Increasing consideration in the shopping journey in the Amazon store
Learn how to reach new customers actively browsing in your category on Amazon.
Here are the themes we’ll cover in this guide
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 14
What does it mean to increase consideration?
Encourage new customers to engage with your brand as they consider products for purchase.
Consideration: A touchpoint in the shopping journey
“Consideration” is a moment in the shopping journey when customers have a need or want and are actively considering different products to fill this gap. They’re gathering information about different products, such as the brand, price, features, reviews and shipping options, to help inform their purchase decision.
But they’re also looking beyond product details and price points. They’re open to discovering new brands that they can connect with, invest in and return to the next time they’re browsing for a new purchase.
As you’re looking to grow your brand, it’s key to engage new customers at this touchpoint with the information they may want in order to consider your brand in their purchase decision.
By sharing content about your products at this moment, you can start building connections that turn new shoppers browsing their options into customers that are ready to make a purchase from your business.
By using sponsored ads, we’ve been able to reach new customers and generate another opportunity for consideration. In a short period of time, it’s proven to be an effective marketing solution and has helped us drive sales on Amazon.
– Sandra Pulido, Marketing Manager, The Sola Company
Reach new shoppers as they’re actively browsing in the Amazon store
When shoppers are actively comparing different products and moving toward making a purchase, your brand should be front and centre to help them discover it and take it into consideration. For shoppers who aren’t familiar with your brand or haven’t shopped with you before, it can be important that you’re visible in that moment.
With our suite of self-service advertising solutions, you can help introduce your products to new shoppers where they’re already browsing and share the information they may want in order to feel confident in making a purchase from your brand.
By increasing consideration for your products in the Amazon store, you can start to establish relevant relationships with new shoppers – and in turn build your customer base and business.
If you’re already familiar with Amazon Ads’ self-service products, skip ahead to view your checklist for reaching new customers.
Explore different ways to increase consideration of your business
Use our checklists to ensure you’re using the right tactics for your goals.
Ready to reach new customers for your brand?
Here’s your checklist to help increase consideration in the Amazon store.
Following this strategy, you can help reach new customers for your brand that are already browsing in your category or reviewing related products, wherever they spend time. These tactics can help you engage a wider audience of shoppers that may be interested in your catalogue, sharing the details they need to make a purchase. This could be the starting point in helping new shoppers become loyal customers of your brand.
If your goal is to reach new customers, try using these tactics for greater results:
- Create a Sponsored Display audiences campaign
- Create a Sponsored Display contextual targeting campaign
Ready to stay top of mind in your category?
Here’s your checklist to help increase consideration in the Amazon store.
Here’s your strategy to help stay top of mind in your category among your current customers and potential new shoppers. Following these tactics will help create engaging experiences for shoppers with your business wherever they spend time that put your unique brand differentiators on display. You’ll also get tips on reaching shoppers that are browsing in your category, helping you engage the right audiences at the right time in their shopping journey.
If your goal is to stay top of mind in your category, try using these tactics for greater results:
- Create a Store for your brand
- Add sub-pages to your Store
- Use non-Amazon marketing efforts to bring traffic to your Store
- Use non-Amazon marketing efforts to bring traffic to your Store
- Share brand content with Posts
- Create a Sponsored Brands campaign linking to your Store
- Create a Sponsored Brands video format ad campaign
- Create a Sponsored Display audiences campaign
- Create a Sponsored Display contextual targeting campaign
- Use “optimize for conversions” in your Sponsored Display campaigns
Get to know our self-service solutions
Learn how our ad products can help you reach new shoppers wherever they spend time.
Our self-service ad products1 can be used individually, but we recommend creating a holistic strategy with a combination of solutions to engage customers throughout their shopping journey, including the consideration stage.
Using multiple solutions gives you the flexibility to try a number of creative formats and campaign strategies that each engage audiences in unique ways. These options give your ads the opportunity to show to more customers, at more moments that matter – like when they’re browsing for products and considering them for purchase.
