How does advertising on Amazon Business work? Amazon Business—Amazon’s B2B marketplace—is one of the most powerful, overlooked pieces of the Amazon ecosystem. And Amazon is giving sellers more control over it than ever before.
More than 6 million businesses buy from Amazon’s B2B marketplace. These range from municipal governments to Fortune 500 companies to senior living corporations, charities, non-profits, and faith groups.
If you sell a product that businesses might buy in bulk, like electronics, office products, or medical supplies, then you need to be thinking about Amazon Business.
It’s a huge deal. Certain categories—like industrial, scientific, and office supplies products—see as much as 50% of their sales from Amazon Business.
Plus, Amazon Business customers give you more bang for your buck. They are known to buy in bulk, convert at higher rates, and return products less frequently.
And now, thanks to new updates Amazon made at unBoxed, you can use data to craft a more informed marketing strategy specific to B2B shoppers.
Why use Amazon Business?
According to Amazon, B2B customers buy far more often—and in higher quantities—than regular consumers. The typical business customer buys 80% more products on every order.
Businesses are also half as likely to return a product, and they are very high converters: They’re 3x more likely than regular shoppers to buy a product after viewing its product page.
That means you don’t have to spend quite as much on ads to convert them.
B2B buyers also have a very high repeat purchase rate. So you can assume a life-time value from all of your business customers.
Want to learn more about Amazon Business and the shipping and pricing options available to sellers? We discussed this in more depth here.
How much do you control Amazon Business marketing?
This is all good stuff, right?
But there’s a glaring problem: Until lately, it has been hard to differentiate your marketing strategies between Amazon Business and Amazon proper. That’s changing now.
Sure, brands that sell on Amazon Business are able to get some basic sales data. The Sales and Traffic Amazon Business report breaks out B2B sales and non-B2B sales.
That way, you can see quickly just how much more or less valuable the B2B channel is to your bottom line.
You can also run advertising specifically on Amazon Business.
Amazon DSP, for instance, offers access to B2B audience segments like:
- Anyone who subscribes to Amazon Business
- Small and medium businesses
- Businesses that viewed a top-200 selling B2B ASIN
Sponsored Display ads can similarly be targeted to business shoppers.
But now—and this is the big news—so can Sponsored Products ads. Starting in fall 2024, Amazon made it possible to adjust bids on Sponsored Products ads that reach corporate customers.
You can now increase your bids specifically on Amazon Business by over 900% on all placements. This feature is called Amazon Business Bid Adjustment.
To go along with that update, you can also get more reporting data on your SP ads. Sponsored Products advertisers can now access full reporting on their Sponsored Products ad performance.
You can see which keywords are performing well with B2B shoppers, and you can also get a much sharper snapshot of your ROAS for B2B shoppers specifically.
The addition of Sponsored Products data and bid controls for B2B shoppers is big news. It means you can now craft a more sophisticated ad plan that’s specific to B2B shoppers.
What does this mean for the future of Amazon Business?
The controls available to advertisers on Amazon Business are, of course, quite limited compared to Amazon proper.
There’s one big limitation to keep in mind: You can’t run Sponsored Products ads that only reach B2B shoppers. You can simply bid differently for corporate customers than for regular customers.
But as Amazon gives you more data about your B2B performance, it’s now possible to create a more sophisticated, data-driven Amazon Business marketing plan.
With greater insights into SP, SD, and DSP performance to Business shoppers, you can begin to craft a holistic B2B ad campaign. Pair that with AMC custom audiences for Sponsored Ads, and you can run a really granular B2B advertising operation.
Now is the time to invest in Amazon Business, especially if you sell a product that corporate customers might like to buy in bulk.
