Are you ready to harness the power of AI for your business?
Download our free AI Revolution white paper today.
Download Now
Unlock your Prime Day potential! Month-by-month strategies inside.
Download the complete calendar and playbook for free
Free Download
Are you prepared for 2024 fees? Download our free Amazon Fee
Stack White Paper
for 2024 to protect your business.
Carbon 6
NEW! Download the free Amazon
Fee Stack White Paper
for 2024.
Free Download
Free Download
Take your Seller Central operations off your to-do listHire us for around-the-clock Amazon account management!
Learn More
ManageByStats is now FREE! Get this ultimate, all-in-one tool suite to boost your profit on Amazon.
Learn More
We double our reimbursements efforts
to get you 20% more back from Amazon!
Learn More
Urgent: Amazon sellers take action now!
Amazon reduced the reimbursement window by a staggering 88.89%, from 18 months to 60 days starting October 23, 2024.
Start Your Free Audit
4
MINUTE READ TIME
Published
October 7, 2022
|
Carbon6 Team

|
Trends & Insights

4 Pillars of Impactful and Cost-Effective PPC Campaigns in Q4

4 Pillars of Impactful and Cost-Effective PPC Campaigns in Q4

Table of Contents

For ecommerce sellers, Q4 is the most magical time of the year. With major shopping holidays like Black Friday and Christmas (and the rumored second Prime Day event in the fall), the fourth quarter is an orchard of opportunities, ripe for picking.

For sellers who want to make the most of these opportunities, a comprehensive pay-per-click (PPC) Sponsored Brands advertising strategy is essential. Read on to see how you can use these four key pillars to build your brand and find Q4 success with your PPC campaigns.

Are you ready for the AI revolution?
Stay ahead of the trends in our free AI Revolution white paper.
Download Now
Take Seller Central operations off your to-do list
Trust our team of experts with 24/7 account management!
Learn More
NEW! Download the free Amazon Fee Stack White Paper for 2024.
Free Download
Unlock your Prime Day potential!
Download the complete playbook for free
Free Download
ManageByStats is now FREE!
Get the complete data suite to boost your profits.
Learn More
We double our reimbursements efforts to get you 20% more back
Learn More
NEW! Free Q4 Playbook to boost your Amazon sales! Your guide to peak-season success with key priorities and timelines.
Download Now

1. Cater to the Holidays

People love the holiday season, so offering them some welcoming holiday-themed vibes can help put them in the spirit. With holiday-themed Sponsored Brands (S/B) and Sponsored Display (S/D) ads, you can raise brand awareness and get people thinking about what gifts to buy before the rush.

If you want to really step your game up, make holiday-themed video ads. Today, you can now direct video ads to storefront pages, enabling a full holiday-specific strategy that gets people browsing and shopping within your product listings.

Go the extra mile and make holiday-themed posts to guide curious shoppers to your products. Currently in beta, posts are available to Amazon sellers registered with Amazon’s Brand Registry, as well as vendors in the US market. Shoppers on mobile devices can see your posts  in feeds and on detail pages based on relevance and customer engagement.

2. Jump on Keywords Early

Traffic skyrockets in Q4 — and so do advertising costs. Make sure you know which keywords are your money-makers and target them ahead of the wave with exact match campaigns.

We recommend using automated tools like PPCEntourage that can identify high-volume keywords, adjust bids based on success, and remove S/B non-converting search terms. Save time by letting the algorithms do the work for you.

For S/D ads, search for “gift” in the new Amazon Audiences section to find keywords that you can capitalize during the busy season. 

3. Implement Targeting and Retargeting Strategies

Avoiding wasted ad spend requires proper targeting. Because of the purchasing influx in Q4, the quarter offers many avenues to creating a cohesive strategy.

One such avenue is implementing contextual targeting. With contextual targeting, sellers are able to show their ads to audiences based on what they’re currently browsing, as opposed to using collected, stored, and analyzed data about shoppers over a period of time. This more traditional advertising method has seen a resurgence ever since the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe and iOS14 severely limited the efficacy of personalized advertising. Contextual targeting will naturally find people interested in your product categories, and it can drive both on- and off-Amazon traffic.

In fact, before the holiday season comes into full swing, it’s a good idea to consider an external traffic push. Use this time to grow awareness and interest across a wide range of potential customers. You can plant the seed of desire early and let it grow, all before the advertising costs start soaring.

What do we recommend?

