hey what's up guys in today's video i
want to dispel the myth that you cannot
afford to run ads i think if you're
running an ecommerce business you should
definitely strongly consider running ads
to your products it's going to increase
visibility and increase sales of course
it comes with a cost so it's a double
edged sword in this video though i want
to talk you through the details about
running ads and hopefully change your
mind about considering running them even
if you're strapped when it comes to your
budget i will talk you through why i
think even if you don't have a lot of
money to throw at ads it's still
something that you can make work so
let's get into it
[Music]
real quick reminder i've got some free
resources for you all linked at the top
of the description i've got the free
weekly print on demand giveaway i've got
my seven day merch by amazon mini course
delivered via email completely free and
i've got a great print on demand uh
amazon merch facebook group so check
that out in the description so as
promised even if you don't think you can
afford to run ads i'm going to try to
change your mind in this video
the first strategy that i want to talk
about is low ball bids this is where
you're essentially bidding pennies okay
if you're running standard sponsored
product ads you can get away with
bidding
two cents per click that is the lowest
you can bid it is very hard to get your
budget spent when you um you know it's
an auction system right so the more you
bid the higher priority placement you're
gonna get with amazon um actually
showing your ads to customers and you
know customers clicking your ads you
getting eyeballs on your products and
hopefully making some sales but uh the
more you spend the it's when i say spend
it's really the more you bid i want to
watch my terminology there because you
can spend a lot with low bids if your
ads are getting shown but the lower your
bids the less people are gonna see your
ads okay so it's not just um how much
you're willing to spend per click but
it's also your budget but i did want to
mention a strategy here
and that is that even if you like set up
your ad campaign and amazon says
suggested bid let's just say suggested
bid one dollar okay
and you want nothing to do with that you
you don't want to pay one dollar for
every time someone clicks your ad well
are you screwed then what if you say
okay amazon's suggested bid says one
dollar i don't feel comfortable spending
more than 10 cents per click you know
that's a huge gap but here's the thing
it may or may not work right if you are
willing to at least set up a campaign
with a budget of however much money you
feel feel comfortable with
you know at 10 cents a click though you
should probably feel comfortable with a
pretty high budget because that's pretty
cheap clicks
um it's also relative to how much money
you make from each sale like if it's kdp
and you're selling cheap books low
profit margins you may you really want
to be tighter on your um your bids and
whatnot but let's just say amazon
suggested bid one dollar
if you bid 10 cents per click are you
gonna get any clicks here's the thing
maybe you will because the people
bidding a dollar
and the people bidding you know anywhere
between your 10 cents and their dollar
because there's other competitors that
are probably in between
they only have so much of a daily budget
set and eventually their daily budget
gets spent okay and then the next guy up
the next highest bid they're gonna start
filling the most valuable ad spaces and
then after them the next guy and also i
don't know how much you guys look at
amazon but they've really increased
their ad inventory that is places for
ads to show up on page and i don't think
i don't think i've seen it really ever
that they kind of have spammy ads where
the same product is listed a bunch of
places on the page like maybe a few
times but not all the time so even if
you have a very low bid
you may still get to occupy an ad spot
maybe at the very bottom of the page
right because as they keep increasing
their ad inventory there's more and more
places for you to render
if it's between you or showing the same
product that's already been shown twice
on the page or three times on the page
you may actually get that spot for you
know one tenth of the bid and then again
as people that are bidding more than you
run out of their budget
you're the next man up eventually so you
may get your ad seen and clicked at you
know a fraction of what people ahead of
you are paying so it is absolutely worth
considering setting up lowball bids
by the way i also just walked through
how to do this in a previous video just
from
earlier this week so i can link to that
in the description but it's also
on my channel so check that out it goes
through the step by step and it honestly
takes like five minutes or less
i also want to talk you through
a cost all right advertising cost of
sale
if you're not familiar with this concept
uh this is basically
on a percentage basis like what is your
profit margin
and how much money did you spend to
generate a sale okay so if your profit
margin in this case let's use a merch by
amazon t-shirt selling at the default
suggested rate of 19.99
well if you make a sale at 1999 you make
5.23 profit
that means if you run ads to that shirt
you can spend
anywhere from five dollars twenty three
cents
to generate a sale or less
to bait to be break even right or
profitable like if you if you make five
dollars twenty three cents a sale and
you spend five dollars 23 cents that's
break even okay you didn't lose money
there
and
if you spend any less than five dollars
23 cents to generate a sale you're
profitable
and of course the benefit of this is
that each time you make a sale guys
you're also improving the organic rank
of your listing
as the algorithm is learning more about
your product so this is where whether
you're running auto ads and you're
letting amazon kind of figure out slowly
what keywords to associate with your
product which by the way like