Amazon Ads allows us to engage with our clients’ customers at different points of their buying journey. Having the ability to reach customers when they’re in a buying frame of mind is a valuable proposition for any brand or agency.
– Mark Pettit, CEO, Skye High Media
Target by keyword or product to help increase the visibility of individual products. Ads appear in shopping results and on product detail pages, helping you drive awareness, consideration and sales.
A customizable, cost-per-click ad solution that helps customers discover and engage with your brand as they browse and research in the Amazon store. Ads feature several rich creative formats that help inform customers as they’re shopping and looking for new products and brands.
Help drive awareness, consideration, and conversion with automatically generated display ads that showcase your product, and appear wherever they spend time. Sponsored Display offers a few different types of targeting, including contextual and audience-based targeting, to help you reach your goals.
Free, always-on destinations for your brand on Amazon where customers can discover everything your business has to offer. Using immersive videos and images, you can showcase your full catalogue as shoppers browse for new products to purchase.
Image-led brand content served to shoppers as they actively browse in your brand’s category within the US Amazon mobile shopping experience. Customers can click through posts to explore your brand’s feed, discover product pages directly from your feed and navigate to your Store.
Customers can choose to follow brands they love to help tailor their shopping experience in the Amazon store. Your followers may see more of your content on Amazon, giving you an opportunity to help increase engagement.
Measure how your non-Amazon marketing strategies impact your brand's shopping activity and sales in the Amazon store. Use these insights to optimize campaigns and plan future tactics that drive value for your brand on Amazon.
Discover, compare and book directly with trusted service providers for policy compliant and impactful creative assets. Search and filter services based on your requirements, browse reviews and samples of work, and connect directly to manage end-to-end creative delivery with your preferred service provider right within the advertising console.
Sellers that used at least two self-service ad products performed 19% higher in the Consideration Index on average, compared to sellers that used only one self-service ad product.8
1 Products and features may not be available in all marketplaces.
2 Available to vendors and to sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry.
3 Vendors and sellers already selling on Amazon in the country where they wish to advertise can create a Store at no additional cost. Otherwise, selling fees apply.
4 Available to US vendors and to US sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry.
5 You must have a US Store.
6 Sellers must have brand representative status to participate. Reach out to seller support with any questions about becoming a brand representative.
7 Available to US vendors, sellers and authors.
8 Amazon internal data, US, UK, DE, FR, JP, CA, IT, ES, AU, MX, 1 September 2021 – 31 August 2022
Create a Sponsored Display audiences campaign
Reach audiences wherever they spend time based on relevant shopping activities.
Create your Sponsored Display audiences campaign
Sponsored Display audiences campaigns allow you to engage or reengage audiences who viewed your products, products similar to yours, relevant categories and even complementary or related categories to your products.
Your display creatives may appear to audiences while they browse websites and apps other than Amazon, as well as placements on the Amazon homepage, product detail pages and shopping results pages – meaning greater opportunity and more touchpoints where you can increase consideration with new customers.
Sponsored Display has been observed to be one of the most effective ad products in driving new-to-brand sales. Advertisers who use Sponsored Display audiences are seeing up to 82% of their sales driven by new-to-brand customers.1
Consideration tip: You can connect your brand marketing strategy to your digital advertising strategy using Amazon audiences, helping to drive consideration as you reach new audiences and gain insights into your brand in the Amazon store.
Advertisers who create a Sponsored Display campaign with audience targeting for a brand for the first time see an average 7.1% increase in consideration for that brand the next month, compared to advertisers who don’t.1
Try these campaign strategies
Using Amazon audiences in your campaign, you can leverage thousands of pre-built audience segments to help reach new prospective shoppers through your consideration campaigns. Amazon audiences are comprised of four major categories, which are built and curated by Amazon Ads using a variety of first-party shopping, streaming and entertainment insights:
- In-market segments help you to engage audiences who are “in-the-aisle” and have been recently shopping for products in a given category. To capture share-of-mind, you can potentially reach audiences in the same category as your advertised products to drive consideration, as well as try out entirely new segments.
