Infographic: Your Sponsored Product Ads New Year’s Checklist

January 17, 2018
By The Badger

Welcome to your New Year’s Sponsored Products Checklist!

Last week, I went over some resolutions to keep your Sponsored Products fit. Now, I want to present a useful checklist to keep at your disposal. Here’s everything you should check off as you decide your campaign strategy for the new year.

Your Sponsored Product Ads

2018 Checklist

ACoS Strategy

Hitting your target ACoS should be the top priority for keeping your account fit in 2018. Good ACoS doesn’t really exist unless you know what you’re target is. Decide now what your ACoS strategy is.

Reminder: ACoS = Ad Spend / Sales

Balance Profit and Revenue – 20 to 30%

Usually, sellers target between 20 to 30%, which is usually optimal for balancing ad spend a profit. After all the Amazon fees, sales tax, production, COGS and overhead costs, if you’re making 28% profit, then you’ll know you need to spend less than 28% on ads to make a profit. This is the kind of balance an Amazon seller searches for when deciding on a target ACoS.

Keep ACoS Ultra-Low to Increase Profit – Under 10%

This works well for high-volume industries where the seller has an advantage of extremely high revenue per visitor. However, for most sellers, bidding ultra-low with an “average” conversion rate (around 10%) will result in a micro-sized account with a lowered amount of sales.

Raise ACoS to Boost Organic Ranking – Over 30%

With an increase in ad spend, you will be more likely to win bids on keywords and increase traffic to your product pages. In theory, increasing in impressions could potentially increase sales. Acquiring more sales, you can increase ratings and appeal to the Amazon A9 algorithm and increase your organic ranking. Increasing your organic ranking can lead to even more sales and repeat the cycle.

Campaign Groupings

Update Your Campaign Groupings

Your campaign groupings should be different than they were during the holidays. You may have separated your products because you had different expectations for them. For example, you may have separated your candy cane colored socks apart from your plain white socks because they were more popular during the holidays. Now it’s time to change them back.

Bids

Lower Your Bids

Amazon hit over 3 billion visitors in December, higher than the past six months in 2017. This increase in traffic is obviously due to the holiday season, accompanied by big sales. January will naturally experience less demand and fewer sales than the holiday season, making the keywords less competitive. You might be wasting money if you are bidding the same amount on keywords as you were in December and November.

Keywords

Change Your Keywords From Holiday Terms

People likely aren’t shopping for “Decorative Christmas Lights” as much, they’re probably shopping for “Decorative String Lights” instead. While it doesn’t cost you anything to keep holiday terms, people may be in research mode instead of buying mode and click on a lot of products, causing you to pay per click and hurting your conversion rate. They could also be eating up your daily budget while not even converting.

Stay Proactive About Your Amazon Ads

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