September 16, 2025 • 25 mins
Unlock the power of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) and geo-targeting to transform your advertising strategy! Once available only to high-budget DSP advertisers, these sophisticated tools are now accessible to all Amazon sellers, opening new possibilities for targeted marketing that delivers exceptional returns.
Through a fascinating case study of a pool equipment brand, we explore how strategic geo-targeting solves one of the most frustrating challenges for seasonal products. By focusing advertising dollars exclusively on regions with year-round pool usage (like Southern California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona), sellers can maintain profitable advertising during traditional off-seasons while connecting with their highest-value customers. Imagine knowing that your Phoenix customers replace pool equipment annually while Michigan customers might use the same tools for years – that's the kind of insight that transforms how you target your advertising.
AMC's implementation varies across Amazon's advertising ecosystem, with different capabilities for DSP, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Products, and Sponsored Brands. We break down exactly how each platform utilizes geographic data, from true filtering to bid modifiers, and explain how to access these powerful tools even without programming expertise. The conversation expands to cover B2B audience targeting, revealing how these professional customers often deliver significantly higher average order values and better conversion rates than standard consumers.
What makes this strategy particularly powerful is how targeted advertising creates a virtuous cycle between ad performance and organic visibility. By directing your spend toward audiences with higher conversion rates, you effectively "signal" to Amazon's algorithms that your products deserve better organic placement. Whether you're struggling with seasonal fluctuations or simply looking to maximize your advertising ROI, these advanced targeting capabilities represent the future of Amazon advertising – and the time to start implementing them is now.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to another episode of Tactics
Tuesday at Brand Fortress HQ.
Today, what we're going to betalking about is the new AMC and
geo-targeting strategieshappening on Amazon.
This is one of those thingsthat I feel like has been around
the Amazon community for anumber of years.
That said, it is worth takinganother look at, because Amazon
has put a lot of resources intoupdating AMC, making it much
(00:25):
more available, and then alsotheir geotargeting strategies as
well.
So with that, mike, I knowyou've been working on this
quite a bit, so I'm going totoss it over to you and, if you
can, maybe just talk about howyou've been thinking about this
and maybe some of the thingsthat you're looking at testing
when it comes to geotargetingand AMC.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Sure, yeah.
So anybody who listens to thepodcast knows we sell pool
cleaning tools, and so we're avery seasonal kind of a product,
and one of the things that wehave run into in the past is
that when we move into the offseason, which essentially is
going to be like August orSeptember, probably more like
September through February, thenour sales drop off.
(01:07):
But more than that, the cost ofadvertising goes up, because
what you end up with is, ifyou're advertising across the US
as a whole, then a lot of theindividuals that you're
advertising are people who don'thave their pools open right now
, and so they might be looking,you know, like they're browsing
(01:30):
around and they're taking a lookat things, but they're not
buying because the pool's notopen, and so you get a lot of
tire kickers and so your ACOSgoes kind of through the roof,
and so you end up having to cutback on your advertising because
you're advertising to a bunchof people that you don't
actually want to at that moment.
So what we're looking at as oneof the opportunities that AMC
offers us is the opportunity tolimit our sponsored ads, you
(01:54):
know, to specific geographicregions that essentially have
year round pool openings, so wecan target.
You know Southern California,southern Texas, southern Florida
, arizona, you know Las Vegas,you know those sorts of areas
where people got those poolsopen all year round, and so then
when we run those ads, our ACOSdoesn't have to climb.
(02:16):
In fact, it might even bebetter than it is right now,
because another thing that wewere looking at is those areas.
Okay, so backing up our productagain, a lot of people already
know this, who listen to thepodcast regularly.
But you know we offer unlimitedlifetime replacement warranties
on our products.
And so if you think about itfor a second and you were to
(02:40):
compare somebody who owns a poolin Michigan to somebody who
owns a pool in Phoenix, comparesomebody who owns a pool in
Michigan to somebody who owns apool in Phoenix, the Phoenix
person has their pool open allyear round.
They have super high, you knowUV, you know light and whatnot.
So it's like tools break downway faster and they get used
considerably more and for a muchlonger period of time every
(03:01):
season than the person inMichigan.
So what happens is a person inMichigan, they might buy a
standard full net, you know fromjust Joe Blow for like 15 bucks
and it might actually last thema few seasons because they're
not using it super hard.
They only use it, for, you know, four months out of the year.
The UV is not that hard.
(03:21):
So but the person in Phoenixthey might go through two per
season, certainly one per season, and so for that person our
lifetime warranty becomes thatmuch more valuable.
Now, this is all speculation,but it makes perfect sense, like
if I'm putting myself in theirshoes.
I absolutely, if I was livingin Phoenix, would pay much more
(03:42):
attention to a lifetime warrantyand the value of it would be
much higher to me than if Ilived in Michigan.
So what we want to do is startadvertising and really directing
our ads to those individuals,who are individuals that have
their pool open year round,because I have a stinking
suspicion that their CTR and CBRvalues will be considerably
(04:05):
higher than if we're advertisingnationwide.
Now, with AMC you can targetregionally like that.
It's a little bit different forsome ads versus others.
So AMC can be used to createaudiences.
That you can use in DSP, butyou can also use in sponsored
ads Now in DSP.
(04:25):
But you can also use insponsored ads Now in DSP and
sponsored display, which is kindof like a mini DSP, you can
actually specifically target thead so that it only goes to
individuals in whatevergeographic region you specify.
