Amazon Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for Vendors in 2025

Supercharge Your Sales With a Robust Amazon Marketing Strategy

Bringing your ecommerce business to Amazon is always a bit of a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, you’re tapping into the world’s biggest ecommerce market, giving your brand instant credibility in the eyes of a switched-on, active customer base. On the other, you’re going to be selling in a highly competitive marketplace, with countless brands vying for similar audience segments and trying to make a sale.

If you want to unlock the full potential of Amazon and get an edge on the competition, you’ll need a robust Amazon marketing strategy that spans paid and organic channels, and approaches them with respect to Amazon-specific nuances that separate it from other kinds of ecommerce marketing.

In this guide, we’ll explore how Amazon marketing differs from other ecommerce channels, the key elements of getting your brand seen on Amazon, and some best practices for combining paid and organic channels on the world’s biggest ecommerce platform.

The Elements of Amazon Marketing

When many people hear “Amazon marketing”, their mind immediately jumps to paid advertising through Amazon’s PPC platform. In reality, however, this is only the first part of your pipeline, and you’ll also need to incorporate crucial organic factors into your Amazon marketing to help your brand reach its potential.

After years of helping vendors unlock the full potential of Amazon, we’ve found that the core elements of any good Amazon marketing strategy are:

Paid Advertising Strategy: Amazon’s advertising platform contains several powerful features for increasing visibility for your products in strategic places around the Amazon site and app. Strategically running campaigns through Amazon’s sponsored products, sponsored brands, sponsored display ads, and Amazon DSP can help you showcase your products at strategic points in the buyer journey and stimulate quick sales.

Amazon SEO: Amazon’s A10 search algorithm uses both keyword crawling and conversion data to serve up the most relevant product results for any search made through the Amazon platform. To gain higher organic rankings for your products, you’ll need to research high-demand keywords related to your product niche, and use these naturally in compelling PDP content that will convince shoppers to make a purchase.

A+ Content and Visual Optimisation: The quality of a listing’s visual content is a consistent predictor of its success on the platform, so optimising the visual elements of your listings is also crucial for Amazon marketing. High-quality product images, accompanied by rich, detailed A+ content that gives your audience a better idea of your brand identity, are essential for staying competitive in the marketplace.

How Amazon Marketing Is Different

While there are certain universals you can find in both Amazon marketing and any other ecommerce model, marketing on Amazon also has a few differences it’s important to understand and adapt to.

Some key distinctions you’ll need to bear in mind as you build your Amazon marketing strategy include:

Search behaviour: Compared to DTC selling, Amazon shoppers have higher purchase intent simply from being on the Amazon platform in the first place. Though content marketing and brand storytelling still have their place on Amazon, these elements are less essential for moving Amazon users towards a purchase.

High competition: Amazon owes a large part of its success to the competition between different brands selling similar products, leading to lower price points compared to other shopping platforms. When you’re selling on Amazon, you’ll have less control over pricing strategies and will need to adapt to a highly competitive landscape.

Branding and customer experience: While your DTC website will give you full control of how you tell your brand’s story, Amazon comes with certain constraints in the organic marketing materials you can use for your A+ content, branded storefronts, brand stories, and other touchpoints. This often means having to create Amazon-specific assets and a broader visual content strategy aligned towards high search intent.

Want to adapt your ecommerce marketing for Amazon success? Our Vendor+ channel management service is designed to make Amazon your top profit driver through a comprehensive channel-specific strategy tailored to your aims. Find out more

Best Practices for Optimising Paid & Organic Amazon Marketing

As the world’s biggest ecommerce platform, Amazon marketing comes with several nuances that set it apart as its own distinct ecommerce marketplace, each requiring a specific approach to give you the best chances of success.

In this section, we’ll take a closer look at each element of a good Amazon marketing strategy, and the best practices you can use to make these elements work for you.

Amazon Advertising

Amazon’s advertising platform, formerly provided as the separate Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) and Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), is a PPC campaign tool managed by Amazon that allows you to run different types of ads in specific places on the Amazon site and app.