- Pre-built lifestyle audiences reflect a variety of shopping and viewing behaviours, including shopping in the Amazon store, browsing on IMDb and streaming on Prime Video or Twitch. Each one maps to specific lifestyles such as “foodies”, “sports enthusiasts”, “tech enthusiasts” and more.
- Interest-based audiences help you engage groups of shoppers who share a common interest based on Amazon browse and purchase signals.
- Life event audiences can help introduce relevant products and services to shoppers based around life moments in order to drive consideration.
1 Amazon internal data, WW, 16/1/21 to 6/3/21
2 Amazon internal data, US, November 2021
Create a Sponsored Display contextual targeting campaign
Target specific products or relevant product categories wherever they spend time.
Create your Sponsored Display contextual targeting campaign
Building a Sponsored Display contextual targeting1 campaign allows you to reach more of your audiences at highly relevant points in their shopping journey, wherever they spend time, when customers view content related to your targeting strategies. On Amazon, your ads may appear on product detail pages, alongside customer reviews, on shopping results pages or under the featured offer. Sponsored Display will also increase opportunities to expand your reach beyond Amazon to third-party websites and mobile apps, helping you increase consideration and reach potential new customers.
For example, a brand selling exercise apparel can use contextual targeting to show ads on Amazon product detail pages within the Exercise and Fitness category, helping to reach shoppers browsing related items.
But there are also many more opportunities to reach fitness enthusiasts at other points in their day as they browse web pages or use their favourite mobile apps. In this example, shoppers browsing other websites for exercise apparel might be early in their shopping journey and unaware of brands selling these items. With contextual targeted ads displayed wherever they spend time, the brand can reach new audiences even if those audiences haven’t previously browsed products related to their advertised product on Amazon. This helps them to engage new shoppers who may not be familiar with their brand at the perfect moment and link the shoppers to their Amazon product detail page where they can continue sharing their brand story.
Advertisers who create a Sponsored Display contextual targeting campaign for the first time for a brand see an average 5% increase in shoppers who add a product of that brand to the cart the next month, compared to advertisers who don’t.2
Choose your targeting method
Within your contextual targeting campaign, you can choose from similar product and category targeting:
- Similar product targeting: If you’re looking to increase consideration, product targeting can help you promote your product among shoppers where they’re browsing products wherever they spend time that are related to your ad. You can target specific products that are similar or complementary to your advertised product to make high-intent audiences aware of your products. You can also consider targeting your own products for the opportunity for your ads to appear on your product detail pages, rather than ads for another brand.
- Category targeting: You can also reach audiences who are browsing “in the aisle” or in the same categories that you choose in your campaign. Using this targeting option, you can increase consideration among a wider set of potential customers actively looking at other products or content within your own category or a related category.
Sponsored Display advertisers who target products and categories in their ads have on average 86% higher attributed orders than advertisers who only target individual products.3
1 Previously referred to as product targeting
2 Amazon internal data, US, November 2021
3 Amazon internal data, US, 19/9/2020 to 17/10/2020
Use “optimize for conversions” in your Sponsored Display campaigns
Leverage custom bid optimizations based on your goals.
Choose the “optimize for conversions” bidding strategy
Sponsored Display offers granular yet flexible bidding controls through custom bid optimizations, which can help you engage and reengage audiences as you grow your business with Amazon.
When creating a contextual targeting or audiences campaign, you can optimize bidding for your specific needs, including to increase conversions. This allows you to signal your campaign needs, deliver against those needs and further optimize campaigns against metrics such as sales.
By choosing “optimize for conversions” under bid optimization strategies, you can help drive product sales and create customer loyalty by showing your ads to shoppers most likely to purchase your product.
Create a Store for your brand
Build a destination on Amazon where you can help enhance customer consideration.
Create a Store for your brand
Your Store is your destination on Amazon to help your brand shine and to showcase your full product catalogue. To use your Store as a tool to drive consideration, design your page to highlight your top products across all of your key categories or sub-categories.
Then, use these widgets to make it easy for customers to browse and add products to their shopping carts directly from your Store on both desktop and mobile:
- Product collection: Use this widget to organize multiple groups of products on the same page within your Store and provide shoppers with the ability to quickly and easily add items to their carts.
