The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns resulted in the slashing of advertising budgets in the United States by as much as 42% in 2020.
Yet advertising spending on Amazon, Google, and Meta increased significantly during this period and through to 2021.
Key Takeaways
- Ad spending on Amazon and other online platforms increased in 2021 even as overall advertising budgets went down in 2020 due to the lockdowns
- PPC automation tools cut down on time and effort spent on managing PPC campaigns manually
- Small businesses can benefit from PPC automation tools by maximizing their ad spending and automating tasks, allowing them to scale their ad campaigns
- The best PPC automation tools should include campaign management, keyword research, and bidding automation
Why You Should Advertise on Amazon
The reason is obvious: Most people turn to online stores to buy everything, from toilet tissue to clothes, and Amazon gets the major share of customers.
According to Statista, Amazon had 41% of the e-retailer market in 2021, with Walmart a far second at 6.6%.
More than half of the online shoppers in the U.S. turn to Amazon first to do a product search. If you want to sell online, you need to get eyes on your products and Amazon is the obvious choice for that.
However, that’s hardly news to many retailers, given the sharp rise in the number of new sellers on Amazon in 2021. But on a platform so huge, you’re competing with many sellers for the same eyes, so you need to go the extra mile to stand out and scale your business.
One effective way to do that is getting on Amazon’s advertising platform and signing up for PPC campaigns.
Of course, it doesn’t come cheap, but using automation software ensures you make the most of your ad spend.
What Is a PPC Automation Tool?
PPC automation tools let business owners manage their PPC campaigns without getting a third-party service provider to do it for them. Most of these tools work for multiple PPC platforms, including Amazon.
While PPC automation tools are paid solutions, you can save a considerable amount of money by using them instead of taking the help of a marketing company.
Of course, hiring a PPC company to take care of everything for you does free you up even more. This is because doing it on your own requires a good understanding of PPC campaigns and marketing principles.
If you’re not ready to commit completely or would rather have more control over your PPC campaigns, using PPC automation tools is the best way to go about it.
Is It Worth Spending on an Amazon PPC Automation Tool as a Small Business?
- Optimize Advertising Cost of Sale
- Automate Repetitive Tasks
- Enable Multitasking
- Get Insights
Paying for software that helps your PPC campaigns might make sense to you. However, you need to understand that running an effective PPC campaign manually, including on Amazon, takes a lot of time and effort.
If your brand carries many products, you must track bids, optimize keywords, and keep an eye on your campaign to ensure you’re not throwing good money after bad. All this is during a regular working day and on top of everything on your schedule.
Automating the entire process frees you up for core tasks, which means raking in more revenue. Here are other benefits of PPC automation.
Optimize Advertising Cost of Sale
Your advertising cost of sale (ACOS) is the key metric when determining the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. Before measuring ACOS, you need to have campaign goals, such as increasing revenue for a specific product or taking a slice off your competitor’s market share. You need to identify the elements that bring you there as quickly as possible.
PPC automation takes away the guesswork by using algorithms to determine the best way to conduct a campaign to reach those goals. These could be by optimizing the product listing or targeting different keywords.
Automate Repetitive Tasks
The process of running an Amazon PPC campaign involves many repetitive tasks. These include generating and analyzing reports, determining keywords that don’t help your ranking or visibility, and scheduling ads to start or stop on a specific day.
While you can certainly do these tasks, they take up too much time you could be spending on core tasks. Configure PPC software to automate these tasks, and you save a lot of your time.
Enable Multitasking
When you use PPC automation software, you’re multitasking without even knowing it. That can allow you to scale up your PPC campaigns quickly, easily, and effectively.
Most people think they can do several things simultaneously, such as running multiple PPC campaigns. However, there’s always be something that falls by the wayside.
Get Insights
Much of what happens in advertising is in the background. PPC automation software can tease out data from each campaign, analyze it, and present it to you as actionable insights to improve your advertising campaigns.
Which PPC Automation Tools Should You Use, and Which Ones Should You Avoid?
- Keyword Research
- Intuitive Interface
- Comprehensive Automation Features
- Broad Integrations
- Free Trial
- Adequate Support
There are many PPC automation software out there to consider. However, as with any software, choosing the right one depends on the nature and size of your business, marketing goals, and budget.
Here are some tips on what you need to look for in PPC automation software to know which ones to avoid.