Alternatively for sponsoredproducts and sponsored brands.
(04:46):
It's not really a limiter, so,in other words, it's not only
going to run your ad to thoseindividuals.
However, it's almost more likea bid modifier kind of a
situation where individuals thatfall within your geographic
region are going to get the bulkof the advertising and the ad
spend.
So you might still advertise topeople in Michigan, but more of
(05:09):
your ads are going to show upto people in Phoenix or Southern
California and things like that.
So that's actually one areathat we're moving into right now
and are looking to implementalmost immediately is that
geographic target.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah.
So, if I understand you correct, just to break this down for
our audience, I think there's acouple of really important
points here.
So the first one is thinkingabout audiences in the sense of.
I think most people at thispoint understand the concept of
a highly targeted audienceversus a broad audience.
(05:41):
So let's just take, you know,you know men's boots is an
example, a random example thatcomes to mind.
So if you were advertising for akeyword that was men's boots,
you know that's pretty wide, andso you're going to get a lot of
people that might click on yourad because they are men that
are looking for a boot.
But if it's, you know, it maynot be the right boot that
(06:02):
they're looking for specificallyfor.
Maybe they're looking forsomething for motorcycling as
opposed to working constructionas opposed to, you know, cowboy
boots, like there's a lot ofdifferent variety there, and so
when you go wide like that, Ithink we're pretty familiar with
the concept of those keywordsare not going to convert as well
as if we have something that'ssuper specific, where you know,
maybe if we were saying it wasfor construction, where it's
(06:22):
like men's boots forconstruction or something like
that, where it's very precise.
So I think we understand thatfrom a keyword standpoint and
really this is just taking thatsame concept and applying it to
audiences.
And in your particular case, youknow, hey, if somebody lives in
Minnesota, they're only usingtheir pool four months out of
the year because it's frozen theother eight months, versus
(06:44):
somebody who lives in Arizona,where they might be able to use
their pool year round.
Not only are they able to usethat tool longer, also, if they
live in Arizona, because of youknow how much uh, you know just
UV light and sunshine that theyget down there, that tool is
much more, or that pool tool ismuch more likely to break down
if they're buying it.
You know from you know thatChinese manufacturer that's
(07:07):
selling on Amazon versus youknow the, versus your brand.
That's a much more premiumproduct.
Is that kind of at least so far, kind of a good description of
how you're approaching this?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, that's absolutely the way that we're
looking at it, and obviously youcan create audiences based
around all sorts of differentthings.
Amazon has kind of somesemi-default audiences that you
can use, and there's alsothere's tools out there that
allow you to connect into AMCthat have, let's say, pre-built
(07:39):
audiences that aren'tnecessarily Amazon-built
audiences, but they're pre-builtqueries, let's say.
So to back up a little bit, theway that you utilize AMC to
actually create these audiencesis that you write SQL queries,
which a lot of people don't knowwhat that is.
They have no idea how to do it,and so there's front ends, just
(08:02):
like there is for sponsored ads, like PackView and things like
that.
So services out there thatallow you to have a front end
interface that's better thanwhat Amazon gives you.
There are interfaces that allowyou to connect into AMC and
they have pre-built SQL queriesthat will create an audience of
a certain type, and so you cango through their list and be
(08:23):
like oh, that's the kind ofaudience that I want, and you
click on it and it will run thebackend query in AMC to create
that audience for you.
And so you have that option ofeither manually entering those
SQL queries or using some sortof a front-end interface to make
that easier to do.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, and I think, something else that I'd like to
add to this conversation, justbecause things have changed over
the last few years.
So the first thing is that.
So AMC is Amazon MarketingCloud, I believe, is what that
abbreviation stands for, and itused to be only for people that
were using a display network orDSP, which typically you know
and again I think this ischanging pretty considerably as
(09:05):
well where you know DSP used tohave to have, you know, I think
it was like 20 or $25,000 amonth in dedicated ad spend in
order to run DSP, and I thinkthat that has come down pretty
considerably.
Where you know you can run DSPnow for a few thousand dollars a
month.
That said, just kind of a littlebit of a rabbit hole here is
that you know, really sponsoredproducts and sponsored brand,
(09:30):
sponsored display are still verymuch you know, I would say,
those fundamental block, youknow blocking and tackling or
building blocks for an Amazonads account.
So if you're struggling, youknow, with getting sponsored
products to work, the chances ofyou getting, you know, good
return on investment from DSP ispretty darn low.
So I just throw that out thereas people that are like oh well,
(09:52):
my, you know sponsored productto add a cost is much higher
than I wanted to do.
Let me try DSP.
You know, I'm sure that there'sa unicorn out there that gets a
better return on DSP than theirsponsored product ads.
But for the most part mostbrands are going to be best
served by making sure that theyhave their sponsored products
ads squared away first and kindof maximize the opportunity
there.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That's absolutely true because not only if you're
not good with sponsored ads, dspis way more complex than
sponsored ads is.
So if you're not able to dialin your sponsored ads, then DSP
is a rough route.
And, quite frankly, sometimeswe've had a little trouble with
DSP, you know, partly becausewe've had some troubles getting
our sponsored ads dialed in, butit's also because a lot of the
(10:36):
value of DSP is remarketing andyou're remarketing to people
that you've gained from withinsponsored ads.
And so if your sponsored adsare not profitable on the front
end, and then you're remarketingon the back end now you're just
spending more money to get youknow.
so it's you really do have toget sponsored ads dialed in
before DSP becomes super viable.
