What Is Relevance?
If you've been in the online business industry for long enough, you'll hear the word "relevance" tossed around quite a bit. What exactly does relevancy mean? How does it affect book sales? It's a rather deep topic, hence why I devoted an entire chapter to discussing the importance of relevancy in your book sales and ad campaigns.
We can view relevancy in two ways: perceived relevance and algorithmic relevance. When we determine, through experience and intuition, the relevance of an item online based on the niche, then that's perceived relevance. Often, people believe they can trust their intuition to guide them to the right outcome for relevance. Sure, your perception can help determine the best relevance for a title, but it doesn't mean it holds weight online. That's where algorithmic relevance comes into play.
Almost every facet of online business relies on a search engine. When a customer searches for a specific term or product, the search engine gets to work delivering the results best suited to that person. Quite a few factors contribute to building relevancy and not every customer will have the same search results. Why is that? Because an algorithm, a complex mathematical formula, determines what works best for each individual and their search. A few of those factors include:
- Previous search history
- Previous engagement (i.e., purchases on Amazon)
- Other similar actions from similar audiences
To put this into simple terms, let's look at a somewhat real-world situation.
You arrive at a party where many people are hanging out. Small and large clusters of people are gathered together. When you approach one conversation, you notice the topic doesn't interest you, so you move on. At that moment, you don't perceive the relevance of the topic to your interests. As you move from circle to circle, you find many conversations fun yet not quite to your taste. Eventually, you land in a small circle of people chatting about arm wrestling championships-that's your jam! The conversation is popping, and everyone is having a good time talking about all things arm wrestling. You finally found a topic you perceive as relevant to your interests.
Now, imagine you go into a party, but instead of going from one conversation to the next trying to find your interests, you have a robot figure it out for you in a split second. The robot knows what everyone is talking about, who is moving between one conversation and another, people who were previously involved in the conversation, and where they went. Then, the robot plugs in all the data into a complex mathematical formula to get the results best suited to your needs. You come in and tell the robot you love to chat about arm wrestling. It immediately whisks you away to the conversation best suited to your satisfaction. Will it get it right every time? No, but the more this robot gets to know your interests, habits, and other information, the more that robot will find you just what you want.
A search engine is essentially your robot-well, everyone's robot, technically-that can send you to what it deems relevant. This is how algorithmic relevance works. Since search engines get queries in the millions every split second online, it's great at predicting human behavior. That's what leads me to say relevance is important to understand when publishing books and using Amazon Advertising.
In Amazon Keywords for Books, I discuss how to build relevance for your publication. Building relevance comes down to a variety of factors, but the most critical factor to building relevance in the Amazon marketplace is cold, hard sales. Nothing benefits your book's relevance in the Amazon algorithm like a good old-fashioned purchase. The more sales and the more consistent those sales are, the more the algorithm trusts your product. This means you build more organic traffic and recommendations in search and with similar products.
Yes, you could get more reviews, use a social share feature on the product page, embed a sample chapter on a website, drive traffic to your product page, and so on. Those actions don't have near the same weight they used to on Amazon. Do they help? It's debatable. Will it hurt? No, but if you want the best results to build relevance in the Amazon algorithm, you must sell books.
Good news! We're talking about running Amazon ads to sell more books. The relevancy already established for your book will play a vital role in the success of your ad campaigns. The more relevant your book is to the selected targeting in an ad campaign, the less you have to spend on that targeting to get the best return on ad spend. This is where things get a little complex.
Amazon ads also have relevancy in the algorithm. Running ads isn't as simple as, "Anyone who has the most money gets the best placement across all marketplaces."
Nope. Amazon thrives on positive customer experiences. Though they understand their formula (the algorithm) isn't perfect, it's certainly user-friendly. Should a browsing customer use search and get bad recommendations, then the algorithm knows what not to serve you on your next search. Once someone buys your book, you build relevancy for your book in the algorithm. In the same way, once a customer interacts with your ad, the algorithm places higher relevancy on your ad.
Here's what Amazon has to say about relevancy and adsii:
Amazon determines all of the ads with the highest relevancy. When it comes to relevancy, Amazon uses an algorithm that takes multiple factors into account to decide which ads to display. The relevancy algorithm is in place to ensure the best shopping experience for the customer.
How can you ever build relevance on an ad that isn't running? That's where getting your product retail-ready makes the biggest difference. Simply publishing a book and praying for the best isn't a sound marketing strategy.
Let's say you use ads for your book and don't just pray for the best. You will definitely increase the odds in your favor because you have an advantage over authors who can't or don't want to use Amazon Advertising. By running campaigns, you're sending interested buyers to your product page. By sending a customer to a product they'll buy, you're increasing the relevance of your ad. The targeting used in each campaign will be where you are most relevant.
Now that you know relevance plays a huge role in book sales and Amazon Ads, you need to understand how the ads platform works. Amazon Advertising works on a virtual auction-based system where a pool of advertisers bid for specific targeting for the ad. At any moment, the algorithm doesn't search for the highest bidder like a real-world auction, but it searches for the most relevant ads.
Why?
Remember, Amazon doesn't just want your money; they want the customer's money too. If a product has a proven track record of consistent sales, then it's highly likely the algorithm is going to rule in favor of that ad. Should two products with similar relevancy compete for ad targeting, the algorithm then defaults to the highest bidder.
Things can and will change on a dime. Should the ad keep getting shown with little to no results, guess what happens to the ad? Relevance drops significantly for that ad and its targeting. The next time those two products bid against each other, the algorithm will rule in favor of the other product because the first product just wasn't pulling its weight.
In Amazon's wordsiii:
The auction also decides which of the most relevant ads has the highest cost-per-click (CPC) bid. A CPC bid is the maximum amount that an advertiser is willing to pay if their ad is clicked. The winner of the auction will pay an amount slightly higher than the second-highest CPC bid if their ad is clicked.
They further go on to explain weak relevancy. Should you target the keyword "lipstick" for your Bluetooth speaker ad, you most likely won't see any results regardless of the budget or cost you affix to the ad. Since the target and the product bear little to no relevancy between the keyword and the historical search data, the algorithm deems your ad less relevant and unworthy of being shown.
Suppose you selected the keyword "audio" with your Bluetooth speaker ad, then you will have strong relevance. Therefore, your ad is more likely to display since it bears stronger relevancy. The greater the degree of ad relevancy, the higher the chances your ad will appear.
Never let that stop you from advertising. Amazon runs ads twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This means tons of ad space is available on the platform. Just because you don't win and get first preference doesn't mean all is lost. With all the ads served in search, on product pages, and even on third-party websites, you still have a chance of being seen. That's ultimately what marketing and promotion are for-visibility. Being seen by a new audience is better than no audience at all.
Here's the part that gets me excited each time I read it. Amazon...
