The road to becoming successful and then maintaining that success as an Amazon seller is paved by creating an ever-expanding arsenal of tools, resources and strategies that build awareness for your brand, the uniqueness of the products you offer and clearly communicates the benefits they will convey once purchased.
Whether you are trying to gain an initial foothold in a niche, or have an established business that you are priming to explode to dominance (leaving competitors in your rear view), Amazon Headline Search Ads are an ideal and powerful tool for realizing these objectives, as well as other intermediate goals.
The goal with Amazon Headline Search Ads is to create a seamless and quick way to direct prospective shoppers to the products they are looking for.
An effective HSA compels a prospective shopper to click on the ad because the message of the ad aligns perfectly with the product they are searching for. Learn more about our Headline Search Ads Manager.
Headline Search Ads are located at the very top of the search result page, (standing out from the rest of the search results listed), stretching across the entire page, with only one HSA per search result page.
Headline Search Ads are:
HSA feature a brand logo or custom image, a custom message with up to 50 characters, and three distinct products. If a prospective shopper clicks on any of the three products featured in the ad, they will be sent to the detail page for that specific product.
Also, if the prospective shopper clicks on the brand logo or headline in the ad, they will be sent to a search results page that includes products that the seller has chosen to feature.
Headline Search Ads are ideal for a group of products in similar categories (products that can be grouped in the same keywords, for example), that are in a highly competitive niche, or that may need a boost in search.
Headline Search Ads can be run through both AMS and Seller Central. Currently, Seller Central provides more information about how ads are performing, giving a more comprehensive level of data (sellers can know how their HSA did the previous month versus ‘month to date’, for example).
Strategically, this type of advertising can be very efficient. Because HSA’s format allows multiple products to be featured, Amazon sellers can group their products according to shared business objectives. An example of this would be to create an HSA designed to feature products for which you are trying to grow sales, while another one is used specifically for improving the visibility of your brand across certain targeted categories.
* Ads that are not eligible are flagged in Campaign Manager under the Advertising tab in Seller Central.
NOTE: HSA’s are shown to prospective shoppers regardless of who is winning the Buy Box
Eligible Product Categories (US)
Product listings must be new and fall into one or more of the following available categories:
NOTE: Adult products, used products and refurbished products are not eligible for HSA.
Upon confirmation that Headline Search Ads are available for your Amazon business, you’ll want to put together all of the pieces that will build your HSA campaign:
In Seller Central:
Amazon has a stock template that’s loaded for sellers to utilize. This means that aside from products images, selection and keywords, sellers won’t have much flexibility when creating the ad.
There is no automatic targeting here, so you need to come up with your own search terms (PPC Entourage is ideal for this), and test them in practice.
Additional points to keep in mind:
The ad creative process for Headline Search Ads is customizable. Test as many different variables to identify the most successful formula including:
To test any component of your ad, always set up several campaigns to run simultaneously, while only changing a single variable within each so that you can clearly identify which option produces the best results.
Example #1 – a sunglasses brand conducted a HSA test (branded versus non-branded headlines), in which they ran a headline campaign that offered “sunglasses” versus [BRAND NAME] Sunglasses.
Including their brand name in the headline could conceivably double or even triple the click-through rate, because with a product such as sunglasses, shoppers are often looking for known brands (and hopefully, shoppers were searching for their particular brand).
Example #2 – another component of a HSA that could be tested involves creating headline campaigns that test using a brand logo versus a product image.
An Amazon seller may find that ads where only the brand logo is used may experience a relatively low volume of sales and traffic, despite a high budgeted ad spend.
On the other hand, when a product image is used, it may produce a higher volume of traffic and more engaged customers, resulting in more sales from a lower overall ad spend.
No matter what testing strategy you decide upon, always be sure to give your test sufficient time to collect meaningful data. (Amazon suggests a minimum of two weeks to determine the effectiveness of any tweaks before making additional changes).
Once you are finished creating your HSA, Amazon will review it to make sure it meets their standards and upholds the type of customer shopping experience they want to maintain.
To improve your chances for a quick approval, make sure your headline is unique, relevant, and matches the most important keywords for your featured products, as well as check for proper punctuation, spelling, and capitalization.
You will receive an email once your ad is approved, or if any changes need to be made. The moderation process can take up to 72 hours.
After your Headline Search Ads are running, you should keep an eye on key performance metrics to help identify any areas for improvement. Monitor these important metrics:
Impressions – the number of times your HSA was viewed by a shopper (If your impressions are lower than you’d like, try increasing your keyword bids).
Clicks – the number of clicks your HSA received (You want to see a high click rate compared to the number of total impressions). If your click rate is low, consider changing the keywords associated with your HSA and/or adjust the ad messaging or images to better align with the keywords you’ve chosen.
ACoS – the percentage of brand sales spent on advertising (A low ACoS means you are spending a low percentage of sales on advertising). If this percentage is high, you are probably having a lot of clicks that don’t convert into sales. You may need to a) choose more narrowly targeted keywords, or b) improve your individual product listings to be more compelling.
Knowing the benefits of Headline Search Ads and how to optimize them to your advantage can help any qualified Amazon seller to increase sales and grow their business.
After your Headline Search Ads are running, you should keep an eye on key performance metrics to help identify any areas for improvement. Monitor these important metrics:
Impressions – the number of times your HSA was viewed by a shopper (If your impressions are lower than you’d like, try increasing your keyword bids).
Clicks – the number of clicks your HSA received (You want to see a high click rate compared to the number of total impressions). If your click rate is low, consider changing the keywords associated with your HSA and/or adjust the ad messaging or images to better align with the keywords you’ve chosen.
ACoS – the percentage of brand sales spent on advertising (A low ACoS means you are spending a low percentage of sales on advertising). If this percentage is high, you are probably having a lot of clicks that don’t convert into sales. You may need to a) choose more narrowly targeted keywords, or b) improve your individual product listings to be more compelling.
Knowing the benefits of Headline Search Ads and how to optimize them to your advantage can help any qualified Amazon seller to increase sales and grow their business.
If you are currently qualified for (or will be in the future) to use HSA in your Amazon business, the team at PPC Entourage has created an awesome tool to help you to create any number of high performance ads…
Entourage Spotlight Headline Creator is your FREE personal swipe file that will help you to quickly create powerful headlines that attract more customers with less effort.
He is the owner and founder of PPC Entourage, one of the original amazon ad software and management companies. Mike started off as a physical therapist in 2015 and just knew there had to be a better way so he started his ecommerce journey. Using the power of Amazon Ads, he built a 7 figure brand in less than one year. Now he helps other sellers do the same with free valuable education, PPC Entourage software and the ad agency. He is also the author of the Amazon Ads Playbook series.
Sign up and receive 30 advertising tips in 30 days.
