the basis of what could work.

Pay attention to what’s getting you the best results and
adjust your strategy from there. Then, look at what could work. Typically, “what’s almost
working” and “what could work” get cut. In today’s advertising
world, many companies believe a strategy either hits goals or doesn’t. But such
opportunities can work better and are more effective in driving awareness,
recognition of a brand, and sales than traditional avenues. In other words, don’t
make your performance-based marketing (e.g., Google and Amazon) solely for
performance: ensure that you’re using them for brand awareness, too.

Your advertising spend is no longer about putting your
dollars toward traditional mediums and hoping you get some customers as a
result. Thanks to performance-based advertising platforms such as Google and
Amazon, you no longer need to cross your fingers. So stop comparing the two,
and combine them to ensure you can compete for years to come.

Zach
Morrison, president
of Elite SEM, joined
the company in 2005 as a founding member. From its humble roots to the
award-winning agency it is today, he has been instrumental in the strategic
growth of the company. He has played a pivotal role in the acquisition and
management of key client accounts by establishing relationships with executives
at Tommy Bahama, Ethan Allen, NFL, Terminix/ServiceMaster, and several others.
Recently named Digiday Top Boss 2018, Morrison’s vision for Elite SEM,
expertise, and commitment to company culture has resulted in multiple
successful acquisitions and integrations leading Elite SEM to a 2018 projection
of close to 500 people and 90 million in revenue. Continuing Elite SEM’s transition into
a holistic digital marketing agency, Morrison has immersed himself in learning
more about integrated media strategies, analytics, and marketing science from
the industry’s top experts. His focus on analytics-based strategies has
resulted in clients achieving exponential growth and ROI through their
partnership with Elite SEM.