Tip 1: Make use of the knowledge that is available

“In this way you are as well prepared as possible for setting up and optimizing your campaigns. There is a lot of information about setting up and optimizing your campaigns on the Supplier Platform. My advise is to use this! It is important to have some basic knowledge before you start. I sometimes notice that the system is looked at too easily. If that is the case, you may not spend your money in the right way. While when you start with some knowledge, you immediately know how to use the system and achieve great results. Good preparation is half the battle!”

Tip 2: Make sure you have enough stock

“It is important that you ensure sufficient stock for your article. This prevents you from investing in items that quickly run out of stock. The algorithm needs some time to learn, so that Sponsored Products can link the articles to the right keywords. After 2 weeks of processing time, your campaign will probably start running effectively. It is wise to also have enough stock after that period, then it is also worth your investment.”

Tip 3: Provide the best service, price & reviews

“You would like to have the buying block. Within sponsored products you compete with each other on the same EAN code. If bol.com has the buying block, you can advertise within sponsored products.”

Tip 4: Increase your relevance

“We want to ensure that the most relevant advertisements are shown. Our algorithm determines which items are included in the auction and have a chance to be shown. This auction is important because after that, the items that are considered relevant by sponsored products, are multiplied by the bid and that determines your position. How do you ensure that you get a place in the auction? Make sure that you have an attractive price, that your content is in order and that you work with flexible delivery times. In this way you increase your relevance and you will secure a place in the auction. Would you like to find out whether your article is interesting for a certain keyword? Do this, by typing in the keyword in the search bar and compare your article with the organic results. These articles have, as it were, ‘proven’ themselves with the consumer. That makes it an interesting article for sponsored products.”

Tip 5: Be prepared!

“Align your campaign budget with your objectives and take optimizations into account. So plan and look ahead. Do you have items in your stock that are seasonal? Or is there a festive season coming up? Make sure to be prepared! For example, you don’t want to have to arrange things the day before Black Friday.” Let’s explain the importance with an example. We see that the search volume doubles around Black Friday. This ensures that if you continue with the same ACoS (advertising costs per sale) and budget, you will quickly run out of budget. Therefore, make sure to increase the campaign budget as soon as you make the preparations. This way you ensure that you are visible with your ad all day long. If you run out of budget halfway through the day, your ad will stop showing and you’ll miss the most important traffic. Because 40% buy after 5 p.m. So prepare yourself well for this. It may happen that you have run out of your campaign budget or that the limit in your entire account is exhausted. Do you want to prevent your campaigns from failing if there is not enough budget? Then use the function: Automatic top-up. You activate this in your sales account and ensure that as soon as you fall below a certain limit, the limit is automatically increased by an amount of your choice.

Tip 6: Optimize your campaigns

“I recommend always starting with automatic campaigns to let the system learn. In addition, you will also learn which articles perform well, which keywords best match articles, how much daily budget the campaign needs and how bids relate to the average bid. This last one is important to track what a competitor pays, on average, for the same click. Do you see that your CPC is a lot higher? Then it is important to find out how you can prevent this. My tip, look carefully at the keywords that are advertised. You can also convert a campaign to a campaign with a manual bid strategy. This can ensure that you are still shown at a lower click price. Place your bid just above the average winning bid, so you may save money on the CPC. In this way you will spend your budget more efficiently!”

We hope Carline’s tips are going to help you! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to send them to adverteren@bol.com.