Anyone running ads to Handmade listings?

Hi Hanley Goods.

I used Amazon’s SP Acquisition Promotion which was £200.00 to be used in a month. I tried targeted keywords, targeting Asins and categories as well as using Amazon’s automated targeting.

Although £170.00 of ad spend produced £284.00 of sales, profit would have been penny’s after all costs and Amazon fees are taken into account.

I’m still running ads but they are not converting into sales at the moment. I’m trying to get the ROI right.

There are a couple of things I believe that are going to make it tough.

1. Lack of reviews. Being handmade, products are not made in large amounts and I read on average, 2 in 100 buyers might leave a review.

2. As you say, delivery times. We can only make 3 to 4 of our products a day and they need time to dry after painting. The best we can do is a 5-day delivery time. People want it NOW! Depending on the product, I’m sure many others have the same issue.

3. Cost. Handmade goods are not massed produced in China. People might like what we do, but in hard times, that plastic widget at half the price will do for now.

However, I think there are solutions that would help. Like the Brand Feature Waiver. That will allow us to create an improved listing so when you do get a click, the experience for the user is better. Also, access to Vine to get reviews.

I also think with the Brand Feature Waiver, you get access to an improved version of Amazon ads. Compared to Google ads, Amazon ads is very basic and viewing data to understand what is working is not very good.

So currently, it won’t be easy to make it work with handmade. But you have to get your product in front of buyers somehow and I can only see things improving in the future.

David