Directing Amazon PPC campaigns is comparable to navigating through a maze: take one bad turn, and you’re greeted with wasted ad spend and performance issues. With the right approaches, however, Amazon PPC becomes a cash-machine. This piece covers seven sturdy, data-anchored methods to assist in driving sales, improving ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), and eliminating extra ad spend.
1. Segment Everything: One Product, One Purpose
One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is lumping multiple products and hundreds of keywords into a single campaign. This approach makes it nearly impossible to measure performance accurately or optimize effectively. Instead, run one product per campaign to keep data clean and focused. Limiting campaigns to a small group of closely related keywords—ideally between one to five, with a maximum of twenty—allows for granular control and better insights. Using single-keyword ad groups (SKAGs) enhances control even further. A study by Ad Badger found that segmented campaigns saw a 22% lower ACOS compared to broader campaigns, simply due to clearer tracking and better targeting.
2. Prioritize TACOS Over ACOS
It is imperative to know the difference between ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale) and TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale). While ACOS gauges the performance of discrete ad campaigns, TACOS measures your account as a whole’s profitability based on ad expenditure versus total revenue, including organic sales. For instance, Campaign A can have 15% ACOS but contribute zero organic lift, while Campaign B has 25% ACOS and 30% increase in organic sales, having a lower TACOS and more long-term success. A higher ACOS is not necessarily negative when it results in organic growth. Sellers would ideally look for a TACOS of less than 10% for sustainable profitability.
3. Always Be Testing: Optimize Relentlessly
The Amazon marketplace is dynamic, and what works today may not work tomorrow. That’s why constant testing is the backbone of sustainable PPC success. Sellers should continuously test bids, keyword match types, ad placements, and keyword additions based on search term reports. Whether you’re tweaking bid values or experimenting with top-of-search placement versus product pages, every change can uncover new performance opportunities. Amazon’s Campaign Manager and third-party tools like Helium 10, ZonGuru, or Perpetua can simplify the testing process. For best results, make incremental changes and isolate variables to understand their individual impact.
4. Always Be Advertising: Don’t Kill Momentum
Consistency in advertising is vital for maintaining visibility and sales momentum. Pausing campaigns, unless absolutely necessary, can disrupt your product’s visibility and result in a drop in ranking. Continuous advertising helps maintain your Best Seller Rank (BSR), keeps your products visible in competitive categories, and ensures your listing remains top of mind for potential customers. For example, a Teikametrics case study reported a 17% decline in organic ranking following a five-day pause in ad campaigns. Rather than shutting off campaigns, decrease bids or allocate your budget thoughtfully.
5. Reducing Bids Won’t Always Reduce ACOS
Most sellers believe that lowering bids will also lower ACOS. This can be true in some cases, but concentration on conversion rate optimization (CRO) is usually a more efficient long-term plan. Improving the primary product image, bullet points, and titles, using A+ Content, and collecting reviews can greatly enhance conversion rates. A brand that refreshed its listing images saw a 28% rise in conversion rate, which reduced ACOS better than bid-only adjustments. Enhancing the shopper experience on your product page can result in higher conversions and greater return on your ad spend.
6. Broad Match = Keyword Discovery Goldmine
Broad match keywords are usually underutilized, but they can be a goldmine for finding new, high-converting search terms. Although they might first send irrelevant traffic, broad match campaigns are great at finding long-tail keyword variations and surprise high-performing terms. These can be used to better expand exact and phrase match campaigns. Always keep an eye on your search term report to find high-scoring keywords and get rid of underperformers. For instance, one vendor discovered a high-performing term with a 12% ACOS in a broad match campaign and transitioned it to a targeted exact match campaign for even higher performance.
7. Never Eliminate a Good Keyword Too Quickly
It’s not necessarily because a keyword isn’t converting immediately that it should be eliminated. There are keywords that take longer or a more intelligent bid strategy to start performing. Before eliminating any keyword, examine the number of clicks it’s gotten compared to conversions. If it has fewer than 10 clicks, too early to conclude. Rather than removing potentially useful keywords, try reducing the bid and keeping an eye on how it does. Examining top-of-search vs. rest-of-search placement performance also offers useful insight. Bumping underperforming keywords into separate campaigns for solo testing will allow you to get a better grasp of their real potential.
Final Thoughts: PPC Success = Strategy + Patience
Amazon PPC isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it channel. It requires strategic segmentation, continuous testing, and smart budget management to succeed. By focusing on total account growth through metrics like TACOS, optimizing your product pages for conversions, and letting data guide your decisions, you’ll be well on your way to building high-performing campaigns that deliver real ROI.
In short, segment your campaigns wisely, keep a close eye on ACOS and TACOS, test incessantly, keep the ads running continually, optimize for better conversion rates, use broad match keywords to find new opportunities, and be kind to underperforming keywords. Adopting these methods will minimize wasted budget, increase your rankings, and generate more profitable sales from your Amazon PPC campaigns.