Keyword Research
Keywords are critical for any PPC campaign, no matter what platform you use. You want your Amazon PPC automation software to have a powerful keyword research feature to help you identify the best keywords to use for your campaign. Any tool without that’s not going to be very effective.
Intuitive Interface
It should be easy to understand the data your software gathers, analyzes, and presents to you. The user interface or dashboard should be well organized so that you can find and understand critical metrics for your PPC campaign.
For example, if your ACOS increases more than you expected, you should be able to see it immediately. If you have a hard time understanding the dashboard, move on.
Comprehensive Automation Features
Some PPC automation software may only handle any one of the following tasks:
- Bid management
- Campaign management
- Keyword management
Choose one that handles all three and more. Since you’re committing to PPC automation, you want it to handle as many manual tasks as possible, such as keyword management and bid adjustments.
Broad Integrations
Software that only works with Amazon might limit your options in the future. While Amazon is your focus presently, that might not always be the case.
You also want PPC automation software that can integrate with other platforms, such as Meta and Google, especially if you sell on your website or other online marketplaces, such as eBay.
Free Trial
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so you want to try a PPC automation software on for size before committing to an annual subscription.
A free trial allows you to see if you find it easy to use, are comfortable with the process and are happy with the results.
Most have free trials or money-back guarantees but consider those with longer (14- to 30-day) free trials first. If the software offers neither, move on.
Adequate Support
Find software that offers onboarding and training resources because you’re going to need it if you’re using PPC automation software for the first time.
Even the most intuitive interface may not tell you the whole story at first, so you need support from the service provider for the first few campaigns.
It should also have quick and reliable customer and technical support for the asking as this is crucial when you run into trouble in the middle of a campaign.
Three PPC Automation Tools for Amazon
- Flywheel 2.0: Best for New Businesses
- Entourage 2.0: Best for Your Budget
- Sellics: Most Recognized
We could provide you with dozens of Amazon PPC automation tools, but we decided to stick to three that checks most of your boxes. Here’s a quick synopsis of each.
Flywheel 2.0: Best for New Businesses
Teikametrics’s FlyWheel is a godsend for new PPC users and small businesses, and you should put it on the top of your PPC automation to-do list.
FlyWheel 2.0 is a relatively new product aimed squarely at Amazon and Walmart advertising management, specifically PPC. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create campaigns, manage bidding, and target keywords automatically.
FlyWheel also does competitive analysis to help you with your marketing strategies. All you need to do is set goals, and FlyWheel does everything else.
Interestingly, FlyWheel doesn’t require a monthly subscription to use if you are making less than $10,000 a month in total marketplace sales. If you make more than $10,000 monthly, you pay 3% of your monthly ad spend, but only if you pay more than $5,000 a month for PPC ads.
If you already make more than $10,000 a month in total marketplace sales, you can still take the AI-Powered plan on a free test drive for 30 days.
Entourage 2.0: Best for Your Budget
Another AI-driven software, PPC Entourage 2.0, is an Amazon-only PPC automation tool. We only included it on the list because, as far as we know, it’s the only one that offers a one-year money-back guarantee.
Called a “No-Brainer” Guarantee, the service provider gives you back your money if you don’t make back what you paid for the software. That sounds like a no-brainer, indeed.
As to pricing, Entourage makes it simple. It charges 2.9% of your monthly ad spend, whatever it is. For example, if you set your monthly ad budget at $5,000, you pay $145 to use the software and its features.
You can also try it for 14 days free, so there’s another no-brainer.
Sellics: Most Recognized
If you search for Amazon PPC automation tools, chances are you’ll find Sellics among many of the recommendations. Among the first tools in this category to come out, it continues to be one of the most popular.
Campaign management can either be rule-based, where you set the rules yourself, or AI-based, in which case you can sit back, and the software does everything for you.
However, Sellics is a bit on the pricey side, starting from $259 a month for an annual subscription. It offers a free PPC evaluation tool to help do-it-yourself (DIY) advertisers, but the full automation power of the software comes with the paid subscription.
It comes with a seven-day trial period, so if you don’t like the first two, you can try this one to see if the price tag is worth it for you after all.
What’s Next?
Try one or all the Amazon PPC automation software listed above or find another one that you think you’ll like better.
Whatever option you choose, do it as soon as possible so you can start saving time and money on your PPC campaigns. Good luck.