- Featured deals: If you have active deals, including Best Deal, Deal of the Day and Lightning Deals, use this feature to display your promotions automatically.
- Shoppable image: Highlight up to six products within an image. When shoppers click on a featured product, they can view key information, add the product to their cart or navigate to the product detail page.
With a Store, customers get a detailed overview of all our products, and that increases the likelihood that they’ll buy more of our products than only the single product they were looking for.
– Albert Vu, Managing Director and Founder, AZDelivery
Add sub-pages to your Store
Group products together by category or sub-category to help shoppers browse more easily.
Add sub-pages to your Store to guide shoppers as they browse
Think of your Store as an educational destination page for your brand within your category. Group products together on multiple sub-pages at the category or sub-category level, focusing on the categories that are most important to your business. While shoppers may visit your Store with a certain product or category in mind, this layout can inspire them to consider additional products or categories your brand has to offer.
Advertisers who publish a sub-page to a live Store for a brand for the first time see an average 7.6% increase in consideration for that brand the next month, compared to advertisers who don’t.1
On your sub-pages, consider using video assets to introduce your key products and demonstrate them in action. High-quality videos can help you build more meaningful connections with customers, providing a way to quickly offer key information. Give details they can’t get from images or text, like the product performing under challenging conditions or a person interacting with your brand. This can help develop loyalty among new and returning customers.
Or incorporate shoppable images onto your sub-pages to inspire customers with rich lifestyle imagery that features your product in different settings or in collections with complementary products in your portfolio. You can choose to make any of the products in the image shoppable, so customers can click on the featured products and see basic information like name, price, customer ratings and Prime availability. They can also add the product to their cart or navigate to the product detail page.
1 Amazon internal data, US, September 2021
Use non-Amazon marketing efforts to bring traffic to your Store
Use Amazon Attribution to measure and optimize the impact of your campaigns.
Use non-Amazon marketing efforts to bring traffic to your Store
Help reach audiences wherever they spend time and encourage them to visit your Store by sharing a link to your Store in your social media posts, email marketing campaigns and your brand’s website.
Then using Amazon Attribution, you can find the insights you need to understand how your non-Amazon marketing efforts – including those across search, social, digital, video and email channels – are driving value for your brand in the Amazon store.
Advertisers that optimized their non-Amazon media using Amazon Attribution insights experienced an average 18% increase in new-to-brand sales.1
To get started, you can access Amazon Attribution through the advertising console alongside your self-service ads campaigns.
1. Sign in to the advertising console.
2. Set up measurement by creating your first campaign.
- Access step-by-step instructions in the help centre to create your Amazon Attribution tags.
- When selecting the creation method, you can manually create the campaign structure or set up measurement with bulk operations for your Google search, Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns.
3. Apply the Amazon Attribution tag into the final destination URL of the associated paid or organic campaign within the publisher interface. This tag will drive directly to your Store.
Once you apply your tags and launch your campaigns, the advertising console will display reporting – most likely only clicks to begin with. Wait 1–2 days to review and validate your reporting. Once you’ve confirmed that your tags are reporting correctly, you can use the Amazon Attribution campaign manager to access your reports. You’ll be able to review key metrics like clicks, detail page views, add to carts, and purchases so you can make in-flight optimizations to your campaigns.
1 Amazon internal study across 93 advertisers, November 2020 – April 2021
Email your followers on Amazon
Use the Amazon Customer Engagement tool to connect directly with your customers.
Email your followers on Amazon with the Amazon Customer Engagement tool
With the Amazon Customer Engagement tool, you have a way to connect with customers that follow your brand on Amazon.1 This tool allows brands to email their followers directly and share information about new product launches that may be relevant to them. This can help you nurture customer relationships and drive visibility and consideration of your products.
To help grow your followers that you can connect with via email:
- Create an engaging Store experience and share your unique Store URL
- Post frequently to keep your brand top-of-mind
- Encourage your social media followers to follow your brand on Amazon
1 This feature is currently in open beta. You must have at least one follower to qualify.
Share brand content with Posts
Share authentic lifestyle images and brand content with relevant shoppers.