Using PixelMe, which allows sellers to launch and manage Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok advertising campaigns all in one single platform. PixelMe also tracks metrics on everyone who clicks your ads, allowing you to use advanced retargeting strategies.

PixelMe retargeting process graphic
Remarketing works by driving customers from off-Amazon ads to Amazon products.

Another great Q4 move for your PPC campaigns is to use S/D ads with view-based remarketing to reclaim any shoppers who check out your products but don’t make the purchase right away. Here’s an insider tip: Use “optimize for reach” when retargeting page viewers to get the most bang for your buck.

4. Take a Data-Based Approach to Advertising

The best way to be effective — and cost-effective — with your advertising for PPC campaigns is to stop guessing. Instead, measure everything. Be a scientist about it, and record what’s working and what isn’t.

Organizing by campaign type quickly shows you the heroes and the duds. For example, we’ve found that “Sponsored Product — Keyword Targeting” and “Sponsored Product — Product Targeting,” are currently doing exceptionally well.

However, just because something is doing great right now doesn’t mean it will always be the  winning move. 

“Constantly test new formats. Whatever Amazon releases, test that new format,” says Victor Dwyer, vice president of marketing at pirawna.

For Q4 specifically, focus your ad spend on the most effective formats. You can run experiments to test various formats after the traffic has returned to normal.

Are you ready for the AI revolution?
Stay ahead in 2025 with our free AI white paper.
Download Now
NEW! Free Q4 Playbook to boost your Amazon sales for peak-season success.
Download Now
Unlock your Prime Day potential!

Download the playbook for free
Free Download
Take Seller Central operations off your to-do list
Trust our team of experts with 24/7 account management!
Learn More

Ringing in Holiday Cheer — and Sales — This Q4

Opportunities are only advantageous when we’re prepared to take advantage of them. If you take the time now to study which campaign types are the most effective, which keywords to focus on, and which pathways to driving external traffic could work best, you can find yourself with an abundance of opportunities in Q4.

Enhance your power and reclaim your time by using automated tools like PPCEntourage to do the research, testing, and adjustments for you. 

For more insider tips, watch our webinar on 7 Tactics to Prep Your PPC for Q4, hosted by PPCEntourage founder Mike Zagare.

Recent Newsletters

Top 5 Amazon Seller Reads this Week: Issue #215
Carbon6 Team
Feb 14, 2025
Newsletters
Top 5 Amazon Seller Reads this Week: Issue #215
Amazon testing DTC site traffic, TikTok launches subscription model, sellers hit 62% share, ad revenue reaches $17.3B, and Q-commerc debuts in India.
See Article
Insights: Carbon6 events season kicks off
Carbon6 Team
Feb 11, 2025
Newsletters
Insights: Carbon6 events season kicks off
The dust has settled on the arrival of 2025, and Q1 is well underway. Here at Carbon6, we’re gearing up for some of the biggest events of the year, with ASGTG, MDS Inspire, and Prosper Show all happening in March.
See Article
Top 5 Amazon Seller Reads this Week: Issue #214
Carbon6 Team
Feb 7, 2025
Newsletters
Top 5 Amazon Seller Reads this Week: Issue #214
Amazon seller updates: Inbound placement fees, de minimis rules, DSP advertising dominance, 2025 marketing trends, and Cartier counterfeit lawsuit.
See Article

Recent Posts

Amazon Seller Updates: AMZ to Send Direct Traffic to DTC, Shipment Updates & Fee Increase
Chelsea Cohen
Feb 14, 2025
Amazon Seller News
Amazon Seller Updates: AMZ to Send Direct Traffic to DTC, Shipment Updates & Fee Increase
Amazon tests external brand links in search results: Shopping app directs customers to brand websites in new beta test for US iOS & Android users.
See Article
How AI Agents Are Reshaping Amazon Advertising & PPC
Shannon Curley
Feb 13, 2025
AI & Automation
How AI Agents Are Reshaping Amazon Advertising & PPC
Find out how AI agents Amazon advertising is reshaping ecommerce digital marketing.
See Article
How Amazon Agencies Can Unlock New Growth Opportunities in 2025
Shannon Curley
Feb 11, 2025
For Your Business
How Amazon Agencies Can Unlock New Growth Opportunities in 2025
Learn how Amazon agencies can stand out, grow sustainably, and help sellers tackle compliance, supply chain, and ad cost challenges.
See Article