Each of these ad placements are better suited to achieving different aims, and can be used together in a diverse strategy or for channelling more resources into a specific part of your Amazon funnel.

The different kinds of ads available through the Amazon advertising platform are:

Sponsored Products: Used to promote specific product listings in high-visibility areas of Amazon, such as the top of search results, on rival product listings, and other places. The relative lack of customisation with a focus on basic product details makes them well-suited for awareness building at the top of your funnel, as well as launching new products or positioning your brand as an alternative to competitors.

Sponsored Brands: Used to advertise your brand as a whole, with similar high-visibility placements to Amazon Sponsored Products. There’s more customisation available for Sponsored Products both in terms of ad creative and placement, making this ad type a good option for various funnel stages and a more general approach to promoting your product range.

Sponsored Display: Unlike other Amazon ad types, Sponsored Display allows you to promote your products both on Amazon and other kinds of advertising real estate around the web. Despite appearing in a broader range of placements, sponsored display ads still have familiar Amazon branding that will inspire the same trust in other places on the web. The unique retargeting features makes Sponsored Display a great option for recapturing shoppers at risk of lapsing, and improving your overall conversion rate.

Amazon Advertising Best Practices

Formulating and executing a good Amazon advertising strategy will mean different things for different brands, and like any kind of marketing will depend on your unique audience and goals. Having said that, there are universal best practices that can help you get the most from the platform that tend to go under-utilised.

Here are some of the general Amazon Advertising best practices we’ve used to help our clients unlock the full potential of Amazon:

• Use automatic campaigns to discover keywords and targeting methods with the highest potential for profit, then use manual campaigns to target these opportunities more efficiently.
  
  
• Analyse product-level profitability on Amazon to focus your resources on the individual ASINs that show the highest potential for paid advertising, and minimise your risk of wasted budget.
  
  
• Use product attribute targeting (PAT) within a campaign with manual targeting to show your products alongside specific variables, such as their average rating or price point. This offers a more specific way to frame your products as alternatives to competitors, or promote your product alongside complementary items and accessories.
  
  
• Identify seemingly relevant, but low-performing keywords, then set these as negative keywords in your campaigns to avoid wasting ad spend.
  
  
• Identify high-performing days and hours of the week to maximise the potential of high-performing periods.
  
  
• Use reputable Amazon tools or a third-party Amazon marketing agency to continually analyse your paid advertising performance and improve it based on observed patterns.

Losing all your Amazon ad spend? Our stress-free Amazon ads management service helps you leverage all available metrics on Amazon’s data ecosystem and minimise waste with precision ad targeting. Find out more

Amazon SEO

Utilising Amazon paid advertising is crucial for any brand who’s serious about maximising their potential as a platform. However, this isn’t the only way to get your products in front of a switched-on audience segment.

Effective Amazon SEO can help your product listings appear in the top spots on Amazon’s search results without having to pay for that visibility directly, helping you drive sales and brand equity while preserving your marketing budget.

If you’re familiar with SEO in other parts of your ecommerce strategy, it’s important to understand how Amazon SEO differs fundamentally from other kinds of organic marketing. The Amazon search engine, unlike Google or Bing, is designed solely to connect shoppers with a product they most want to purchase. 

With this transactional intent baked into the search algorithm, brands need to focus on keyword optimisation, conversion rate, and reviews to secure those competitive positions in Amazon’s results pages.

Amazon SEO Best Practices

Armed with an understanding of Amazon’s status as a transactional-only search engine, you’ll need to apply proven Amazon best practices to different elements of your listings to optimise your products for visibility.

Here’s a look at each of the listing elements that can affect your product’s organic visibility, and the steps you can take to optimise them for Amazon’s algorithm.

Product Titles

Your product title will have a big impact on the first impression your audience gets of your brand, so it’s important to use this field for careful keyword optimisation and giving idle shoppers a reason to click through to the listing.

• Keep to Amazon’s character limit of 200 characters (note this limit can be different for some product categories).
  
  
• Naturally include your highest-volume target keyword.
  
  
• List the product’s most compelling USPs in the title to encourage click-through rate, without sacrificing a natural tone of voice.
  