Share your brand content with Posts
Reach shoppers and drive consideration with Posts’ authentic lifestyle content that can deliver your brand story to relevant shoppers – at no cost, as often as you'd like.
Each post links to a product detail page and includes category tags so shoppers can continue exploring posts in related categories. Posts appear on product detail pages on the Amazon mobile shopping app (iOS and Android) and on mobile web in the US. Your posts will also appear on your Store, allowing shoppers to move between inspiration and shopping while browsing.
Advertisers who create a post for a brand for the first time see an average 12.7% increase in shoppers who add a product of that brand to the cart the next month, compared to advertisers who don’t.1
Start posting with these tips:
- Help customers imagine your products in a realistic context with lifestyle photography and descriptive captions that align with your brand’s personality, from playful to professional. Showcase product collections by tagging multiple products in each post.
- Create content that’s relevant to your category and audiences. We automatically showcase your posts in your Store and on product detail pages based on relevance and shopping engagement.
- There’s no limit to how often you can post, so make sure you’re frequently posting high-quality content to help increase the likelihood of your post being displayed and to help grow your following.
Posts delivered more than 14.4B viewable impressions and 726MM engagements at no cost to advertisers between April 2020 – July 2021.2
1 Amazon internal data, US, November 2021
2 Amazon internal data, US, April 2020 – 31 July 2021
Create a Sponsored Brands campaign linking to your Store
Stand out in shopping results with content about the products and categories featured in your Store.
Create a Sponsored Brands campaign linking to your Store
Sponsored Brands campaigns with the Store spotlight and product collection creative formats can help you promote your Store and range of products directly in shopping results. By linking your campaigns to your Store, you can help shoppers discover your entire product selection and learn more about your brand so it will be top-of-mind for their upcoming purchases.
Advertisers who linked their Sponsored Brands campaign to a Store saw on average that shoppers spend 2X longer on their Store. Meanwhile, their product detail page views and sales increased by 55% and 15% respectively.1
Sponsored Brands with Store spotlight
You can feature up to three Store sub-pages in your ad and customize the headline along with the sub-page image and label. This gives you the opportunity to highlight a range of categories or multiple complementary sub-categories from your Store. Customers will be directed to those sub-pages when they click your ad, so they have the opportunity to continue engaging with the rich content in your Store.
When adding images for each of your sub-pages to your ad creative, choose customized lifestyle images that will represent your brand identity, stand out in shopping results and encourage customers to click through to your Store to explore these categories.
Your Store must have a minimum of three sub-pages to be eligible, with a unique product on each sub-page. The first three sub-pages of your Store page will be pre-selected for the Sponsored Brands creative, but you have the option to change which sub-page you want to feature. You’ll also have the ability to enter a custom headline, select a brand logo, and change the labels and images that represent the sub-pages within your campaign.
Sponsored Brands with product collection
Promote multiple products from your Store, focusing on your bestselling products with high ratings. This can help catch the attention of shoppers as they’re browsing and encourage them to visit your Store for deeper engagement.
Add rich custom images representing your brand portfolio to help tell your brand story to shoppers as they’re browsing. Or use images of specific products in use to increase product consideration.
1 Amazon internal data, 21 Nov – 22 Mar, across 25,000 advertisers analyzed in the US
Create a Sponsored Brands video format ad campaign
Help your auto-playing video appear right in shopping results.
Create a Sponsored Brands video format ad campaign
Sponsored Brands ads with video creative provide a unique storytelling opportunity for your brand. These ads feature short, auto-playing video directly within shopping results that can inspire, educate and entertain shoppers as they’re browsing in your category. When shoppers click on the video, they’re taken to your product detail page where they can explore more about the product.
While you can create your video campaign in a familiar way as the rest of your Sponsored Brands campaigns, ads with this creative format have their own ad placement and auction. This means that running a Sponsored Brands video format campaign won’t compete against your other Sponsored Brands ads or any other self-service ad campaigns you may be running.
