Scaling on Amazon Advertising: The Complete Guide

May 26, 2021
By The Badger

If you’re selling on Amazon, chances are you want to grow and scale your business. Growth begets growth in the world of Amazon, and the bigger you are, the easier it is to get more customers and sales. As you rise through the ranks, you could even become a serious challenger to the top dogs in your category. There are several strategies you can use to scale, and which one you should use depends on how well your campaigns are performing.

Got some potential extra ad spend burning a hole in your pocket and not sure how best to use it? Fear not, because we’re here to show you how to grow your Amazon PPC account no matter the state of your Amazon campaigns.

How to Scale Campaigns At or Better Than Your Target ACOS

If your campaigns are at or better than your target Amazon ACOS, give yourself a pat on the back. It’s tough to get your ad spend right where you want it or even better. You’re in a great position to scale because campaigns at or below your target ACOS are by far the easiest to scale. You could scale it up by adding an extra zero to your ad spend if you wanted to.

Take a good look at your budget. Campaigns that are at or under your target ACOS should never be budget-limited unless it’s for a very good reason, e.g. very limited inventory or supply chain issues.

You should also take a look at your Search Term Impression Share reports for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. These should tell you your search term impression rank and if there’s any room to improve that rank by bidding more aggressively.

You also want to be doing bid optimization as you scale these campaigns. Just because they’re doing really well doesn’t mean you can put your extra ad spend anywhere. Your campaigns might hide some keywords that are worse than your target ACOS and could run away with your ad spend if you’re not careful. Watch those keywords like a hawk and be ready to decrease your bids on them if necessary.

In terms of how to go about scaling your campaign spend, you can do it really quickly if that campaign is doing well. If it’s 100% smooth sailing, you can spread the ramp-up out over a week, increasing the budget by 25% at a time. Regardless, slower is better when ramping up your campaign budget. Doubling your budget overnight can leave you with runaway ACOS.

If you have a campaign with multiple keywords that falls into this category, take the top 10 keywords in that campaign, then move each of them over to a single keyword campaign with their own dedicated budgets and placement settings.

The last thing is to make sure you keep running additional RPSB keyword research and graduating your search terms. At the same time, don’t forget about product targeting. A lot of Amazon sellers focus their targeting solely on keywords and search terms, but you want to take on winning products as well. This is where auto targeting can come in handy.

How to Scale Campaigns Worse Than Your Target ACOS

With these campaigns, scaling is a lot less cut and dry than optimizing campaigns that are at or better than your target ACOS. With these campaigns, if you just increase your budget without any prior campaign prep, your ACOS is just going to further increase.

Here, the top three most important aspects of scaling are control, control, and control. You really need to rein in that ACOS with bid optimization. Don’t pause your high-ACOS keywords outright; chances are they’re still generating orders, your bids are just higher than what the keyword is worth. A good way to figure out what a good bid is for your keyword is by multiplying your revenue per click (RPC) by your target ACOS. With a lot of your keywords, the secret to unlocking their profit potential is bidding down.

Keep optimizing your bids and hunting for those low order frequency keywords that are getting more ad spend than they’re worth. At the same time, you can still scale by seeking out small long-tail keywords and bidding on them accordingly. Over the course of several months of bid optimization and finding long-tail keywords, you might find you’ve lowered your ACOS and doubled your ad spend at the same time.

However, once in a blue moon, you might inadvertently find yourself sitting on a one-in-a-million keyword. Some keywords have a high ACOS not because they have an overinflated ad spend, but because they lack the ad spend to land the placements that let them shine. If you have a suspicion that one of these keywords is hiding in your poorly-performing campaign, try upping the bid on it bit by bit and see what happens. Keep in mind that this is not something to do en masse, nor should you do it early on in your quest to optimize and scale your campaign.

While all of this is great for your campaigns, you might be surprised to find the best thing you can do to help scale your above-target-ACOS campaigns has nothing to do with your campaigns at all.

Product Page Improvements

Take a quick look at your Amazon product pages. What do they look like now? Are they properly optimized? If your campaigns are doing worse than you’d hoped, it might be time to give your product pages a makeover.

Test different prices on your product pages. See if you get more or fewer orders at different price points, then zero in on the one that gets you the most bang for your buck.

Make sure your product photos are high-quality and professional. Lifestyle photos that show your ideal customer using your product are always a good addition to your listings. Be sure to include dimensions info as well.

an amazon product listing for powdered peanut butter that shows the product being used in several ways — Here are some examples of great lifestyle product page images.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, videos are worth a million. Having a video on your product page can convey a ton of information to shoppers and give your credibility a major boost.

Finally, create an Amazon review strategy for your product pages, and if you already have one, revisit it to see if there are any ways it could be improved. Positive reviews of your products can help drive up your revenue. Be sure to check your star ratings as well. If the majority of your products are sitting on an average of 3.5 stars, now might not be the time to scale your campaigns.

Scaling with New Amazon Campaigns

The #1 easiest way to scale your Amazon account might be to create new campaigns. Of course, we’re not saying to take a scorched earth approach and start from scratch; there’s plenty of raw potential in your existing campaigns as well.

Good news: just like every time you log onto Amazon as a shopper, there are all kinds of new ways to spend your money in Amazon Advertising. If you have ad spend to spare, consider dipping your toes into Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display if you haven’t already. Then, take your best keywords and put them in those new ad types and your account can grow by 20% to 30% right off the bat.

Another way to scale your Amazon account with new campaigns is to break into new targeting types. The first one to look at is brand defense. Don’t be afraid to bid on your own brand in Sponsored Products or use it as a targeting type in Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Display. Your competitors are probably bidding on it already, so brand defense is a good way to keep them from shooting their shot.

There are tons of other ways to flesh out your new campaigns – finding new keywords with reverse ASIN, cross-selling complementary products, combining strategies across different ad types, and more. The possibilities are endless!

By adding new campaigns and reaching your shoppers in new ways, you can scale your Amazon account without having to lay a finger on your current campaigns. Plus, internal data from Amazon has shown that when you have Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display active in your account, it boosts the performance of your Sponsored Products campaigns.

Key Takeaways

Scaling your business on Amazon is no simple task and how you go about it depends greatly on the health of your campaigns.

If your campaigns are at or better than your target ACOS, you will find it much easier to scale your account. Raise your budget caps so these campaigns have ample room to grow unless you have good reasons to keep them where they are. Stay on the lookout for high-ACOS keywords and raise your budget gradually to make sure nothing goes haywire.

For campaigns that are worse than your target ACOS, slow down your scaling. Keep your focus on optimizing your bids and scale by gradually adding long-tail keywords over time. Another way to make sure your campaigns are fit to scale is to take a look at your product pages and see if you can make any improvements with either your pricing strategy or the content of your product listings.

The easiest way to scale your Amazon Advertising account is to create new campaigns, experimenting with new ad types, new targeting types, or both. It’s a fast way to grow your account while reaching customers in new ways and making the most of what the Advertising console has to offer.

Scale your Amazon PPC account to infinity and beyond!