However, like you said, nowthat AMC is applicable to
(10:58):
sponsored ads, you don't have togo the DSP route.
You can use, you know,sponsored display as kind of a
mini DSP if you want, and useAMC to lay around those
audiences to better target yourads.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, and so a couple other things I would add into
this.
So you know again I just want toreiterate for people that maybe
have heard of you know AmazonMarketing Cloud a couple of
years ago and think you know DSPand that type of stuff that
those two things don'tnecessarily have to go together
anymore.
Amazon Marketing Cloud, you know, works if, even if you're just
you know, running sponsoredproduct ads now, and it can be
(11:32):
incredibly helpful in you knowjust the data that's happening
there.
The other thing is is that youknow and I think you touched on
a little bit, mike, and I thinkit's just worth double clicking
on which is sponsored displayads now do a number of the
things that used to be DSP only.
So when you start looking at,you know, targeting different
audiences, you start looking atretargeting, cross-selling,
(11:53):
those types of things likesponsored display ads can now do
a lot of those things withouthaving to have a DSP account.
So you know there's a lot ofdifferent ways to approach this,
but at the end of the day, Ithink you bring up a really
valuable point here, which isyou know we're really familiar
with targeting based on keywords, but really from an Amazon
standpoint, yes, where theplatform isn't as rich in
(12:17):
audience or hasn't been in thepast, and this is an opportunity
really to take advantage ofthat where other platforms for
if you've ever run meta adsbefore does a fantastic job with
audiences and taking some ofthose same principles and
applying it to how you'rerunning Amazon ads.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Audiences are super, super powerful.
Like you were saying, john,keywords we've been targeting
with keywords on Amazon andGoogle for a long time, but
being able to do both.
I know that this particularTactics Tuesday is about
geo-ranking and how we're goingto implement that, but the
amount of things that you can dowith audiences on DSP
(12:57):
historically, but now sponsoreddisplay, and now you can use
those same audiences and layerthem on top of the keywords that
you're already using, I meanit's so, so, ridiculously
powerful because, like Mike said, I mean you know, year round
we're targeting just everyone,everyone searching for, for
anything.
I know that in Michigan inDecember, most people aren't
(13:17):
searching for pool poles or poolbrushes, however, there's ads
being served to them.
So so being able to layer on anaudience, either demographic or
retargeting or something alongthose lines, and also in
sponsored product there, like myI think Mike touched on this
just a little bit you canactually they're expanding how
you can target within sponsoredproducts, like now there's a
(13:39):
couple of other audiences youcan.
Actually they're expanding howyou can target within sponsored
products, like now there's acouple of other audiences, like
for the for Port ProTuff,there's a B2B you can.
It's almost like it's a bidadjustment so you can.
You can raise your bid based onwho the audience is and like
we've started doing that for theB2B audiences.
But there's also retargeting onsponsored products with those
(13:59):
bid adjustments as well.
So they're starting to open upall of these really, really
super cool ways to target peoplewithin sponsored products.
But with AMC, I mean havingallowing other people to access
AMC that aren't using DSP nowopens that up to the rest of us
and that's really what we'replaying around with,
specifically with thegeo-targeting thing.
(14:20):
But it's super exciting.
I mean, once we figure out thegeo-targeting thing and who that
pool professional is and thenbe able to layer on other
audience kind of demographictype stuff on it, that's when
things really start to scale.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, and I think those modifiers are really
important too.
I mean, I know you know top ofsearch has had a modifier for a
long time and you know there'sdefinitely solid.
Strategies have been used for along time of, you know, having
lower bids and then using thatmodifier to get as much of that
top of search as possible.
Because if you look at, youknow now that Amazon shows us
those stats, you just see somuch better clicks and
(14:54):
conversions on that top ofsearch in a lot of cases.
Now, obviously that you know alot of brands have gotten very
aggressive as they've seen topof search work really well.
The nice thing about this isthat, hey, you might have some
competitors.
In fact, mike, you probably area good example If you have a
lot of competitors that that B2Bmarket probably isn't their
(15:14):
strong suit, and so by beingable to add that modifier
specifically for B2B, where youknow strong suit, and so by
being able to add that modifierspecifically for B2B, where
that's an audience that you canserve significantly better, that
gives you a huge advantage?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah for sure, and one of the things that we noted
not too long ago was just howvaluable that B2B customer was
to us.
So the average order value forthose B2B customers on Amazon is
nearly 50% higher than for nonB2B customers.
And then, in addition to that,we were finding that our
(15:48):
conversion rates wereconsiderably better for B2B and
so, therefore, obviously, clickrates, or click costs, you know,
are lower.
So we were able to take and dothat modifier so that we can
more specifically target thoseB2B customers.
And one thing that it's, Ithink, it's important to
recognize is you have anopportunity, through your Amazon
(16:12):
advertising to this is a badword, but I'm going to use it
anyways to manipulate yourAmazon stats overall.
Right, and this is you know,the more of your sales that run
through ads, the more, the moreyou can do that because such a
high percentage of your salesare running through there, like
(16:33):
for ProTuff, unfortunately.
Obviously you don't want thatto be the case, but if it is the
case, then your ad strategy canreally kind of manipulate your
overall numbers for your productin the right direction or the
wrong direction if you're notdoing it well.
So, in other words, amazon istaking into account when they're
looking at organic ranking andthings of that nature.
You know what is the standardconversion rate of your product.
(16:55):
What is the standardclick-through rate of your
product.
