What are the 3 keyword match types used in Amazon PPC

For Amazon advertising to rank your products on top of search results, your keywords must perfectly tone with users’ ‘search queries’. The moment you create an ad campaign, you’re typically prompted to enter the keywords that are being used for the campaign. In a product ad, keywords are words or phrases related to your product that may be searched by customers.

There are three types of keyword matches used in Amazon PPC ads which most of the  Amazon PPC services follow to showcase sponsored products and sponsored brands. These are:

• Broad match
• Phrase match
• Exact match

These PPC types can have a variety of keywords, compromising short tail and long-tail keywords. Mostly short tail keywords have high traffic and therefore high bids as well, while long-tail keywords have low bids.

Sponsored products also offer negative match types as well, which prevents your ads from being shown when that particular keyword is searched. If a user types a negative match keyword in a search query, then your ad won’t be shown.

In this article, we will discuss in detail three keyword match types and how they are important for your Amazon PPC management. Let’s get started.

Broad Match

If broad match keywords are used in your ad, it can appear when a customer’s search term is a combination of the exact keyword term or its close variants, such as plurals, acronyms, stemming, and abbreviations. Keywords and synonyms can appear in any order in the customer search term. Using broad match keywords will help you increase the reach and exposure of your campaigns, as well as expand keyword coverage.

In contrast to highly targeted ads, broad and phrase match keywords target a larger demographic of shoppers. It is impossible to alter the broad match settings of some of Amazon’s suggested keywords. For example, the keyword is “Christmas items”. The user can get a wide range of results with this keyword such as there will also be items related to Grinch, Christmas trees, Snowmen and shirts, shoes, necklaces related to Christmas as well.

The broader your term is, the more audience it will target. Since ‘Grinch’ and ‘Snowmen’ aren’t even related, they will still be shown. Paying for broad match keywords may help you with traffic, but your conversion rate will not be satisfactory. A more precise search term may yield better results, such as “Christmas shirts” or “Christmas shirt gifts”. A broad keyword may not yield sales, but it will give you an idea of what the customers are searching for. You can use broad keywords for a specific period of time to analyze the data from users and later adjust your keywords to match the items on your store.

Phrase Match

You can provide your exact keyword, or the exact keyword among a series of words, when you use the phrase match type, making it more restrictive than broad match. You’ll also see your ad when potential customers search for close variations of that keyword, or with specific words before or after it.

Your ads can reach more shoppers with phrase matches while allowing you to continue optimizing your targeting. Similar to broad match keywords, these keywords can also broaden your keyword coverage and enable you to reach more people with your ads. For a keyword such as “Christmas gifts” you can expand it to “Christmas gifts for mother”, “Christmas gifts for wife” or “Christmas t-shirts with snowmen”, your ad will now be displayed when a user types these keywords in search queries. Using phrase match may lower the audience who will see your ad, but it will surely improve conversion rate, since sometimes your product will be what the user exactly wants.

Exact Match

In order for your ad to appear, the customer’s search term must match exactly the keyword you’ve entered. When shopping for other words before or after the exact keyword, the ad will not appear, unlike broad or phrase matches. This is the most restrictive match type, but it is likely to generate better results based on the buyer’s search and to target ads at a very specific group of shoppers. Using a keyword match type of exact match indicates that you need to bid higher for keywords that are most relevant to your product.

Let’s see how the exact match works. For example, using the keyword “Christmas shirts for kids” will specifically show shirts kids wear there will be no results for shirts for mother, wife or father.

Since you are only targeting a specific match, the exact match target audience is the lowest as compared to the other two, but conversion rate is the highest since your product is exactly what the customer wants for this particular event.

Conclusion

What is the best search type for an ad campaign? There are advantages and disadvantages to each type of search. Just starting out with your first campaign may not afford you the opportunity to collect a lot of data regarding exact keyword matches. That’s why you should run a broad match for one month before you analyze the search terms used by your customers. Then start bidding on phrases and exact match keywords based on your broad keywords, then your conversion rate and click-through rate (CTR) may get better. Make sure all your keywords are relevant as there is a limit of 1000 keywords per ad group for sponsored products and sponsored brands.

Remember that patience is one key to successful online advertising when selling your products. You may not get gold in the beginning but if you continue to learn, analyze and track your campaigns the results will start showing sometime soon.

If you are looking for further guidance on which phrase match is best for your Amazon PPC, checkout Urtasker. They provide Amazon PPC management services and guide you professionally about which phrase is best suited for you. More than 1000 small business owners have benefitted from their Amazon PPC services, and you can be one of them too.