29 Jun Automatic or manual campaigns: what are they and which is better?

• Both are based on the use of keywords as a means for customers to find your product.
• The use of one or the other will depend on the needs of each seller, the type of product and the sales strategy to be followed.

The use of advertising campaigns is becoming more and more essential to sell your products on Amazon in a stable and secure way. Although it is often difficult to know which is the best option among all the options available in the Sponsored Products.

When faced with the question of which type of advertising campaign is better to invest money in, automatic or manual, at Nozama Solutions we are clear: both. In the hybrid model, both types of campaigns feed back into each other, which is why it is considered the most effective for most cases, as you can use the data you collect from one campaign to benefit the other, and vice versa.

On the other hand, it is worth noting that the decisive factor in an Amazon campaign are the keywords, through them you will be able to reach potential customers.

Below, we explain what each type of campaign consists of and how you can benefit from them.

Automatic campaigns

They are ideal for getting started in pay-per-click (PPC). In this case, it is Amazon itself that selects the keywords that will lead customers to your product.

Once you have selected the inventory items you want to advertise, the platform lets you bid on the type of match, i.e. what other products or search terms you want yours to be matched with:

Close match: related words or products, which would be the descriptive terms of your product, based on the titles, descriptions, bullet points, etc.

Distant match: products that have to do with each other but are further apart.

Complementary products: relates you to those products from your competitors.

Related products: links you to products in the same sector but which are not strictly speaking competitors. For example, if our keyword is «premium gin», the search engine will match everything to do with gin, including glasses, spices or a cocktail book.

Depending on your strategy, you will need to increase your bid for one type of match or another to better position your product on the platform. You can also block the items that Amazon links you to if you are not interested in that type of matching.

Manual campaigns

In this case, it is you as the seller who chooses the keywords that will guide your campaign by targeting the ads. To do this, carry out good keyword research and establish the type of segmentation that best suits your business objectives. There are three types of matching:

Broad match: Amazon can increase the reach of your keyword by using variations such as plurals, abbreviations, use of a single word (in case the keyword is composed of more than one), changing the order or adding terms.

Phrase match: this is more restrictive than the previous one and requires the keyword to appear exactly as you put it.

Exact match: ads will only be displayed if the term you have chosen is used.

But the most important aspect of manual campaigns is the ability to bid on a per-keyword basis. This means developing a variety of strategies to achieve higher performance within your budget.

Hybrid campaigns: the most comprehensive option

In general, automated campaigns are ideal for launching a new product on Amazon. This is because it is difficult to know at the outset what the behaviour of buyers will be. Moreover, it is not known what search terms are used to find it or what the state of the market is.

On the other hand, manual campaigns are very useful when the sector and competitors are well known and the keywords are clear. This makes it easier for you to advertise your products wherever and whenever you want.

At Nozama Solutions we believe that the ideal is to combine both models, starting with an automated campaign from which we can extract the best performing keywords and observe how the advertised products perform. After that, you can gradually move to manual, controlling the keywords as you wish, investing more or less money in bidding for them and keeping track of the campaign in a more complete way.

However, switching from the automatic campaign to the manual one does not imply abandoning the first one, as it is also a good option to keep both active and use them simultaneously so that they feed back on each other, thus obtaining results and keyword yields that can be decisive for success.