You know for certain keywordsyour product what is the
standard click-through rate ofyour product for certain
keywords?
So when they're looking at thenumbers, if you are very careful
with your Amazon PPC and you'retargeting properly so that
you're targeting the rightindividuals who are going to
give you better conversion rates, better click rates, not only
do your ad costs go down, butyour overall stats for that
(17:18):
product and that ASIN go up andin Amazon's eyes then there's a
good chance that organically youwill rank better as a result of
it.
So don't underestimate thevalue of being able to kind of
manipulate those numbers withyour PPC.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Queuing Matt or Mike?
We're going to call thatqueuing.
We're queuing.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I did say it was a bad word.
I wasn't coming up with a goodone though.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
But yeah, I mean, it is a great point.
As far as you know, especially,I mean, again, we have a magic
wand.
We'd all love to back in thedays where, you know, 70% of our
sales were organic and 30% ofthem were ad based.
And especially, if you know,depending on where you are in
your category and what categoryyou're in you, if you know,
depending on where you are inyour category and what category
you're in you know, you knowit's one of those things where,
(18:04):
unfortunately, that's just notthe case anymore.
But you do bring up a goodpoint as far as, like, how you
can take advantage of that andespecially, making sure that
you're pushing, you know,campaigns that really are
focusing on those right keywordsif that's what you're trying to
rank for and do you have goodconversion rates to really give?
You know Amazon that thequeuing data that your product.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
We're signaling Amazon.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
There you go, that you know it has the statistics
that they're looking for.
So I think that's a very validpoint looking for.
So I think that's a very validpoint Trying to think of what
else would be important, as ouraudience listens to this, when
we think about AMC andgeo-targeting.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Well, a couple of things that I could add would be
just as we've walked through.
This process is getting AMCadded to your account is not as
easy as a lot of people havemade it sound.
Supposedly, you can contactAmazon directly and make that
happen.
However, if you do expect towait many, many weeks before it
(19:10):
actually gets implemented if itever gets added to your account
at all However, running througha provider of some sort, an
agency or whatever somethinglike PackView as a service or
something, they can get AMCadded to your account and they
have much more sway.
So it will actually happen, andwhat I did confirm the other
(19:33):
day was that once it's added,even if you step away from that
agency or from that service, saylike PackView or something you
maintain AMC access and you canaccess it directly through your
advertising console withinAmazon.
So if you want access to AMC,the fastest way to get it is to
go through an agency or aservice of some sort and get
(19:55):
them to add it.
I don't recommend signing up forsome agency just to get AMC and
then leaving the agency.
That would be really crappy todo to somebody.
However, I'm just letting youknow that's the way to get
yourself in the door and if itturned out you didn't want to
continue using that agencybecause they're not really
fulfilling your needs, you canstep away from them and maintain
(20:16):
that AMC access.
I would also say make sure okayI mentioned earlier that you can
use those interfaces to createSQL queries that it will create
an audience and you can usepre-built queries based on the
audience type that you want tocreate.
I would say that you're likelygoing to want to get to the
(20:37):
point where you can create thosemanual SQL queries yourself in
the backend, within your Amazonads console, and the best way I
can suggest to do that is toeither utilize one that's
already been created or createyour own custom GPT that knows
how to generate SQL queries forAMC, and then you just go into
(20:59):
the custom GPT, you tell it theaudience that you're trying to
target and it will generate theSQL query that you can just
paste into AMC.
So you don't have to be an SQLexpert to do it, you just have
to be decent at creating acustom GPT that can do that for
you.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, and there's probably.
I bet, if you did enoughsearching out there, I'm sure
there's a GPT.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I know there's at least one that exists out there,
because Matt's the one thatpointed it out.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Monsoor from incrementum actually put it
together it's amazing Tip of thehat for him.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I figured if somebody had it that would probably be
him.
So, all right, fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Well, I think, as we wrap up, I think that probably
the biggest thing that I wouldsay is get access to AMC.
Reasonably speaking, it wouldbe silly to not do that, because
(21:58):
you're probably going to dosome testing with it and you're
going to think there's someaudiences that are going to be
good for you and they're notgoing to work out.
They're not going to work out.
However, if you keep testing,you will find audiences that
will improve your performance onyour sponsored ads and also DSP
, if you're using DSP.
So get access.
Whatever the.
You know whatever you need todo to get access.
(22:19):
Get access and then test it.
You know, like really startthinking through.
You know, use chat, gpt or someother AI to discuss.
You know, like prompt it to saythis is what I have access to,
this is what I can do with AMC.
How should I use it?
This is my product.
(22:40):
This is the current avatar thatwe sell to.
These are our stats.
You know what are ways,creative ways that I might be
able to use AMC and create newaudiences to potentially improve
our performance.
I guarantee you that ChatGPT orsome other AI will give you
some really good ideas ofaudiences that you should try
and create and test to getbetter performance, and I'm
(23:01):
absolutely certain that at leastsome of them will be productive
for you, and so I would justsay move, don't wait, do
something with it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Okay, yeah, and I would also add just you know
again, you know sponsor displayhas some great capabilities now
and whether you know the peoplethat I've seen that are the
happiest that I think.
Spent man, I think we've got tosilence some notifications, all
right, anyway, I think, as wewrap this up, see, we do this
live, as evidenced.
(23:31):
So, I think, looking atsponsored display and audiences
and knowing that, like you,don't have to wait until you
have AMC or DSP in order to dothat, the other piece of advice
that I would give is that what'sdifferent about audiences is
it's very creative dependent.