  
• Include secondary keywords if possible while still respecting the character limit and maintaining a natural, informative title structure.
  
  
• Stick to Amazon's policy by not repeating keywords in the title.

Bullet Points

Your bullet points are where you can do further convincing to push Amazon users towards a purchase, and are also a good place to integrate keywords which Amazon’s search algorithm can pick up on.

• Stick to Amazon guidelines by keeping to 200 characters maximum per bullet point.
  
  
• List the product’s seven most important USPs as bullet points, with each product feature linked to a tangible benefit in a clear and succinct way. Note that sellers will only have five bullet points to work with.
  
  
• Include any high-volume keywords that didn’t make it into the title naturally within the bullet points text.
  
  

Product Descriptions

Though less important in terms of keyword optimisation, product descriptions can still influence ranking when they contain keywords that overlap with the content in the first two fields. This field also presents a good opportunity to showcase your brand identity and optimise the listing for higher conversion.

• Reiterate the product’s USPs while using a more detailed style of copy to give shoppers a better idea of your brand identity.
  
  
• Leave space for any features or benefits that may not be a major selling point, but could still feasibly convince members of your audience to make a purchase.
  
  
• Use longer, phrase-ordered keywords that have some overlap with the keywords you’ve used in the title and bullet points. For example, if you’ve optimised the first sections for “iPhone case”, the product description may be a good place to optimise for “real leather iPhone case”.

Note that although you won't be able to see the product description if your listing has A+ content, it will still be crawled by Amazon's algorithm, and should be optimised as much as possible.

Backend Keywords

Backend keywords is a hidden field where you can explicitly show Amazon the keywords you want to rank for, rather than integrating them into your visible copy.

Backend keywords are an often-misunderstood element of Amazon SEO that can easily be misused if you’re not clear on how they work.

Here are some key things to bear in mind when approaching this part of the listing:

• The backend keywords field is limited to 500 characters. Though it may be possible to submit text that goes over this limit in the text field, Amazon will still only crawl the first 500 characters, so there’s no advantage to going over.
  
  
• Backend keywords are weighed equally with the keywords in your visible copy by Amazon’s algorithm. Because keyword density doesn’t factor into organic rankings, there’s no reason to repeat keywords in the backend field that you’ve already included in the visible parts of the listing.
  
  
• Amazon’s algorithm will only pick up individual words from the backend keywords field. Repeating phrases that share the same words, for example “organic dog food”, and “bulk dog food”, won’t increase your ranking for the keyword “dog food”, and will only waste character space.
  
  
• Because the algorithm only sees individual words, there’s no need to separate each keyword you enter with commas, and this will also only serve to use up characters.
  
  
• There's no benefit in including brand names that aren't common words, as Amazon's algorithm will ignore them.

Amazon A+ Content and Visual Optimisation

The visual aspects of your Amazon listings, namely the product images and A+ content, are a hugely important part of Amazon digital marketing when you’re looking to make your brand stand out from all the noise. 

The product images (both on Amazon search results and PDP galleries) are the first impression that many people in your audience will get of your brand on Amazon, and the quality of these elements can be a major predictor of whether or not an Amazon user will consider making a purchase. 

A+ content, on the other hand, will give you space to go into further detail about a particular product and your broader range, giving your audience a more detailed look at your brand identity that you wouldn’t be able to achieve with basic listing elements.

Here are some key principles to follow when optimising visual elements to ensure your listings are as compelling as possible:

Amazon Listing Images Best Practices

• Follow Amazon’s requirements by making the first image a high-quality photo of the product on a white background, without any accessories, text, logos, or other elements.
  
  
• Abide by recommended image dimensions (3000 x 3000 px) to ensure images are zoomable and accessible on all device types.
  
  
• Make use of infographic-style images that highlight the product’s best features and give your audience a reason to buy, often before they even read your bullet points.
  
  
• Zoom in on the key physical features of your product to help customers better understand what they’re buying, and the advantages it has over close competitors’ products.
  
  

Amazon A+ Content Best Practices

• Provide unique, relevant information on the product that you haven’t been able to cover in the title, bullets, or description.
  