Advertisers who used Sponsored Brands video ad format, saw on average 83% of their sales from new-to-brand customers.1
Create your video to increase consideration of your featured product
Consideration tip: By appearing in shopping results, your videos have the opportunity to show to customers when they’re already browsing and looking for inspiration.
Make sure your video illustrates how your products can fulfill the needs of shoppers and helps inspire them to consider trying your brand:
- Focus your video on building an emotional connection between customers and your products with inspirational and entertaining visuals. Videos that connect or resonate emotionally with customers help brands and products stand out.
- Showcase quick product demonstrations on features and uses in your video that will help customers to imagine using the product in a real-life setting.
- Strike a balance by highlighting your product for about 80% of the video, with the other 20% dedicated to your brand and other related product offerings. For example, if your ad features a video for a lawn mower, shoppers might also be interested to see the other products your brand offers in the lawn and garden category.
- Grab customers’ attention by showing captivating images or videos of your product within the first two seconds of the video, and include the product function within the first five seconds.
- Have your logo appear at the beginning or end of your video to help remind customers who you are.
- Keep mobile viewers in mind by making sure the product is not too small throughout the video.
1 Amazon internal data, 21 May – 22 Apr, across 30,000 worldwide advertisers
Measuring your consideration campaigns
Learn how to use Brand Metrics to gauge the success of your campaigns.
Explore Brand Metrics
Brand Metrics (beta)1 provides a measurement solution that quantifies opportunities for your brand at each stage of the customer journey in the Amazon store, and helps brands understand the value of different shopping engagements that impact stages of that journey. You can access awareness, consideration and purchase indices that compare your performance to peers using models predictive of consideration and sales.
Brand Metrics quantifies the number of customers in the awareness and consideration marketing funnel stages and is built at scale to measure all shopping engagements with your brand in the Amazon store, not just ad-attributed engagements. Additionally, Brand Metrics breaks out key shopping engagements at each stage of the shopping journey, along with the return on engagement, so you can measure the historical sales following a consideration event or purchase.
Benefits of Brand Metrics
Brand Metrics helps you:
- Understand your brand performance by measuring the number of actual on-Amazon shopper engagements.
- Measure the impact of your upper and mid funnel tactics and see how they contribute to shoppers moving through the purchase journey.
- Evaluate engagement metrics to understand the value of your branded intent, and how brand purchasers go on to generate additional sales in the 12 months following a purchase.
- Monitor your performance relative to your category and peers at each stage of the purchase journey and over time.
- Optimize your marketing and advertising efforts in the Amazon store to engage more shoppers and build your brand.
Amazon Ads has been very pivotal for a brand like ourselves. We have all of these tools at our disposal to reach the relevant audience and a way to stand out. Amazon has been instrumental in our growth as a brand.
– Ralph Newhouse, CEO, Chefman
Key metrics to review for consideration
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Consideration percentile | Indicates how your brand is performing in terms of consideration compared to your peers. If your brand is in a high percentile, it means you’re performing better than x% of the seller population within your category. |
| Detail page view only | The number of customers that have viewed your product detail page. |
| Brand searches and detail page views | The number of customers that researched your brand and viewed your product detail page. |
| Engaged shopper rate | Percentage range of shoppers in the selected category that your brand has driven an engagement with or purchase from in the selected time frame divided by the total shoppers with more than one detail page view in the selected category. An engagement includes shoppers viewing your product detail page, researching your brand and viewing detail page, adding to cart or purchasing. |
| Shoppers | Total shoppers in the selected category over the selected time frame. These shoppers are organized into each segment by their most recent engagement. An engagement includes shoppers viewing your product detail page, researching your brand and viewing detail page, adding to cart or purchasing. |
1 Brand Metrics is available to eligible seller brand owners and vendors advertising in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Japan, who have at least one month of sales and meet minimum orders per month requirements.
Ready to get started? Here’s how:
Register, or sign into Vendor Central or Seller Central and hover over “Advertising” in the menu.
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Increasing consideration in the shopping journey in the Amazon store