So, you know, be prepared toinvest some time in good
(23:51):
creatives and testing outcreatives and those types of
things in order to be successful.
That said, you know, thinkabout it.
As you know, an additional toolin your tool belt, and I think
we're going to see a lot more ofAmazon's advertising going
towards, you know, audiencetargeting.
That does involve having goodcreative in order to be
successful.
(24:12):
So if you're starting on thatnow, I think you're going to be
in a good place in the nextcouple of years as the platform
changes and starts leaning intomore audiences as opposed to
keywords.
For sure, I agree, all right,and with that, I think that's a
great place to wrap for today.
Thank you everybody forlistening and we'll see you on
another Tactics Tuesday.
Welcome everybody to another episode of Tactics
Tuesday at Brand Fortress HQ.
Today, what we're going to betalking about is the new AMC and
geo-targeting strategieshappening on Amazon.
This is one of those thingsthat I feel like has been around
the Amazon community for anumber of years.
That said, it is worth takinganother look at, because Amazon
has put a lot of resources intoupdating AMC, making it much
(00:25):
more available, and then alsotheir geotargeting strategies as
well.
So with that, mike, I knowyou've been working on this
quite a bit, so I'm going totoss it over to you and, if you
can, maybe just talk about howyou've been thinking about this
and maybe some of the thingsthat you're looking at testing
when it comes to geotargetingand AMC.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Sure, yeah.
So anybody who listens to thepodcast knows we sell pool
cleaning tools, and so we're avery seasonal kind of a product,
and one of the things that wehave run into in the past is
that when we move into the offseason, which essentially is
going to be like August orSeptember, probably more like
September through February, thenour sales drop off.
(01:07):
But more than that, the cost ofadvertising goes up, because
what you end up with is, ifyou're advertising across the US
as a whole, then a lot of theindividuals that you're
advertising are people who don'thave their pools open right now
, and so they might be looking,you know, like they're browsing
(01:30):
around and they're taking a lookat things, but they're not
buying because the pool's notopen, and so you get a lot of
tire kickers and so your ACOSgoes kind of through the roof,
and so you end up having to cutback on your advertising because
you're advertising to a bunchof people that you don't
actually want to at that moment.
So what we're looking at as oneof the opportunities that AMC
offers us is the opportunity tolimit our sponsored ads, you
(01:54):
know, to specific geographicregions that essentially have
year round pool openings, so wecan target.
You know Southern California,southern Texas, southern Florida
, arizona, you know Las Vegas,you know those sorts of areas
where people got those poolsopen all year round, and so then
when we run those ads, our ACOSdoesn't have to climb.
(02:16):
In fact, it might even bebetter than it is right now,
because another thing that wewere looking at is those areas.
Okay, so backing up our productagain, a lot of people already
know this, who listen to thepodcast regularly.
But you know we offer unlimitedlifetime replacement warranties
on our products.
And so if you think about itfor a second and you were to
(02:40):
compare somebody who owns a poolin Michigan to somebody who
owns a pool in Phoenix, comparesomebody who owns a pool in
Michigan to somebody who owns apool in Phoenix, the Phoenix
person has their pool open allyear round.
They have super high, you knowUV, you know light and whatnot.
So it's like tools break downway faster and they get used
considerably more and for a muchlonger period of time every
(03:01):
season than the person inMichigan.
So what happens is a person inMichigan, they might buy a
standard full net, you know fromjust Joe Blow for like 15 bucks
and it might actually last thema few seasons because they're
not using it super hard.
They only use it, for, you know, four months out of the year.
The UV is not that hard.
(03:21):
So but the person in Phoenixthey might go through two per
season, certainly one per season, and so for that person our
lifetime warranty becomes thatmuch more valuable.
Now, this is all speculation,but it makes perfect sense, like
if I'm putting myself in theirshoes.
I absolutely, if I was livingin Phoenix, would pay much more
(03:42):
attention to a lifetime warrantyand the value of it would be
much higher to me than if Ilived in Michigan.
So what we want to do is startadvertising and really directing
our ads to those individuals,who are individuals that have
their pool open year round,because I have a stinking
suspicion that their CTR and CBRvalues will be considerably
(04:05):
higher than if we're advertisingnationwide.
Now, with AMC you can targetregionally like that.
It's a little bit different forsome ads versus others.
So AMC can be used to createaudiences.
That you can use in DSP, butyou can also use in sponsored
ads Now in DSP.
(04:25):
But you can also use insponsored ads Now in DSP and
sponsored display, which is kindof like a mini DSP, you can
actually specifically target thead so that it only goes to
individuals in whatevergeographic region you specify.
Alternatively for sponsoredproducts and sponsored brands.
(04:46):
It's not really a limiter, so,in other words, it's not only
going to run your ad to thoseindividuals.
However, it's almost more likea bid modifier kind of a
situation where individuals thatfall within your geographic
region are going to get the bulkof the advertising and the ad
spend.
So you might still advertise topeople in Michigan, but more of
(05:09):
your ads are going to show upto people in Phoenix or Southern
California and things like that.
So that's actually one areathat we're moving into right now
and are looking to implementalmost immediately is that
geographic target.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah.
So, if I understand you correct, just to break this down for
our audience, I think there's acouple of really important
points here.
So the first one is thinkingabout audiences in the sense of.
I think most people at thispoint understand the concept of
a highly targeted audienceversus a broad audience.
