In today's Amazon tip, I'll be talking about Expanded Product Targeting to help you "automate" your product harvesting funnel.

 Amazon advertisers should be familiar with Keyword match types: broad, phrase and exact, but what about Product "match types"? Technically, product match types don't exist, it's either Category or Product targeting.

 Think of...

1. Category targeting, the same as a broad match type for keyword targeting, matching products within a category.
2. [NEW] Expanded product targeting, the same as phrase match type for keyword targeting, similar products.
3. Product targeting, the same as exact match type for keyword targeting, targeting one particular product.

Here's How Expanded Product Targeting Works

Expanded Product Targeting is an Amazon Sponsored Product campaign, that allows you to target specific items closely related to your advertised product for Sponsored Product campaigns. The cool thing here, it's a limited list of closely related items that is updated daily based on past interactions and views.

This means less product research if you're specific with your target products AND Amazon will update related items based on past customer behavior. Poor targeting, poor results.

Let's take a look at how to add this to your Amazon advertising strategy.

Here are the Three Part Framework For Creating Product Targeting Campaigns

I set up my product targeting campaign structure similar to how I set up my manual campaigns for keywords.

STEP 1: Select products that are closely related to your product

Remember, poor targeting = poor results.

For example, you sell "coffee cups". Don't type "coffee cups" on Amazon (image above) and target the first 5-10 products. I see glass coffee cups, 12-pack, 100 packs with lids, insulated ripple, 12 oz cups...

To be more specific, maybe "coffee cups with lids 16 oz"  (image below) and target those instead to help the Amazon AI find closely related items. The more similar data points you provide Amazon, the more relevant products it will target.

STEP 2: Create your Product Targeting Campaigns

Launch two campaigns, expanded product targeting and product targeting. Negate your product targets from your expanded product targets.  Anything that converts from your expanded product targeting campaign, move it to its own product targeting campaign.

Right now, I'm testing how many expanded product targeting.  If you have an optimal number of targets, let me know.

STEP 3: Repeat and Rinse

After you gain some traction, go explore complementary products, i.e. coffee bean, coffee press and coffee creamer. Spin off a new set of product campaigns. Don't fall into the trap of creating too many campaigns you can't track.

Now it's your turn, go master steps 1-3.