My Amazon Guy - Top 10 Amazon PPC Tips to Cut Costs and Increase Sales
Stephen Pope, founder of My Amazon Guy, shares strategies to manage and optimize Amazon PPC campaigns effectively. He addresses common issues like high PPC costs that can wipe out profits and offers practical solutions. Key strategies include ensuring you don't run out of budget, improving main product images to increase click-through rates, and using negative keywords to eliminate unprofitable search terms. He also suggests day parting to optimize ad spend during peak conversion times and using broad match modifiers to refine keyword targeting. Additionally, he recommends creating low-budget auto campaigns for each SKU to test performance and using custom headline images in sponsored brand ads to increase visibility. Lastly, he advises leveraging lifetime data in Seller Central to analyze long-term PPC performance.
Key Points:
- Ensure PPC budget doesn't run out to maintain ad visibility and performance.
- Improve main product images to boost click-through rates and reduce PPC costs.
- Use negative keywords to eliminate unprofitable search terms and save money.
- Implement day parting to optimize ad spend during peak conversion times.
- Utilize broad match modifiers to refine keyword targeting and improve efficiency.
Details:
1. 🎯 Introduction to PPC Challenges and Tips
- Many new sellers experience PPC expenses surpassing their revenue, leading to profit erosion.
- Stephen Pope, founder of 'My Amazon Guy,' highlights this common issue and offers solutions based on his extensive experience.
- Jordan Lee Smith reports high sales volumes but faces challenges with PPC costs negating profits.
- Stephen Pope will outline specific PPC strategies, honed over seven years, to help reduce costs and sustain sales.
2. 💰 Tip 1: Budget Management
2.1. Budget Management Strategy
2.2. Practical Examples and Adjustments
3. 🖼️ Tip 2: Optimize Main Images for PPC
- Optimizing your main image can have the number one impact on your PPC performance outside of pricing.
- Simple changes, such as adding a bow or showcasing more aspects of the product, can significantly enhance the image's appeal.
- Including elements like a two-pack view or displaying the contents of a package can provide better insight into the product.
- Enhancing the main image with a holiday theme or highlighting product outcomes can increase the click-through rate (CTR).
- Higher CTR can reduce your advertising cost of sales (ACoS) as Amazon may offer a 5-15% discount on PPC bids for better-performing images.
- An increased CTR also leads to a higher conversion rate, as initial interest is higher when the image is more engaging.
4. 🔍 Tip 3: Use Keyword Negations
- Implement keyword negations to prevent ads from appearing in irrelevant searches, thereby improving PPC effectiveness.
- Example: For a shoe store, negate keywords like 'free', 'cheap', or 'used' to avoid non-converting clicks.
- Keyword negations can lead to a higher Click-Through Rate (CTR) and better ad spend efficiency.
- Brands have observed up to a 30% reduction in wasted ad spend by using keyword negations effectively.
5. ⏰ Tip 4: Implement Day Parting
- Conduct weekly reviews of search term reports to identify and exclude high-cost, low-performing keywords, especially important during Q4 when new keywords emerge.
- Sort search terms by spend to quickly identify high-spending, non-converting keywords, such as those with 88% ACOS, and add them as negative exact matches to save costs.
- Excluding a high-cost keyword, for example, can save $88 per week, significantly reducing ACOS and improving ROI.
- Identify and consider excluding competitor terms that consistently fail to convert, thus optimizing ad spend.
- Utilize partial match filters to analyze keyword groups, finding opportunities for ACOS improvement by trimming low performers and focusing on higher-performing keywords.
- Implementing these strategies can lead to cost savings and improved ad efficiency, directly impacting overall campaign performance by lowering ACOS and increasing profitability.
6. 📣 Tip 5: Utilize Social Posts
- Implement day parting by setting scheduled rules in campaign settings to optimize conversion rates during high-performing times.
- Identify specific times and days when your product converts better, such as during holidays or special events, and adjust bids and budgets accordingly.
- Example schedule: Boost bids by 35% on Mondays from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PST, as it is the highest converting time of the week.
- Increase bids by 10% from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. PST from Tuesday to Thursday, which is a moderate converting period.
- Adjust bid increases dynamically throughout Monday, ranging from 25% to 50%, based on performance.
- On Fridays, only increase bids from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. PST, as other times are less effective.
- Boost bids by 25% on Sundays from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. PST to capture increased activity.
- Schedule these rules in advance to ensure automatic adjustments during high-conversion periods.
7. 🔄 Tip 6: Broad Match Modifier
7.1. Understanding Changes in Social Media Engagement
7.2. Leveraging Social Post Features for Increased Visibility
7.3. Implementing Broad Match Modifiers
8. 🛠️ Tip 7: Create Auto Campaigns
- The broad match modifier requires all specified words to be included in a search term, increasing precision without the constraints of phrase matching.
- By adding a plus sign before each word in a broad match keyword, advertisers can ensure these words appear in search terms, while allowing additional words to be present.
- This strategy helps avoid the rising costs of exact match advertising by enhancing creative keyword targeting.
- Implementing a broad match modifier doesn't require advanced knowledge and can be applied to any product by simply modifying existing broad match keywords.
- Broad match modifiers provide similar bid opportunities as broad matches but result in fewer search terms, as they exclude terms lacking the specified word combination.
- For example, if you use the broad match modifier '+red +shoes', your ad may appear for 'buy red running shoes' or 'red shoes sale', but not for 'buy shoes' or 'red sandals'.
- This allows advertisers to balance between reach and relevance, optimizing ad spend and improving targeting efficiency.
- Overall, broad match modifiers are a cost-effective tool for advertisers looking to increase precision and control over their campaigns without sacrificing reach.
9. 📊 Tip 8: Calculate Expected ACoS
- Creating an auto campaign for every SKU with a $1 budget and a 5-cent bid can yield interesting results, especially for catalogs with many SKUs.
- This strategy allows for creating one campaign with unlimited ad groups or separating them based on segmentation preferences.
- A previous campaign using this technique averaged a 43% ACoS, with some products achieving as low as 10% ACoS, while others were less successful.
- Testing is essential, as results can vary; however, it's particularly beneficial for catalogs with 30-50 products to secure low bids at scale.
- Setup is straightforward and quick, requiring less than 10 minutes with a template upload, involving a $5 bid budget per ad group, and minimal maintenance.
10. 🖼️ Tip 9: Custom Headline Images
- Use a spreadsheet to calculate expected ACoS by entering conversion rates ranging from 1% to 20% and a specific CPC bid, such as $1.32, to estimate clicks.
- Estimate cost per conversion by factoring in sales price and aiming for a target ACoS between 26% and 33%, based on historical conversion rates, such as 8% to 10%.
- Adjust CPC bids to align with desired ACoS, acknowledging that PPC campaigns often experience lower conversion rates due to new customer exposure, potentially decreasing conversion rates by approximately 2%.
- For instance, a listing with an average conversion rate of 9% might realistically achieve 7% in PPC, necessitating an ACoS adjustment from 29% to 37%.
11. 📈 Tip 10: Review Lifetime PPC Data
- Implementing custom headline images in sponsored brand ads can significantly boost click-through rates by offering visually appealing, larger ad space.
- Custom headline ads utilize 1242 pixels, making them more eye-catching compared to standard ads, which leads to increased user engagement.
- The setup process is straightforward: select the store spotlight option and add a custom image in the creative section.
- Consider using custom headline images to maximize ad visibility and attract more clicks, leveraging the additional real estate provided.