we don't know every single relevant
keyword to our products so you do want
to always probably run those auto
campaigns
and then you want to take those high
value keywords that are converting and
move them to a manual campaign but also
you know with a manual campaign it's
like
if you're selling a t-shirt with a
unicorn on it well do you think you
should be advertising on the keywords
unicorn t-shirt yeah you probably should
right so you don't have to just wait for
the auto campaign to figure stuff out um
we can you know probably figure it out
ourselves like what keywords are humans
going to type in when they're looking
for our product
so we have by the way with at with a
cost advertising cost of sale
the math is we take our profit margin or
we take the amount of money we make per
sale so in the t-shirt example five
dollars 23 cents we divide it by 1999
and we get the 26.1 percent profit
margin the profit margin again the that
represents our break even so anything
that is in this case with merch by
amazon standard t-shirt 1999
u.s market if we have an a cost of 26.1
percent
or lower
that means that we are making money if
it's exactly 26.1 hey you're breaking
even but even at breakeven guys
you're helping the algorithm learn about
your product which is gonna result in
organic sales and better placement which
by the way those numbers don't get
rolled up into your advert advertising
numbers so you won't actually know
you won't be able to attribute um the
the money you make from the organic
sales to the fact that you spent money
on ads so
it's a it's a win-win it's a as long as
you're not like seriously wasting money
i did a video actually
say last week or the week before where i
had a one-on-one call and uh with
permission i was able to share that um
somebody's fba product in addition to
like what they spent on the product they
really didn't look at their ads and i
was like doing a screen share with them
in the one-on-one call and i was like oh
i was like man you better turn those ads
off because i mean
i'm not kidding guys 23 000 were spent
on ads because they were kind of set up
and not paid attention to
and really high budget and kind of
irresponsible bids so i know that when
you hear that you're like okay ryan you
just talked me into running ads now
you're talking me out of it all again
but that's why i set really responsible
daily budgets but especially more
important than the budget
you get to control your bids you know
what i mean so just make sure your bids
aren't excessively high um when it comes
to amazon doing suggested bids i always
say start low you know start 50 of that
and then work your way up if it's not
working now here's one thing that i
should have taken screenshots of but i
didn't in your advertising console you
know when you log in and there's the
table kind of showing your advert
advertising data and there's columns
like each row is a different product or
a different campaign let's say a
different campaign and each column is a
different like advertising metric
there are two that you should enable
right now and i can write this in the
description for you um as well so you
have it uh visual
you wanna enable the a cost the
advertising cost of sale because it used
to be there now it's not there by
default anymore i don't know why that is
uh so
enable acos
because that's the really important
metric if you ask me it's the most
important and then also enable
impressions i don't know why that's not
there by default enable a cost enable
impressions okay
when you see impressions you get to see
if your ads are at least getting seen
which means they're getting served okay
uh if your impressions are low that
means you definitely need to increase
those bids
or you know i mean it depends on your
budget i get it i get it but with a cost
that's really the metric that i care
most about because it helps me know if
i'm losing money and this is in
aggregate by the way it's over a time
frame so it's not on each individual
sale but it's in aggregate so some days
you may spend and not make any sales
other days you may spend a little and
make a lot of sales but it averages it
out okay
and as i mentioned guys the name of the
game on amazon on the world's largest
ecommerce marketplace to me is improving
your organic rank and i want to do that
in any way possible advertising is
absolutely a method that works
and what's cool is hey when you run ads
too you get a little bit of data off of
amazon they don't like to offer up data
very often but when you run ads like i
said you can see impressions
you can see what keywords are converting
you know what rate they're converting at
you can see how much money it costs to
advertise on specific keywords like i've
literally launched fba products because
i saw how cheaply i could run ads on
valuable keywords and you can actually
do this without launching the product
itself you can go into the advertising
console
type in keywords and look at the amazon
suggested bids if they're really low
that's an indicator that hey you might
be able to like make some good money
here i mean it's all relative to how
much profit you make per sale and if
your listings are good if your listings
suck you're gonna
you know convert at a lower rate so it's
gonna cost you more money these are all
things that factor in hopefully i'm not
throwing too much at you um
you know right now but like it's a
learning curve but it just gets easier
over time just like anything else in
life so don't be scared to run ads on
amazon guys thank you for watching this
video please check out my merch by
amazon full course where it gets you
access to my full advertising course
niche research um design everything guys
automation um obviously a ton of merch
by amazon specific content as well
walking you through how i went from tier
10 to tier 200 thousand you can find out
more in the description but guys thank
you for watching please hit that like
and subscribe button if you haven't
already and i'll see you tomorrow with a
new video
[Music]