From the surface, AMS ads look simple enough with nothing overly complicated when you go in to set things up and create your ad. The problem lies in its simplicity. Most confuse simplicity with easy and so don’t get too far to truly understand how to use AMS profitably. To get your ads to produce great results, it takes a bit more work than simply putting an ad up and letting it run. Without proper attention, your ads won’t perform very well.
Here is a list of the 5 most common mistakes people are making with their AMS ads and how to correct it.
1. Making Keyword Assumptions
Assuming which keywords work is probably the biggest mistake most people make with AMS ads. When I first started with AMS, I made the same mistake in assuming which keywords would work for my books. I based my keyword selection on what I thought made sense. When you do this, you miss out on keyword opportunities that could be very profitable for your books. I have found highly profitable keywords that I would personally consider unrelated to my niche.
When conduction your keyword research, never assume which keywords will and won’t work. Test it and let the market tell you. This is vital to finding keywords that work for your book. Testing is important for creating profitable ads on any platform and this applies to AMS as well.
Next time you find a keyword that you think won’t work, test it out first before you knock it.
2. Building a Keyword List the Wrong Way
There is a right way to building a keyword list and a wrong way. The wrong way is to build a keyword list based on what you think will work. If you are in non-fiction and your book is on self-help, you may come up with a bunch of self-help related keywords off the top of your head. The problem with this is there is no data to back up whether these keywords are what people are searching for.
The best way is to use tools like Google Keyword Planner to see what people are actually typing to find content related to your niche. You can also use Amazon’s search bar. Start typing a word in the search bar and you will see a suggestion box. These are terms people are typing on Amazon to find products. The search terms closest to the top are always the ones searched the most. These are just two methods you can use to find keywords/search terms people are using. This takes away from guesswork.
When building your list for your AMS ads, make sure you are looking at the market for what people are typing instead of guessing based on what makes sense.
3. Not Collecting Enough Keywords
With Sponsored Products, you can add up to 1000 keywords on a single ad. Take advantage of this and get in as many keywords as possible. Use the methods mentioned in the last point to build a list of keywords for your campaigns. Gather as many as you can. Try to collect at least 200 keywords/search terms for your AMS ads.
The more testing you can do with your AMS ads, the quicker you can find the keywords that work for your book. Testing is key to success in marketing, regardless of the platform, so make sure you get as many keywords in your ad campaigns as possible. My minimum is 200 but I like to have at least 500 when testing.
4. Not Monitoring Your Ads
AMS is not a set it and forget it marketing platform, you need to be monitoring your ads performance regularly. Set a routine, whether it’s daily, every other day, or weekly. Make a habit of checking in on your ads to ensure you are not overspending, that your ads are performing and have consistent impressions, and most of all, are getting clicks to drive traffic to your book’s page on Amazon.
You need to be adjusting your bids as you find profitable keywords within your ads. Bid adjustment is important to ensure you keep showing up in search results and to find the sweet spot that has the best return. None of this can be done unless you monitor your AMS ads.
5. Not Tracking Your Ad Data
Majority of users using AMS are not tracking their ad data. Ad data is the impressions, clicks, spend, and total sales, amongst others, that your ad accumulates over time. At the time of writing, AMS US does not support tracking of daily metrics. You are only ever shown the total accumulation of each data point for your ads. This breeds a problem with AMS ads. If you are not tracking your ad, how do you know if it’s still performing well? You can’t. This is why it’s important to track your data.
If you track your ads data and you make an adjustment, like bid adjustments, you can see how that affects the overall performance over the next few days. One of the big reasons I track my ads is to see if the ad is still performing well enough to it continue running. If my ads impressions dramatically decrease, I know it’s time to create a new one. If I don’t track the metrics, I would never know if it’s time to create new ads.
These are the 5 biggest mistakes most people are making with AMS ads. If you want to profit off of AMS, make sure you have these 5 points on lock!
If you want to learn more about AMS, maximize your ads performance, and boost your book sales, I have an in-depth course that discusses all this and a ton more. I also show you my exact step-by-step formula to create profitable ads. You can check it out here.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I hope you found it valuable and you learned a thing or two!