(05:41):
So let's just take, you know,you know men's boots is an
example, a random example thatcomes to mind.
So if you were advertising for akeyword that was men's boots,
you know that's pretty wide, andso you're going to get a lot of
people that might click on yourad because they are men that
are looking for a boot.
But if it's, you know, it maynot be the right boot that
(06:02):
they're looking for specificallyfor.
Maybe they're looking forsomething for motorcycling as
opposed to working constructionas opposed to, you know, cowboy
boots, like there's a lot ofdifferent variety there, and so
when you go wide like that, Ithink we're pretty familiar with
the concept of those keywordsare not going to convert as well
as if we have something that'ssuper specific, where you know,
maybe if we were saying it wasfor construction, where it's
(06:22):
like men's boots forconstruction or something like
that, where it's very precise.
So I think we understand thatfrom a keyword standpoint and
really this is just taking thatsame concept and applying it to
audiences.
And in your particular case, youknow, hey, if somebody lives in
Minnesota, they're only usingtheir pool four months out of
the year because it's frozen theother eight months, versus
(06:44):
somebody who lives in Arizona,where they might be able to use
their pool year round.
Not only are they able to usethat tool longer, also, if they
live in Arizona, because of youknow how much uh, you know just
UV light and sunshine that theyget down there, that tool is
much more, or that pool tool ismuch more likely to break down
if they're buying it.
You know from you know thatChinese manufacturer that's
(07:07):
selling on Amazon versus youknow the, versus your brand.
That's a much more premiumproduct.
Is that kind of at least so far, kind of a good description of
how you're approaching this?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, that's absolutely the way that we're
looking at it, and obviously youcan create audiences based
around all sorts of differentthings.
Amazon has kind of somesemi-default audiences that you
can use, and there's alsothere's tools out there that
allow you to connect into AMCthat have, let's say, pre-built
(07:39):
audiences that aren'tnecessarily Amazon-built
audiences, but they're pre-builtqueries, let's say.
So to back up a little bit, theway that you utilize AMC to
actually create these audiencesis that you write SQL queries,
which a lot of people don't knowwhat that is.
They have no idea how to do it,and so there's front ends, just
(08:02):
like there is for sponsored ads, like PackView and things like
that.
So services out there thatallow you to have a front end
interface that's better thanwhat Amazon gives you.
There are interfaces that allowyou to connect into AMC and
they have pre-built SQL queriesthat will create an audience of
a certain type, and so you cango through their list and be
(08:23):
like oh, that's the kind ofaudience that I want, and you
click on it and it will run thebackend query in AMC to create
that audience for you.
And so you have that option ofeither manually entering those
SQL queries or using some sortof a front-end interface to make
that easier to do.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, and I think, something else that I'd like to
add to this conversation, justbecause things have changed over
the last few years.
So the first thing is that.
So AMC is Amazon MarketingCloud, I believe, is what that
abbreviation stands for, and itused to be only for people that
were using a display network orDSP, which typically you know
and again I think this ischanging pretty considerably as
(09:05):
well where you know DSP used tohave to have, you know, I think
it was like 20 or $25,000 amonth in dedicated ad spend in
order to run DSP, and I thinkthat that has come down pretty
considerably.
Where you know you can run DSPnow for a few thousand dollars a
month.
That said, just kind of a littlebit of a rabbit hole here is
that you know, really sponsoredproducts and sponsored brand,
(09:30):
sponsored display are still verymuch you know, I would say,
those fundamental block, youknow blocking and tackling or
building blocks for an Amazonads account.
So if you're struggling, youknow, with getting sponsored
products to work, the chances ofyou getting, you know, good
return on investment from DSP ispretty darn low.
So I just throw that out thereas people that are like oh well,
(09:52):
my, you know sponsored productto add a cost is much higher
than I wanted to do.
Let me try DSP.
You know, I'm sure that there'sa unicorn out there that gets a
better return on DSP than theirsponsored product ads.
But for the most part mostbrands are going to be best
served by making sure that theyhave their sponsored products
ads squared away first and kindof maximize the opportunity
there.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That's absolutely true because not only if you're
not good with sponsored ads, dspis way more complex than
sponsored ads is.
So if you're not able to dialin your sponsored ads, then DSP
is a rough route.
And, quite frankly, sometimeswe've had a little trouble with
DSP, you know, partly becausewe've had some troubles getting
our sponsored ads dialed in, butit's also because a lot of the
(10:36):
value of DSP is remarketing andyou're remarketing to people
that you've gained from withinsponsored ads.
And so if your sponsored adsare not profitable on the front
end, and then you're remarketingon the back end now you're just
spending more money to get youknow.
so it's you really do have toget sponsored ads dialed in
before DSP becomes super viable.
However, like you said, nowthat AMC is applicable to
(10:58):
sponsored ads, you don't have togo the DSP route.
You can use, you know,sponsored display as kind of a
mini DSP if you want, and useAMC to lay around those
audiences to better target yourads.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, and so a couple other things I would add into
this.
So you know again I just want toreiterate for people that maybe
have heard of you know AmazonMarketing Cloud a couple of
years ago and think you know DSPand that type of stuff that
those two things don'tnecessarily have to go together
anymore.
Amazon Marketing Cloud, you know, works if, even if you're just
you know, running sponsoredproduct ads now, and it can be
(11:32):
incredibly helpful in you knowjust the data that's happening
there.
