Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) has become a go-to advertising platform for brands looking to boost visibility and sales on Amazon. With proven performance at scale, AMS provides highly targeted promotional capabilities to reach Amazon’s vast buyer base. However, effectively integrating AMS into your end to end campaign management requires understanding the right timing and situations for activation. Certain scenarios lend themselves particularly well to launching AMS campaigns to maximize your advertising ROI.
Determining the ideal timing for implementing AMS advertising enables brands to capitalize on opportunities for growth and a strong return on ad spend. Here are the recommended circumstances for activating AMS campaigns to drive sales on Amazon:
- Launching new products
New product launches represent a prime opportunity for AMS advertising. Promoting your latest products right out of the gate helps establish visibility and discoverability on Amazon’s platform.
AMS ads can target shoppers searching for related products and direct them to your new item listings to generate that all-important initial traction. For products in competitive categories, AMS provides the extra launch boost needed to stand out from the crowd.
- Driving Demand During Peak Seasons
Seasonal peaks, such as holidays or event tie-ins, create demand surges for certain products. AMS enables capitalizing on high-volume seasonal keywords and purchase intent to advertise directly to interested shoppers in the moment.
Targeting seasonal product demand through AMS is an efficient way to spike sales during key promotional windows throughout the year.
- Clearing Excess Inventory
The ams advertising excels at driving turnover for excess product inventory. Creating campaigns specifically targeting your overstock SKUs can help liquidate surplus items faster.
Promoting last-unit and limited-time offers through AMS provides a sales catalyst to clear excess inventory in a profitable manner.
- Gaining share in competitive categories
In highly competitive e-commerce categories, AMS enables brands to actively vie for market share through paid advertising. You can target category buyers and compete directly using AMS product ads.
Sustaining category share over time requires an always-on AMS strategy to capture interested shoppers in hyper-competitive product segments.
- Promoting new sellers and stores
AMS is ideal for rapidly accelerating new seller profiles and Amazon stores. The self-serve capabilities allow any seller to start driving product visibility and discovery immediately.
New sellers can leverage AMS to kickstart sales momentum and establish a foothold on Amazon in competitive categories.
- Maintaining Sales During Seasonal Lulls
Just as seasons bring peaks, they also lead to lulls. AMS helps counteract the impact of periodical seasonal declines in organic sales.
Supplementing paid advertising during seasonal troughs provides continuity and stability in sales that are not reliant on external factors. AMS fills the gap until organic performance improves.
- Reaching new audiences
Reaching entirely new buyer demographics is possible on Amazon by targeting those groups through AMS. Create campaigns with messaging and targeting focused on the audiences you aim to acquire as new customers.
AMS opens up new customer segments that you may not be reaching efficiently through existing marketing alone.
- Promoting Brand Awareness Campaigns
In addition to direct-response sales ads, AMS also facilitates brand-building campaigns. This includes driving awareness through repeat exposure to your brand names, products, and messaging.
Combining AMS product ads with brand-focused advertising provides a more well-rounded marketing strategy on Amazon’s platform and ecosystem.
- Optimizing New Campaign Initiatives
When preparing major new marketing initiatives like large catalog launches or rebranding campaigns, AMS allows optimizing elements before launch.
Test product targeting, creativity, landing pages, and more through AMS to refine the strategy pre-launch for greater effectiveness out of the gates.
- Diagnosing underperforming listings
For products experiencing declining sales or conversions, use AMS ads to diagnose the issue. Compare the performance of existing product listings against AMS ads leading to those same listings.
If AMS ads drive sales but organic listings falter, that points to a content optimization opportunity for those listings to recapture organic performance.
- Personalizing Messages to Loyal Shoppers
AMS offers options to target existing brand loyalists with personalized messaging and offers. You can tailor ads to VIP customers only, promoting new arrivals and exclusive deals.
Loyalty marketing through AMS helps strengthen relationships with your best shoppers and drive repeat purchases.
- Driving Conversions from Competitor Audiences
Wooing customers away from rival brands is fair game on Amazon. AMS enables directly targeting competitor products or brand followers with ads promoting your own alternative items.
Flipping competitors’ own audiences against them using AMS ads can unlock new cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
- Optimizing campaigns around events
Tying your brand to external events, influencers, or cultural moments can boost appeal. Leverage AMS to test promotional strategies that capitalize on event-based marketing opportunities before fully launching.
- Monitoring Performance
Once launched, AMS campaigns should be continuously monitored using advertising software. Tracking sales, ACoS, spend, and other key metrics enables ongoing optimization of targeting, budgets, and creatives. Optimization through robust e-commerce monitoring ensures AMS keeps delivering the desired performance and ROI over the campaign lifetime.
- Driving Traffic to New Sites or Platforms
AMS provides ready-made traffic sources to help get new online properties off the ground. Send existing Amazon audiences to experience your new destination with targeted AMS text ads.
Quickly seeding new sites and apps with qualified users accelerates the process of building awareness, a user base, and organic traffic over the long term.
- Building Brands Through Video
Video ads on Amazon enable showcasing products and brands cinematically to drive deeper engagement. Combining video storytelling with AMS targeting provides creative brand building while still driving clicks and conversions.
As attention spans decrease, video content stands out and connects emotionally with audiences, making AMS video ads worthwhile brand investments.
Conclusion
Determining the right situations and timing to activate Amazon Marketing Services advertising unlocks its true revenue-generating potential. New product launches, seasonal peaks, inventory sell-through needs, gaining category share, seller growth campaigns, seasonal lulls, reaching new audiences, and more all represent opportunities to drive measurable impact from AMS campaigns. Brands can also leverage AMS for brand building, pre-launch optimization, re-engaging lost customers, capitalizing on events, and careful performance monitoring. With the right timing and scenarios guiding e-commerce monitoring software, brands can maximize campaign ROI, expand market positioning, and sustain sales growth on Amazon.
