One of the most misused aspects of a solid PPC strategy is continuous campaign launches. In 99% of cases with PPC accounts, from a seller to a high ticket service provider, the targeting, campaigns, and the like are set up on day one. From there, the closest thing to finding new opportunities is when new targets are added to over-bloated ad groups once in a blue moon. Keep reading to find out how you can find the gold in your search terms report.
Digging Deeper Than ‘Optimization’
There is significant emphasis on ‘optimization’… but the very nature of optimization is management, maintenance, and efficiency. It’s tough (depending on the niche) to scale sales with optimization in and of itself, let alone get the ship back on course if things are not going as planned.
A thriving PPC account should do more than have pretty ACoS or TACoS stats–it should also drive top-line growth. Put more money in the bank each month versus that same month last year.
To drive growth, you need forward motion. It is created by launching new campaigns at regular intervals weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly–a year in and year out. The work is not done on launch; that is only the first step.
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Segmentation Is The Key
Poor segmentation is usually the culprit for exhausting a targeting pool, which can be a roadblock to continuous campaign launches. I have audited many accounts where some big-name agencies did the build-out with bloated segmentation–most sellers also make this mistake. Essentially, everything is jammed into 4-7 campaigns. That won’t work in today’s Amazon unless you are a long-standing 7-figure seller in about 8-10 cases. However, that’s a topic for another post–I digress.
Coasting on existing targeting will lead to sales erosion. Amazon rewards the big dogs and those that demonstrate sales velocity. Stagnation is penalized with declining organic positions and progressively worse placements in PPC. Unless you are an alpha seller or a blessed new launch on fire with sales velocity–you will need to create your momentum to get better traction.
While there are many places to farm targeting, it’s been my experience that the purest and most potent targeting that a seller can use is right before them in their account. Most sellers understand that the search terms report is a good place to find new targets, but that’s only one piece of critical insight that the report gives us.
The Nitty-Gritty
Here are some actionable tactics you can use from your search terms report and some basic recommendations on organizing the report for maximum impact.
Customer Search Terms
This is the most obvious leverage point, but look at the customer search terms column in the report and collect the terms that have the highest sales and lowest ACoS. From there, filter them against your existing targeting for redundancy and then create a campaign with them using 1-3 targets per campaign.
Keyword Match Types
Pay close attention to which keyword match types are driving the most conversions. Launch those campaigns first. For example, if you notice that historically you get stronger sales on phrase match terms, launch the phrase match variations first. On the flip side, if you notice that ASIN targets are nailing most of the sales, launch those first.
Testing
Don’t launch large swaths of new campaigns each week. Test in chunks of 3-8 new campaigns a week so you can keep your account economics inline. You don’t want test spending blowing apart profitability.
Converting Search Terms
Even though Amazon lets you pull search terms data on the 65-day macro – Keep a running list of the top 50 converting terms. Every 65 days, filter the existing converting terms against the previously aggregated total’s 50 terms rolling data and combine. This will slowly build historical data, which otherwise would be impossible to procure. It’s always a good idea to see where you are trending historically right from the raw data itself. It allows you to find new traction points you might miss using the tools only.
New Launch Opportunities
The real power in the search terms report is how it can help us find new product launch opportunities. For example, let’s say you sell plastic decorative storage crates. But you keep getting conversions on the term ‘plastic cake cooling stand’ even though your product is very clearly not a cake cooling stand. This is called a hint.
Begin developing and sourcing your plastic cake cooling stand, then launch it. What you’ll find out of the gate is that you’ll get WAY better placements because you already have rolling sales history on that term. Think of it as a way to make the Maldives honeymoon into a supercharged Maldives honeymoon.
In closing, remember the best and purest data you can get to formulate where you should go next is right in front of you in your Amazon account. Wring every last drop of insight you can from it.
About the author
John Serafano is the Owner & Founder of Ascendance360, a full-service Amazon marketing agency. John and his agency specialize in private label branding strategies for small to medium-sized sellers.
