The days leading up to Christmas and the new year are not the days to play around with your advertising. This is the time to zoom in on what works, double down there, and cut anything that adds unprofitable noise and distraction to the mix. Here are a few no-nonsense tips for maximizing your Amazon Advertising efforts during the remaining weeks of Q4.

Data: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Data is just numbers if you can’t extrapolate trends to use going forward. Between Prime Day and the Black Friday/Cyber Monday long weekend, you should have gotten a good sense of what drives traffic to your listings and what makes them convert. Don’t just sit on this data; it’s your blueprint for where you should be focusing your holiday Amazon Advertising. Make time to review it ASAP, and amp up the practices that worked and scale back on the ones that didn’t.
Remember, this time is not about experimenting. It’s about accuracy and sales and meeting customer demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. Get into your keywords and User Search Terms and go big on the proven winners (don’t be afraid to spend more during this make-or-break time) and drop the losers. Run strong, lean, and fearless campaigns based on the knowledge you’ve gathered.

It’s About Quality, Not Quantity

When we were kids, we loved to see a ton of presents under the tree. The more, the better! As we’ve grown up, we’ve learned that more is not always better and quality is what really matters. Think of your keywords similarly. Your Amazon Advertising campaigns should not be targeting keywords like “stocking stuffer” or “gifts for mom.” Sure, that’s sometimes how people will shop when looking for holiday items, but you will be competing against so many other sellers and over-reaching. It’s not a strategy, it’s a wish. Instead, stay true to your product and your brand and don’t spread your keywords all over the place. Focus on quality and targeting the right buyers with the keywords that resonate with them.
Also remember that Amazon encourages relevance in advertising campaigns. If you’re selling a 5,000-piece Lego set, no one is going to believe that’s a stocking stuffer. Amazon Advertising campaigns should be focusing on 3-5 main keywords. Your listings should be entirely optimized for these keywords. Specialize your campaigns, don’t generalize them or think that you can sneak something in and put one over on the Amazon algorithm. You can’t and it will hurt your relevance ranking and cost you for clicks that don’t convert.

Stretch Your Ad Budget While Your Competitors Max Out

You can pause campaigns any time you want, but in Seller Central, that requires going in and manually stopping and restarting them when you want those changes to take effect. Super inefficient and rife with chances for error.
Ignite has the perfect feature to maximize your budget and capitalize on key shopping times: Ad Scheduling (aka Dayparting)! This feature gives you the opportunity to automatically set when your ads run and when they don’t. This way, you don’t have to pause and restart manually and you get the most from your ad spend by hitting hard when and where the buying action is and eliminating the waste of dead-end clicks.
Remember that Amazon Advertising resets at 12:01 A.M. PST every day. This means that all of the Amazon sellers not using ad scheduling are already paying to run ads at when the clock strikes that time and their next day’s budget kicks in. Does that seem like the best time for conversions? Probably not (at least for US-based sellers). So why pay to advertise then?
Don’t. Instead save your ad budget for when people are actually shopping. How do you know when that is? Based on your orders overview, you can see when most of your buyers complete their purchases. Focus your ad power on those hours and not the fringe spells.

Wrap-Up

Amazon Advertising is all about being smart, strategic, methodical, and using the information that you’ve been gathering all along. The tips above will put you light years ahead of your competition and help you win the ads that convert when it comes to high-value holiday shoppers.
And remember, in terms of keyword power, bid suggestions, and ad scheduling, no other platform (including Seller Central’s Campaign Manager) can offer what Ignite delivers.

• If you’re already using Ignite, go forth and use all of its amazing exclusive features to make this your best holiday season ever.
• If you’re not yet using Ignite, start your free 30-day trial today and you’ll see just how much you can improve your ad campaigns.