1.3 Data Driven Marketing on Amazon (Amazon PPC): Amazon PPC Campaign Management and Optimization

A good idea is worthless without impeccable execution and a commitment to iterate. - Zach Klein

D2C Brands need to incorporate continuous monitoring and optimization in their PPC campaign strategy efforts to:

1. Test, learn, and adapt PPC strategies based on real-time data, ensuring efficiency.
2. Improve ad quality score, leading to better placement in search results and increased visibility.
3. Accommodate changes in market trends and consumer behavior.

This is the 4th part of the series, Data Driven Marketing on Amazon (Amazon PPC). The objective of this series is to provide a framework, for D2C and digital B2C brands, to build, and implement a data-driven Amazon PPC campaign strategy on Amazon.com. There are 4 parts to this series as listed below:

Part 1: Understanding the customer acquisition funnel.

Part 2: Product level profitability and hero products identification.

Part 3: Budget planning and PPC campaign strategy.

Part 4: Amazon PPC campaign management and optimization.

PPC campaign optimization involves evaluating the campaign performance against the predetermined objective and making necessary changes in PPC campaign parameters such as budget, target, products and campaign settings to achieve the desired results in the most cost efficient manner. We are going to divide the PPC campaigns into 4 categories for optimization purpose:

1. Performance below the benchmark and spend less than the budget
2. Performance below the benchmark and spend at par with the budget
3. Performance above the benchmark and spend less than the budget
4. Performance above the benchmark and spend at par with the budget

PPC campaign type 1: Performance below the benchmark and spend less than the budget

• Budget: Reduce the campaign budget.
• Target (Keywords): Increase bids on the better performing keywords, reduce bids on the poor performing keywords, add the non-performing targets to negative KWs, include more keywords as targets from campaign search terms and keyword research.
• Products: Exclude the non-performing products.
• Campaign Settings: Dynamic bids down only with 10% - 30% increase for top of the search placement.

PPC campaign type 2: Performance below the benchmark and spend at par with the budget

• Budget: No change or reduce if, the budget can be allocated to the better performing campaigns.
• Target: Reduce bids on the poor performing keywords, add the non-performing targets to the negative KWs, include more keywords as targets from search terms and keyword research.
• Products: Exclude the non-performing products.
• Campaign Settings: Experiment with the schedule rules along with the dynamic bids - down only strategy (Amazon algorithm does not spread the ad spend evenly throughout the day and there is a chance that your campaign is going out of budget and leading to loss of sales. One way to avoid this is to alter your bid depending upon the distribution of sales or ROAS during the day: Increase the bids during the high sales periods and the periods of high ROAS. This data can be obtained from the measurement and reporting tab in the campaign dashboard).

PPC Campaign type 3: Performance above the benchmark and spend less than the budget

• Budget: No change.
• Target: Increase bids on the keywords and observe the change in the number of impressions and top of the search impression share. If there is an increase in these metrics, the campaign revenue should increase given everything else remains the same. Keep increasing the bids till 100% campaign budget is utilized. Include more keywords as targets from the search terms and keyword research.
• Products: No change.
• Campaign Settings: Dynamic bids - up and down with a 10% to 30% increase in the bids for top of the search placement.

PPC campaign type 4: Performance above the benchmark and spend at par with the budget

• Budget: Increase budget if the same is not a constraint.
• Target: Reduce bids on any poor or non-performing keywords.
• Products: No change.
• Campaign Settings: Dynamic bids - up and down with a 10% to 30% increase in the bids for top of the search placement.

Conclusion

Please keep in the mind that the PPC campaign optimization process is a continuous iteration and should be done periodically. Keep track of the changes made and measure the associated impact. You can use campaign history tab to see the changes and associated impact on performance parameters.

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