Top 10 Amazon PPC Campaign Optimization Mistakes To Avoid

Setting up your Amazon PPC campaigns with an optimal structure is just the beginning. Optimization of these campaigns is where the magic happens.

However, many Amazon PPC experts, consultants, and even Amazon advertising agencies make the mistake of either not optimizing these campaigns at all or do it the wrong way. In either case, the result is High ACoS and Low Sales.

Here are the top 10 Amazon PPC campaign optimization mistakes to avoid:

1. Structure Them Right

   Well begun is half done they say and it couldn’t be any truer when it comes to Amazon PPC campaigns. If the campaigns are not structured properly for each product, campaign type, and targeting option, things will go quickly out of control and any level of efficiency in optimization will not be as effective.

2. Never SIFI Your Campaigns

   If you SIFI your campaigns, i.e. you just “Set It and Forget It”, then you are asking the money burning machine to do the damage. There are several moving parts in an Amazon PPC campaign and they need to be optimized for better performance on a regular basis. At least once a week.

3. Don’t Miss The Feature Bus

   Amazon PPC is evolving fast and a lot of changes are taking place and new features are being introduced. Your campaigns, therefore, need to be up to date with the latest changes and features otherwise you may start losing before you realize it.

4. Go Negative On Losers

   When you run Amazon PPC campaigns (whether automatic or manual), they show your ads on certain search terms. The beauty is in the advertising reports, you can see which of these search terms didn’t result in a sale and which of them actually ran with a higher than target ACoS. Identify and add these search terms as negative keywords, at least once a week. If not, you will be burning your advertising showing ads on search terms that are not relevant to your products.

5. Rally Behind The Winners

   Likewise, the advertising reports can show you the search terms which resulted in a sale and at what ACoS. The ones that resulted in a sale at lower than target ACoS are your winners. Unless you rally behind these winning search terms by adding them into your manual campaigns, you will not be able to maximize their sales potential.

6. Automatic And Manual Campaigns Win Together, Not In Isolation

   We often come across either just automatic or manual campaigns. Both Automatic and Manual campaigns have their unique advantages. While automatic campaigns do automatic targeting and help discover search terms and other targeting options that work, manual campaigns offer control on bids and targeting options. Therefore identical automatic and manual campaigns should be run to make the best of both.

7. Don’t Try Evergreen Bids, Auction Takes Place In Real Time

   If you set your bids on ad groups and keywords and never optimize them,  you are going to either miss out on potential sales because of low bids or see high ACoS because of higher than required bids. The auction takes places every time a customer searches on Amazon and your ads are eligible to show. Therefore bids need to optimize regularly to stay optimal.

8. Take Action Based On Sufficient Data Only

   While the advertising data is shown real time, sales data is usually delayed by 48 hours. Also, you need sufficient data in order to make the right decisions. Don’t judge the performance of a keyword based on 1-2 clicks. Wait until 5 clicks and a reliable time for the ads to have run before making optimization decisions.

9. Look For Multiple Data Signals

   ACoS being high or low is not the only data signal to call a keyword or other targeting method a winner or loser. Look at other metrics such as CTR, CPC, duration of the campaign etc in order to make logical decisions.

10. Avoid Prejudices – Try All Targeting Options

    Just because automatic campaigns offer no control or broad match keywords can match related search terms, doesn’t make them bad targeting options necessarily. Ideally, all targeting options and all keyword match types should be tried. Only data-driven decisions should be made to identify winners and losers.

Bonus: Don’t Name Random – Use Proper Naming Conventions:

If you just named campaigns and ad groups randomly, you will find it difficult and/or time-consuming to analyze their performance later. Things can get real messy quickly when you start creating campaigns for different campaigns types, targeting options and keyword match types. Therefore we strongly recommend following a proper naming convention at all times.