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My Core PPC Strategies​​

 

Amazon PPC generates an enormous amount of data. Consistently knowing what to do with the information will be the difference between success and failure. I treat your money as though it were my own. And I don't like spending it without it serving a purpose.

 

Data tells a story. Here are my strategies for creating a happy ending...​​​

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PPC isn't just about bids

 

It's easy to look at an Amazon PPC account and see thousands of keywords, targets, campaigns, bids, and performance figures. But individual numbers rarely tell the full tale.

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A campaign producing a high ACoS isn't automatically a problem, and one with low ACoS isn't automatically a success.

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A keyword that hasn't produced a sale may still be contributing to discovery, visibility, or future organic performance.

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Sometimes the most important decision is knowing what not to change yet. When to let something breathe.

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I therefore look at the account as a whole rather than treating every campaign or target as an isolated unit.

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The Commercial Objective

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Before deciding what PPC should do, I need to understand what the business is trying to achieve.

 

That might mean:

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• Growing sales

• Launching new ASINs

• Increasing profitability

• Moving excess inventory

• Improving organic visibility

• Supporting a hero product

• Defending an established position

• Supporting a seasonal opportunity

• Establishing a new keyword position

• Expanding into a new product or category

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Not every ASIN has the same job.

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And not every campaign should therefore be judged by the same measure.

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The advertising strategy needs to reflect the commercial strategy, not the other way around.

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Look At the Opportunity, Not Just the Account

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I want to understand where the opportunity lies. That means looking at the relationship between:

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Paid visibility → Search behaviour → Conversion → Organic visibility → Sales

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I look at the search terms and targets that are already working, but I'm equally interested in what they reveal about opportunities we haven't yet exploited.

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That can include emerging search terms, competitor products, category opportunities, Amazon Choice and Best Seller acquisition, product variations, and changes in customer search behaviour.

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PPC is therefore both a sales channel and a source of competitive intelligence.

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Before making changes, I will assess a target's contribution...

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Considering Contribution... Not Just Isolated Numbers

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One of the most important principles behind my approach is to look at contribution rather than just campaign performance.

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An individual campaign can look unprofitable in isolation while still contributing valuable sales, data, or search visibility to the wider account.

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Equally, a campaign producing an attractive ACoS isn't necessarily making the impact we need.

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I therefore consider what each part of the account is contributing to the bigger picture.

 

The objective isn't to make every campaign look good.

 

It's to make the account work better as a whole.

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The Economics Behind the Advertising

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ACoS is a useful measurement, but it isn't an effective business strategy in isolation.

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The right advertising decision depends on the product's economics and the objective we're trying to achieve.

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I therefore consider factors such as:

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• Selling price

• Organic sales

• Product margins

• Ad Sales volume

• Ranking objectives

• Keyword Cannibalization

• The role of the individual ASIN

• Inventory Levels, Charging, and Restocking

• The commercial value of acquiring a customer or search position

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This is why I don't believe in applying a single ACoS target blindly across an entire account.

 

Different campaigns can have different jobs.​

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Structure to Match Purpose

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Poor ad structure can create inefficiencies that are difficult to spot.

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It needs to support specific strategies rather than hold them back.

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I build a framework to help me organize sales and ranking around key aspects such as competitor targeting, keyword alignment, opportunity testing, and seasonal scaling.

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I consider how targets are grouped, where they need to be isolated, where duplication creates waste, and where greater control is required.

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This affords me greater control while giving the algorithm maximum opportunity to find and broaden keyword-to-asin alignment.

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Flowing with Amazon's Algorithm - And Not Forcing It

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Amazon's advertising system and algorithms are constantly producing signals. Some are obvious, and some are buried deep within data.

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Amazon tells you a story. You can work with it, or try to force things. Sometimes, a mixture of both is needed... but knowing when to push the right button is vital.

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Sometimes it tells me to invest in new search directions. Or to reduce exposure, and isolate a target that still has the chance to perform given the right circumstances.

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I don't believe that every decision needs to be made immediately, but that subtle changes to these signals can turn around the fortunes of something that might otherwise be paused.

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Because the ability to recognize when the data isn't yet telling you enough is part of the art of good management.

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Thinking Beyond the Seven-day Window

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PPC produces data very quickly; its accuracy suffers from lag and buyer delays.

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The Amazon advertising dashboard and search term reports show data for a 7-day window (14 days for some ad types), however, it allows for a thirty-day sales attribution.

In practice, this difference can equate to as much as 20% increased revenue from the data period originally assessed. This means that decisions made without factoring in yet-to-be sales data can be bad decisions.

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I therefore use different time horizons depending on what I am trying to achieve.

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I'm looking at what is happening now and what will likely happen if I make a change.

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The difference is important.

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Constantly reacting to short-term fluctuations can create as many problems as it solves.

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PPC Reflects What is Happening Organically

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...and shouldn't be treated in isolation.

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If the listing isn't relevant to the search, the product isn't competitive, the offer isn't compelling, inventory is constrained or distributed unevenly, or the customer isn't converting... increasing the advertising budget doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.

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That's where my decades of product sales, branding, and copywriting come into play.

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A great PPC strategy can't compensate for a weak listing.

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Where appropriate, I use my ListingEvolve® framework to improve the relationship between the listing, the search terms we're targeting, and Amazon's increasingly AI-driven discovery systems.

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Use Advertising to Learn

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I don't simply optimize your account. The data it generates tells me a lot about the direction in which we need to flow. Controlling the keyword/ASIN targets can be an important aspect to scale an account, but it needs to work in tandem with what Amazon is telling you.

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Targeted keywords don't always react in a logically expected manner. Velocity anchors become blocks to meaningful growth.

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And some successes aren't obvious until they announce themselves. I work with both methods at specific times in an ASIN's journey.

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What This Means for Your Account

 

The principles above describe how I think about an account.

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Behind them is a detailed campaign management and testing process covering campaign structure, keyword discovery, targeting, bidding, placements, search-term analysis, product targeting, and performance management.

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There are real reasons behind the decisions I make.

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I'm looking at your advertising in the context of the whole Amazon business, rather than simply trying to make a collection of campaign metrics look better.

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The data tells me what happened.

Experience helps me decide what it means.

Strategy determines what happens next.

 

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