Nine things to check before you spend another dollar on Amazon ads

Why nine

An Amazon listing fails in a small number of ways, and they compound. A listing that is not indexed for a query cannot rank for it, so the ads on that query are paying for a position the listing can never hold. A listing with the wrong images converts poorly, so every dollar of traffic returns less. Each check below answers one question, and the order matters, because the later checks only make sense once the earlier ones are answered.

• Paid versus organic. How much of your sales are your ads buying? A high and flat share means the ads are renting a position the listing is not earning.
• Indexing. Which of your keywords does Amazon actually index? A term that is not indexed cannot rank, and spend on it is wasted before the click.
• Rankings. Where do you sit on the searches that matter, organically and in sponsored placements, and is the paid position building an organic one or replacing it?
• Market share. What is your share of impressions, clicks, and purchases on the queries you compete on? Search Query Performance answers this per query, and the gap between click share and purchase share is the conversion story.
• Query states. Every search query sorted into dominating, winning, competing, opportunity, or bleeding, which is the list of decisions the account has been avoiding.
• Traffic. Where are the missing impressions? Queries with demand where the listing does not appear, and placements where it appears but does not get clicked.
• Conversion. What is costing you the sale on the page? Price against the query, review count and rating against the competitors on that query, the main image, the first bullet, the A+ module a buyer actually reaches.
• Design. Images and content against your category. The category sets the visual standard, and a listing that looks like the third best option converts like it.
• Sales. The trend and what is driving it. Growth from a promotion, from a competitor's stockout, and from a rank gain look the same on a chart and mean opposite things.

What the checks produce

Run in order, the nine checks produce one written read of a listing and its advertising: what is broken, what it is costing, and what to do first.

Write it down

Write the findings down in the order of the checks, with what each one is costing. A list that names the query and the cost gets understood, and it can be handed to the person who has to fix it and kept for the follow-up.