Seller Central helps you access tons of valuable information. When you’ve collected enough data, you can pivot your campaigns to focus on what’s working, and get away from things that are only costing you revenue.
But how can you access those retail insights? Today’s post will walk you through the two most informative reports you can access, and how to use the information contained within them.
Need some ideas for how to use the information you gain from campaign reports?
Campaign Structure
Before we get into how to access reports, it’s important to touch on campaign structure. Much of the data in these reports can be organized through the campaigns you run. However, if you don’t have a well-crafted campaign structure, it’s difficult to find specific pieces of information, as well as see how products are performing.
Organize your campaigns by name, number, or designation so you can easily filter and review relevant data.
How to Access Campaign Reports
When you’re ready to Access Campaign reports, log in to Seller Central.
Head on over to the Advertising Tab. Then go to the Campaign Manager, and in the drop-down menu, click on the type of report you want to access.
From here, you’ll be able to find a variety of advertising reports that will provide you with a plethora of data to use.
You can also access it by going to the reports tab and choosing a report from there.
Once you’ve downloaded your reports, you have several options for how to filter them. Here are just a few.
- Advertising cost of sales
- Campaign dates
- Conversion rate
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Number of orders
- Seven day sales
- Total spend
Understanding Report Terms
There are several terms in these reports that need to be defined to make the most of them. Understanding these terms can help you piece together the data you have to get a complete picture of how customers are interacting with (or not seeing) your products. You can make changes accordingly and improve your ROI.
Advertising Cost of Sales
One thing to keep in mind with campaign structures is that there’s no good or bad advertising cost of sales amount. The number can change depending on what strategy you use.
ASINS
An ASIN is an Amazon Standard Identification Number. You can find these on the product page. These can be used to search for products in Amazon’s catalog.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is how many click-throughs your ad gets for every 100 ad impressions, expressed as a percentage. It’s a great way of determining the immediate response to your ads.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is best expressed as a formula.
Conversion rate = Total sales / Total visits to your product page
In other words, the conversion rate measures how many people buy your products compared to how many people see them.
Cost Per Click
How much Amazon charges every time a shopper clicks on one of your sponsored links.
Number of Impressions
Page impressions are how many times your ad has been seen. The number of impressions doesn’t measure clicks or conversion.
Portfolio Name
Portfolios are a way to manage your products by grouping them in a specific way. You can create a portfolio for brand categories, seasons, and more.
Return on Ad Spend
Return on ad spend is expressed as a formula. Total sales/total spend on ads. It’s the net income a campaign has produced.
SKU
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) is an identification code for your store or product that helps you track inventory.
Types of Campaign Reports Useful For Gathering Data
The two main types of reports you’ll be working with are the Search Term Report and the Placement Report.
Search Term Report
The Search Term Report helps you see how your customers overall are discovering your items and other related products sold by competitors.
The Search Terms Report helps you see conversion rates and search popularity on a per-product or per campaign level. The report has information on popular search terms during your campaign.
You can also see what products customers click on after searching that term, even if they aren’t yours. Click-through rate covers how many times shoppers have clicked on your links when they show up on the page. Click-through rate is an excellent metric for demonstrating how much attention your ads are getting.
You can see which products are attracting customer attention, and see what it has that your listings don’t.
The report also shows you search frequency rank. This covers a specific search term’s popularity when ranked against other search terms during the campaign period.
How to Use Data From This Report
Generating and reviewing a search term report is a great way to see how individual keywords are performing in your ad campaigns. You can also see how they perform against competitor products.
Search term reports can also help you see if specific phrases have too much competition. Phrase competition is one of the most significant places you could be spending too much per click.
Another great feature of search term reports is that you can find broad matches to your keywords that are bringing in a lot of traffic. Maybe these matches are bringing in more to your page than the keyword you chose. Having this information can help you see when you need to pivot to follow the search terms instead of trying to make random phrases work.
Placement Report
The placement report allows you to see different ad placements on Amazon and their performance. Comparing click-through rate can help you understand which placements are converting more, and which ones don’t get you the results you want.
There are three places your ads can appear on the Amazon platform.
Sponsored Brands show up directly beneath the search bar, and look like organic answers to a product search.
Sponsored Products can show up in two places. Either below sponsored brands, or beneath “Sponsored Products Related to This Item.” The first place generally gains more conversions than the second.
Product Display Ads show up in various places on the product display page. These can target the product or general interest.
Seeing how placement translates to results can help you put advertising investment towards the options that will bring you the most significant ROI.
There are three places your ads can appear on the Amazon platform: Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Products, and Product Display Ads.
How to Use Data From This Report
The product placement report can help you see what items your products are displaying near. Looking at these reports can show you if you’re targeting the right audience. If one page had ads that don’t convert on a specific product, that audience isn’t interested in what you have to sell.
This information can influence your ad campaign strategy and help you see what types of products apply to the keywords you want to target. You can also determine what ads aren’t worth the spend anymore. If you continue to spend money on a campaign that doesn’t produce any results, you probably won’t see anything from it.
This report shows you other product pages on Amazon and where the ad shows up on those pages.
If you look at a particular product, most of the impressions are coming from the product page and not other placements. Sales follow that as well.
You can do pivot charts and group your campaigns based on what you find. Doing so can change your campaigns to have you bid higher on certain CPCs or ad placements. It’s easier to see what’s performing well on different product pages and the different details that influence conversion.
Having ad performance data isn’t enough. You need to know what to do with it. Now that you know what you’re looking at, you can use it to achieve your Amazon selling goals.