  
• While still making the most of the extended space, try to keep the text content short and to-the-point so it’s easy for customers to consume.
  
  
• Answer frequently asked questions about your product and its broader category that might otherwise be a blocker to making a purchase decision.
  
  
• Create unique infographics according to the A+ platform’s image specifications to reiterate the most important USPs in a visually engaging, Amazon-friendly way.
  
  
• Use the comparison chart feature to highlight other products in your range, with a particular emphasis on complementary items that could be effective cross-selling or upselling opportunities.
  
  
• Apply your own brand guidelines to the tone of voice in the content to help the listing stand out from the more “fast sell” copy used on Amazon titles and bullet points.
  
  
• Humanise this part of the page with lifestyle images so the customer can see themselves using the product
  
  
• Include an image of the product next to something that can help gauge its size visually.

Amazon Marketing Strategy FAQs

Amazon’s sheer volume of daily users and the universal trust in the brand makes it an ideal place to grow your ecommerce brand. However, a solid approach to Amazon marketing is crucial if you want to get an edge on the competition and unlock the channel’s full potential.

We hope this look at key marketing concepts has helped you lay the foundations of an Amazon marketing strategy that will unlock the platform’s full potential for your brand.

We’ll conclude with some common questions we often hear about marketing on Amazon. For more support, be sure to check out some of our other blog posts, or check out our Vendor+ page to discover how our Amazon marketing services can help you.

How does Amazon marketing differ from DTC ecommerce marketing?

Amazon marketing differs from DTC ecommerce in several key ways:

Search Behaviour: Amazon shoppers typically have higher purchase intent compared to those browsing a direct-to-consumer (DTC) website.

High Competition: Pricing is more competitive due to the presence of multiple sellers offering similar products.

Branding Limitations: Amazon has specific content guidelines, limiting how brands can present themselves compared to their own website.

What are the main elements of an Amazon marketing strategy?

A well-rounded Amazon marketing strategy should include:

Paid Advertising: Using Amazon PPC ads (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP) to drive visibility.

Amazon SEO: Optimising product listings with relevant keywords to improve organic rankings.

A+ Content and Visual Optimisation: Enhancing product pages with high-quality images, infographics, and brand storytelling.

What types of ads are available on Amazon?

Amazon offers several advertising options:

Sponsored Products: Promotes specific listings in search results and competitor product pages.

Sponsored Brands: Highlights a brand and its product range in premium positions.

Sponsored Display: Re-targets potential buyers on and off Amazon.

Amazon DSP: Allows for programmatic advertising across Amazon and external sites.

How does Amazon SEO work, and why is it important?

Amazon SEO involves optimising product listings to rank higher in Amazon’s search results. Unlike Google, Amazon’s search algorithm (A10) prioritises transactional intent, meaning that keywords, conversion rates, and customer reviews all impact rankings. A keen understanding of different listing elements and how Amazon’s algorithm weighs them can help with effective keyword optimisation, increasing your chances of organic rankings.

What are some best practices for Amazon product listings?

To improve visibility and conversions, vendors should:

• Optimise Product Titles: Include high-volume keywords and key product benefits.
  
  
• Use Bullet Points Effectively: Highlight the most important selling points concisely while including any secondary keywords not used in the title.
  
  
• Write Persuasive Descriptions: Reinforce product benefits while integrating secondary keywords.
  
  
• Leverage Backend Keywords: Use hidden search terms to enhance discoverability, without wasting space by keyword stuffing.
  
  

How can vendors improve their Amazon advertising performance?

Some key tactics to include your paid advertising performance on Amazon include:

• Running automatic campaigns to discover effective keywords before switching to manual targeting.
  
  
• Analysing profitability per ASIN to allocate budget effectively.
  
  
• Using negative keywords to filter out low-performing search terms and ads.
  
  
• Employing dayparting to target high-performing times of day.

Should UK vendors use an Amazon marketing agency?

While it’s possible to manage Amazon marketing in-house, working with an experienced Amazon agency can provide expert insights, optimise campaigns more effectively, and free up time to focus on your wider business goals.