The other thing is is that youknow and I think you touched on
a little bit, mike, and I thinkit's just worth double clicking
on which is sponsored displayads now do a number of the
things that used to be DSP only.
So when you start looking at,you know, targeting different
audiences, you start looking atretargeting, cross-selling,
(11:53):
those types of things likesponsored display ads can now do
a lot of those things withouthaving to have a DSP account.
So you know there's a lot ofdifferent ways to approach this,
but at the end of the day, Ithink you bring up a really
valuable point here, which isyou know we're really familiar
with targeting based on keywords, but really from an Amazon
standpoint, yes, where theplatform isn't as rich in
(12:17):
audience or hasn't been in thepast, and this is an opportunity
really to take advantage ofthat where other platforms for
if you've ever run meta adsbefore does a fantastic job with
audiences and taking some ofthose same principles and
applying it to how you'rerunning Amazon ads.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Audiences are super, super powerful.
Like you were saying, john,keywords we've been targeting
with keywords on Amazon andGoogle for a long time, but
being able to do both.
I know that this particularTactics Tuesday is about
geo-ranking and how we're goingto implement that, but the
amount of things that you can dowith audiences on DSP
(12:57):
historically, but now sponsoreddisplay, and now you can use
those same audiences and layerthem on top of the keywords that
you're already using, I meanit's so, so, ridiculously
powerful because, like Mike said, I mean you know, year round
we're targeting just everyone,everyone searching for, for
anything.
I know that in Michigan inDecember, most people aren't
(13:17):
searching for pool poles or poolbrushes, however, there's ads
being served to them.
So so being able to layer on anaudience, either demographic or
retargeting or something alongthose lines, and also in
sponsored product there, like myI think Mike touched on this
just a little bit you canactually they're expanding how
you can target within sponsoredproducts, like now there's a
(13:39):
couple of other audiences youcan.
Actually they're expanding howyou can target within sponsored
products, like now there's acouple of other audiences, like
for the for Port ProTuff,there's a B2B you can.
It's almost like it's a bidadjustment so you can.
You can raise your bid based onwho the audience is and like
we've started doing that for theB2B audiences.
But there's also retargeting onsponsored products with those
(13:59):
bid adjustments as well.
So they're starting to open upall of these really, really
super cool ways to target peoplewithin sponsored products.
But with AMC, I mean havingallowing other people to access
AMC that aren't using DSP nowopens that up to the rest of us
and that's really what we'replaying around with,
specifically with thegeo-targeting thing.
(14:20):
But it's super exciting.
I mean, once we figure out thegeo-targeting thing and who that
pool professional is and thenbe able to layer on other
audience kind of demographictype stuff on it, that's when
things really start to scale.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, and I think those modifiers are really
important too.
I mean, I know you know top ofsearch has had a modifier for a
long time and you know there'sdefinitely solid.
Strategies have been used for along time of, you know, having
lower bids and then using thatmodifier to get as much of that
top of search as possible.
Because if you look at, youknow now that Amazon shows us
those stats, you just see somuch better clicks and
(14:54):
conversions on that top ofsearch in a lot of cases.
Now, obviously that you know alot of brands have gotten very
aggressive as they've seen topof search work really well.
The nice thing about this isthat, hey, you might have some
competitors.
In fact, mike, you probably area good example If you have a
lot of competitors that that B2Bmarket probably isn't their
(15:14):
strong suit, and so by beingable to add that modifier
specifically for B2B, where youknow strong suit, and so by
being able to add that modifierspecifically for B2B, where
that's an audience that you canserve significantly better, that
gives you a huge advantage?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah for sure, and one of the things that we noted
not too long ago was just howvaluable that B2B customer was
to us.
So the average order value forthose B2B customers on Amazon is
nearly 50% higher than for nonB2B customers.
And then, in addition to that,we were finding that our
(15:48):
conversion rates wereconsiderably better for B2B and
so, therefore, obviously, clickrates, or click costs, you know,
are lower.
So we were able to take and dothat modifier so that we can
more specifically target thoseB2B customers.
And one thing that it's, Ithink, it's important to
recognize is you have anopportunity, through your Amazon
(16:12):
advertising to this is a badword, but I'm going to use it
anyways to manipulate yourAmazon stats overall.
Right, and this is you know,the more of your sales that run
through ads, the more, the moreyou can do that because such a
high percentage of your salesare running through there, like
(16:33):
for ProTuff, unfortunately.
Obviously you don't want thatto be the case, but if it is the
case, then your ad strategy canreally kind of manipulate your
overall numbers for your productin the right direction or the
wrong direction if you're notdoing it well.
So, in other words, amazon istaking into account when they're
looking at organic ranking andthings of that nature.
You know what is the standardconversion rate of your product.
(16:55):
What is the standardclick-through rate of your
product.
You know for certain keywordsyour product what is the
standard click-through rate ofyour product for certain
keywords?
So when they're looking at thenumbers, if you are very careful
with your Amazon PPC and you'retargeting properly so that
you're targeting the rightindividuals who are going to
give you better conversion rates, better click rates, not only
do your ad costs go down, butyour overall stats for that
(17:18):
product and that ASIN go up andin Amazon's eyes then there's a
good chance that organically youwill rank better as a result of
it.
So don't underestimate thevalue of being able to kind of
manipulate those numbers withyour PPC.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Queuing Matt or Mike?
We're going to call thatqueuing.
We're queuing.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I did say it was a bad word.
I wasn't coming up with a goodone though.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
But yeah, I mean, it is a great point.
