So you are ready to launch your new product on Amazon, your photos are looking great and your listing is perfected. You may not realize it, but launching your product is only step one of this journey. As a full-time seller and Amazon PPC consultant, I have realized that the combination of a good launch and a well-rounded Amazon PPC strategy is nearly unstoppable! Maybe you are not sure when the “right time” is to turn on PPC or even how to approach advertising on Amazon. Don’t worry, you are not alone. Every seller, new and old, at some point will realize that Amazon PPC is a must for success on the platform. You don’t need to hire an expensive consultant to manage it and you don’t need to be spending hours everyday optimizing your campaigns, you just need a good system.

Here are some tips for setting up your Sponsored Products Campaigns and managing them so you can get the most out of your newly launched product:

1) Find as many keywords as possible!

If you are only bidding on 100 or less keywords you are missing out on so many potential buyers. Often times, the obvious keywords most sellers target are all being bid on by the competition. This translates to higher bids, less conversions and lowered profit. Let’s face the facts, a brand new product with less reviews will never convert as good as a seasoned product with thousands of reviews. However, you can cast a wider net and get easy sales with other terms the competition may not even be bidding on. By adding hundreds, even thousands of keywords and long-tail keyword rich phrases, you’ll have way more coverage for your products and will find some golden nuggets in places you never thought you would find them. Ok, but how?

Here are a few FREE Amazon keyword research tools to get you started:

A) Google Adwords

B) Scientific Seller

C) KeywordTool.io

D) Keyword Tool Dominator

2) Put together the correct Amazon PPC campaign structure.

You can’t just throw all your products in one auto campaign and expect to make money on your PPC spend. So how do you set them up for success? We have tested so many ways but here is what we found works best!

A) 1 Child ASIN per campaign.

B) 500-1000 keywords per ad group.

C) Create separate ad groups for each match type (Broad, Phrase, Exact) bidding on all the same words in each.

D) Run an auto campaign along your manual campaigns at a very low bid ($0.1-$0.25) which will catch the keywords you may have not found in your research phase.

3) Start low and slowly raise your bids.

Unless your product offering is so unique that there is nothing else available to buyers like it, you will need to take a systematic approach to your Amazon PPC. Newer products with less reviews and questions flat out do not convert as well as older ones with more social proof. If you come out with guns blazing, bidding on the most competitive keywords with higher CPCs you will burn a huge hole in your wallet. Here is what we recommend.

Phase 1 – 0-10% of top competitors reviews:

Keep your bids around $.50-$1.00 per click max. Limit your campaign budgets to what you are comfortable losing the first few days, maybe $10-$25 per day. You will run out of your budget the first few weeks until you get some initial data and start to eliminate some of the poor performing terms. Start Phase 1 the first day of your launch or the day your product is fully checked into Amazon and available for sale, whichever comes first.

Phase 2 – 11-25% of top competitors reviews:

By this time you should have paused any really poor performing keywords from Phase 1. Raise bids slowly as you see steady sales coming in and you start to get more reviews. $1-$1.50 will be sufficient for most products. Remember, you still can’t go after these highly competitive keywords with only 10 reviews when your competitor has 1,200. Also, raise your campaign daily budgets on any campaigns that have been performing well, around $25-$50 per day will be plenty. It’s OK if you run out of budget in Phase 2 on some days.

Phase 3 – 26-50% of top competitors reviews:

You are reaching a good stage now to start to compete with the big boys! Your campaigns should be starting to bring you a significant amount of sales. You should have paused a lot of keywords by now, added many negative match customer search terms which have not been converting and your campaigns should be optimized enough to run 24/7. If you are running out midday you should be raising your budget.

Phase 4 – 51%+ of top competitors reviews:

It’s time to start gunning for that number 1 spot! You are ready at this point to target the most competitive keywords in your niche and bid as high as you are comfortable bidding. At this stage, your campaigns should have some very highly profitable keywords, but remember that the landscape of a niche is always evolving. Some keywords that were once winners may no longer convert and others will come along and beat out your past best performers.

4) Optimize, optimize, optimize!

None of the above mentioned will do you any good if you do not optimize your campaigns correctly. This requires a systematic approach, defined rules and continual effort… or you can sign up for your 30-day free trial of My PPC Pal and we will handle this for you automatically. Whatever you do, don’t get attached to any keyword or phrase! No matter how great you think it is, if you followed the other steps above, a single keyword won’t make a difference.

Here are some general rules to try when making optimizations. These can be edited to whatever you see fit for your niche, but stick to your rules that you set.

A) If a keyword reaches $10 spend without a sale, pause it.

B) If a keyword gets 10 clicks and does not convert to a sale, pause it.

C) If a keywords click-through-rate drops below 0.10% or 1000 impressions per click, pause it.

5) Don’t make a low ACoS your only goal!

I have seen it time and time again, too many sellers feel that in order for Amazon PPC to be successful, they need to have a super low ACoS. Make it a goal to be just profitable on your ad spend. I promise you that your organic sales will more than make up for things on the profit side.

If you follow the above steps, I can assure you that your Amazon PPC efforts will convert better, drive more organic sales and your business will have some solid ground to stand on when new competition rolls in.

Don’t have time for this? Not sure you are doing things right? That’s why we created My PPC Pal.

We will maintain all aspects of your campaign optimizations for you so you can focus on growing your business. Already signed up? See our guide on getting started –

Plans start at less than 2 bucks a day and My PPC Pal will raise and lower bids, pause poor performing keywords, and add negative match customer search terms to your campaigns.

If we find just one bad keyword or customer search term for you a month, this will more than pay for the cost, but we make optimizations daily, so we usually save you much more than that!

Check out this video to learn more and sign up for your 30-day free trial now, and elevate your Amazon game to the next level!

See our home page for more details and pricing plans.