Most vendors are fully aware that Amazon isn’t the only game in town. They’re simply the most successful one.
But even seasoned sellers are frequently faced with a dilemma: how to accurately measure the performance of external marketing campaigns. It’s not always easy. It demands both adequate foresight as well as a host of analytical tools that can be as confusing as they are inaccurate. Any successful eCommerce advertising campaign relies on channel diversity. Sellers are aware of this. And so is Amazon.
While currently in beta, Amazon Attribution allows brands to measure the impact of their external marketing campaigns based on how consumers discover, research, and buy their products on Amazon. For any vendor using cross-channel marketing solutions to drive traffic to an Amazon listing, it’s an invaluable tool. But what is it? And how does it work?
What is Amazon Attribution?
Amazon Attribution is an analytics solution provided to brand registered sellers allowing them to gain direct insight into how search, social, video, display, and email marketing campaigns off-Amazon affect their performance on Amazon. This insight can help show you just how, when and where the strengths and weaknesses of your external campaigns are. But it’s not for everyone. Only professional sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, as well as vendors and agencies with clients authorized to sell on Amazon are eligible for Attribution.
Furthermore, only the following countries can register for Attribution: the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Spain.
Why Use Amazon Attribution?
Amazon has never insisted that what happens on Amazon stays on Amazon. They’re fully aware that successful performance on Amazon is increasingly reliant on traffic from outside sources. But measuring your ROI from outside sources can prove difficult. And organic traffic alone won’t always drive significant conversions.
Sales velocity is critical in how your product is ranked in Amazon’s A9 algorithm. But the greater the opportunity to drive traffic to a listing, the greater the opportunity for visibility. A9 doesn’t distinguish between paid traffic and organic traffic. And the higher and faster your products sell on Amazon, the higher you’ll rank on A9.
Attribution gives you a clear and direct insight into every aspect of your sales funnel, from awareness to consideration to purchase. It informs your campaign by indicating where your traffic comes from, how potential customers are engaging with your listing and what they’re actually looking for from both your listing as well as your competitor’s. And it’s a results-driven insight which can save you time as well as inform and optimize your future external strategies across display, email, search, social and video marketing campaigns through key features including:
Add to Carts
Clicks
Detail page views
Impressions
Reporting
Sales.
How to Use Amazon Attribution
Currently, Attribution requires registration either through Seller Central or a separate vendor-specific form. Requests are reviewed regularly, with confirmation of approval averaging no more than two weeks’ time.
Upon approval, you can begin selecting the individual campaigns you’d like to monitor by creating an Attribution tag which tracks each the entire history of a customer’s product search—regardless of whether they actually make a purchase. By pasting the Attribution tag URL into a separate campaign monitoring dashboard, the tag will generate the necessary analytical data needed after a period of anywhere from 30 - 90 days. To create a tag:
Sign into Attribution.
Choose the campaign you’d like to monitor.
Click “New order.”
If creating a tag for a Google, Facebook or Instagram ad, click “Upload file to create order and tags.” For other campaigns, click “Manually create order and tags.”
Add your selected product listings.
You can scroll down to “Order settings” and name an Attribution tag or create an external ID for multiple tags.
Click “Continue to line items” and choose from the list of advertising platforms.
Add your Attribution tag URL to each platform.
Amazon will also give you detailed instructions on the creation of your Attribution tag and best practices for monitoring. You can also manage and measure Attribution through the Amazon Advertising API.
While Attribution is a unique and powerful tool which can help sellers optimize their off-Amazon traffic, it’s one tool among many in Amazon’s advertising suite. It’s great for monitoring external campaigns, but don’t rely on Attribution alone to drive conversions. Your performance on Amazon can only be maximized by diverse solutions. Attribution is just one additional tool which can help you on your journey.
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