As far as you know, especially,I mean, again, we have a magic
wand.
We'd all love to back in thedays where, you know, 70% of our
sales were organic and 30% ofthem were ad based.
And especially, if you know,depending on where you are in
your category and what categoryyou're in you, if you know,
depending on where you are inyour category and what category
you're in you know, you knowit's one of those things where,
(18:04):
unfortunately, that's just notthe case anymore.
But you do bring up a goodpoint as far as, like, how you
can take advantage of that andespecially, making sure that
you're pushing, you know,campaigns that really are
focusing on those right keywordsif that's what you're trying to
rank for and do you have goodconversion rates to really give?
You know Amazon that thequeuing data that your product.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
We're signaling Amazon.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
There you go, that you know it has the statistics
that they're looking for.
So I think that's a very validpoint looking for.
So I think that's a very validpoint Trying to think of what
else would be important, as ouraudience listens to this, when
we think about AMC andgeo-targeting.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Well, a couple of things that I could add would be
just as we've walked through.
This process is getting AMCadded to your account is not as
easy as a lot of people havemade it sound.
Supposedly, you can contactAmazon directly and make that
happen.
However, if you do expect towait many, many weeks before it
(19:10):
actually gets implemented if itever gets added to your account
at all However, running througha provider of some sort, an
agency or whatever somethinglike PackView as a service or
something, they can get AMCadded to your account and they
have much more sway.
So it will actually happen, andwhat I did confirm the other
(19:33):
day was that once it's added,even if you step away from that
agency or from that service, saylike PackView or something you
maintain AMC access and you canaccess it directly through your
advertising console withinAmazon.
So if you want access to AMC,the fastest way to get it is to
go through an agency or aservice of some sort and get
(19:55):
them to add it.
I don't recommend signing up forsome agency just to get AMC and
then leaving the agency.
That would be really crappy todo to somebody.
However, I'm just letting youknow that's the way to get
yourself in the door and if itturned out you didn't want to
continue using that agencybecause they're not really
fulfilling your needs, you canstep away from them and maintain
(20:16):
that AMC access.
I would also say make sure okayI mentioned earlier that you can
use those interfaces to createSQL queries that it will create
an audience and you can usepre-built queries based on the
audience type that you want tocreate.
I would say that you're likelygoing to want to get to the
(20:37):
point where you can create thosemanual SQL queries yourself in
the backend, within your Amazonads console, and the best way I
can suggest to do that is toeither utilize one that's
already been created or createyour own custom GPT that knows
how to generate SQL queries forAMC, and then you just go into
(20:59):
the custom GPT, you tell it theaudience that you're trying to
target and it will generate theSQL query that you can just
paste into AMC.
So you don't have to be an SQLexpert to do it, you just have
to be decent at creating acustom GPT that can do that for
you.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, and there's probably.
I bet, if you did enoughsearching out there, I'm sure
there's a GPT.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I know there's at least one that exists out there,
because Matt's the one thatpointed it out.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Monsoor from incrementum actually put it
together it's amazing Tip of thehat for him.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I figured if somebody had it that would probably be
him.
So, all right, fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Well, I think, as we wrap up, I think that probably
the biggest thing that I wouldsay is get access to AMC.
Reasonably speaking, it wouldbe silly to not do that, because
(21:58):
you're probably going to dosome testing with it and you're
going to think there's someaudiences that are going to be
good for you and they're notgoing to work out.
They're not going to work out.
However, if you keep testing,you will find audiences that
will improve your performance onyour sponsored ads and also DSP
, if you're using DSP.
So get access.
Whatever the.
You know whatever you need todo to get access.
(22:19):
Get access and then test it.
You know, like really startthinking through.
You know, use chat, gpt or someother AI to discuss.
You know, like prompt it to saythis is what I have access to,
this is what I can do with AMC.
How should I use it?
This is my product.
(22:40):
This is the current avatar thatwe sell to.
These are our stats.
You know what are ways,creative ways that I might be
able to use AMC and create newaudiences to potentially improve
our performance.
I guarantee you that ChatGPT orsome other AI will give you
some really good ideas ofaudiences that you should try
and create and test to getbetter performance, and I'm
(23:01):
absolutely certain that at leastsome of them will be productive
for you, and so I would justsay move, don't wait, do
something with it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Okay, yeah, and I would also add just you know
again, you know sponsor displayhas some great capabilities now
and whether you know the peoplethat I've seen that are the
happiest that I think.
Spent man, I think we've got tosilence some notifications, all
right, anyway, I think, as wewrap this up, see, we do this
live, as evidenced.
(23:31):
So, I think, looking atsponsored display and audiences
and knowing that, like you,don't have to wait until you
have AMC or DSP in order to dothat, the other piece of advice
that I would give is that what'sdifferent about audiences is
it's very creative dependent.
So, you know, be prepared toinvest some time in good
(23:51):
creatives and testing outcreatives and those types of
things in order to be successful.
That said, you know, thinkabout it.
As you know, an additional toolin your tool belt, and I think
we're going to see a lot more ofAmazon's advertising going
towards, you know, audiencetargeting.
That does involve having goodcreative in order to be
successful.
(24:12):
So if you're starting on thatnow, I think you're going to be
in a good place in the nextcouple of years as the platform
changes and starts leaning intomore audiences as opposed to
keywords.
For sure, I agree, all right,and with that, I think that's a
great place to wrap for today.
Thank you everybody forlistening and we'll see you on
another Tactics Tuesday.
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