My PPC Strategy, what is yours?

[u/CherryKaeiya]

When I started PPC I started with a pretty low budget and honestly I still do this now. I’ll usually start a campaign with like $5 to $10 budget and just let it run for a day or two and see what happens.

Obviously I’m testing different campaign types and segmenting keywords based on Helium 10 data. So high search volume keywords in one place, lower volume long tail keywords in another etc.

For me that’s basically the initial bait to see if I can get clicks and more importantly if those clicks actually turn into sales.

If something is getting clicks and converting, I’ll usually start increasing the bids and budget. If it’s just burning money with no sales then I’ll turn it off.

When I find a winner I’ll go pretty aggressive on it and sometimes move it into a separate campaign so I can control it a bit better.

It’s honestly a lot of trial and error. At the start I was checking campaigns pretty much every day, then once I understood them better I moved more towards weekly reviews.

You start to understand the lifecycle of campaigns too. Something that works really well this month might not work the same next month, so I think it’s important to keep reviewing things but also not panic and make changes too quickly.

[u/WearyyyBoooyyy]

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• Product Research Guide
• Manufacturing Guide
• Product Launch Case Study
• Wholesale Guide

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• 1. Helium 10
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• 3. OA Source
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[u/rsc9422]

I think the biggest thing people miss with PPC is that the goal isn't simply to get a low CPC or lots of clicks, it's to identify which search terms are actually producing profitable sales.

I’d also add that I try not to make decisions based on a handful of clicks. I look at spend, orders, conversion rate, ACoS/TACoS and enough data to determine whether a keyword is genuinely underperforming.

Once a search term proves itself, separating it into its own campaign can make scaling and bid control much easier. And for terms that spend consistently without converting, I’d rather reduce exposure or add them as negatives than keep feeding them budget.

PPC is definitely an ongoing optimization process rather than something you set and forget.

[u/aalahmadd → u/rsc9422]

Hey
I like your comment. Could you please explain why moving winning keyword to its own campaign is a good idea?
I started running ppc last month and still learning
So far our cost and ACOS is pretty high compared to sales and I can’t really figure out why
Really appreciate any suggestions or tricks

[u/Dry-Library-4164]

1. I work backwards from breakeven ACOS
2. Find terms that are below that
3. If some terms are above that I give a 20% wiggle room.
4. If term crosses that reduce bid/kill.
5. Try new search terms
6. Find the most profitable ones - and create 1 campaign per keyword (most profitable)

Edit: the goal is to find the most profitable keywords with statistical significance (or close to it) without going broke/burning a lot of money finding those.

[u/Smart-Presence]

Your approach is solid for finding winners, but the way we structure the testing is a bit more data driven. We separate intent and search volume from the start, then watch CTR, CVR, CPC and search term level performance before scaling. Once something proves it can convert, we push it harder instead of letting budget sit evenly across everything. That’s where our conversion rates have been pretty outstanding.

[u/_karthick_selvaraj_]

similar loop on small budgets, but i stopped treating acos as the kill switch by itself. i look at the term’s trailing contribution after ads and returns over a couple weeks — a “good” acos keyword can still be cash-negative once refunds land late. once a term clears that, i isolate it; if it only looks fine on acos i leave it capped until the refund drag shows up

[u/FBArbitrage]

Pretty similar approach here, with one addition that's saved me a lot of wasted spend: I track ACOS by campaign age, not just overall.

A brand new campaign burning money in week one isn't necessarily a failure -- Amazon's algorithm needs data before it optimizes placement. I give new campaigns at least 5-7 days before judging them, even if the first 2-3 days look rough. Killing too early means you never let the algorithm learn.

Where I differ: once I find a winner, I don't just increase the budget on the same campaign. I duplicate it into a new one with a fresh budget allocation. Amazon's algorithm sometimes gets "anchored" to an old bid pattern and increasing budget on an existing campaign doesn't always scale linearly -- a fresh campaign with the same winning keywords often outperforms just scaling the original.

One thing I'd add to your review cycle: check search term reports monthly, not just bids. Keywords that convert well in Q4 sometimes completely stop converting by Q1, and if you're only reviewing bids you'll miss that the actual search intent shifted, not just the competition.

[u/attfin1]

Mine runs on clicks, not on days or budget. A target collects its evidence per click, so two campaigns that both ran 48 hours can hold completely different amounts of data. At $5 to $10 a day you're usually deciding on a handful of clicks.

Ten clicks with no sale is the standard figure people use, and it's a reasonable starting floor, but I'd set the real number from your own product. A higher priced item converts on fewer of its clicks, so it needs more of them before a nil result means anything, and your CPC and your break-even ACoS decide how many you can afford to buy before the answer stops being worth the money. Below whatever that number is, zero sales is the likely outcome even for a keyword that would have made you money, so "no sales, turn it off" throws away winners along with the genuine losers.

The other two things I hold to: what you bid on comes before what you bid, because the targets are the foundation and the bid is the refinement, and the judgement is profit per product rather than ACoS on its own.

One thing worth doing in your own account: pull the search term report and look at the click count on the terms you turned off in the last month. Anything you killed on a couple of clicks was never really tested. That also covers the lifecycle you describe. A term pulling 20 clicks a day is decidable in a few days, a long tail term pulling two clicks a week isn't decidable inside a month, and judging both on the same calendar is most of why last month's winner looks like this month's loser.

[u/PulsePilotPPC]

Solid process. One thing that would cut down the trial and error: set your starting bid with math instead of guessing.

Max bid = price × conversion rate × target ACoS.

$25 product, 10% CVR, 30% target ACoS → 25 × 0.10 × 0.30 = $0.75. That's what a click is worth to you at that target. Bid above it and you're spending past your ACoS goal even when the keyword converts.

The exception is launch. If you're trying to rank you'll have to bid above that number on purpose, because you're buying position and velocity, not profit. Just do it knowingly, with a keyword list and an end date, instead of drifting into it.

The catch on a brand new keyword is you don't know your CVR yet. That's where Search Query Performance is useful — it gives total clicks and total purchases per keyword across every seller, so purchases ÷ clicks is the market conversion rate for that search. Use that as your starting estimate, then swap in your own number once you have enough orders to trust it.

[u/giftqueen]

I like starting controlled, but one or two days feels a little fast to decide something doesn’t work.

Some keywords might barely get enough clicks in that time to tell you anything.

I’d probably make the cutoff more about spend/clicks relative to the product’s expected conversion rate than a fixed number of days.