10 Reasons Why Your Amazon PPC Campaign Has Lost Effectiveness

  Have you experienced a decline in your Amazon PPC campaign's performance after a period of success? Are your profits diminishing, lea...

 

Have you experienced a decline in your Amazon PPC campaign's performance after a period of success? Are your profits diminishing, leaving you wondering what went wrong? It's possible that you're making mistakes in your campaigns that are hindering your ability to maximize profits.

Working with PPC campaigns on Amazon can be challenging. The platform's algorithms and marketplace are constantly evolving, and the competition is fierce. Setting up a campaign and neglecting to monitor its performance regularly won't lead to sustained success.

Drawing from years of experience and numerous campaigns, we have identified several common issues that can cause a campaign to lose effectiveness. In this article, we will explore these problems to help you understand why your campaigns may have stopped working.

 

Lack of Clear Campaign Segmentation

Attempting to target multiple objectives with mixed-match campaigns is inherently challenging. Different ad campaigns have different goals, and your choice of keywords should align with those goals.

When you opt for broad keywords or phrases, numerous words may precede or follow your core keyword, making it difficult to interpret the data and identify the best-performing words or phrases. Exact matches provide better insights, as you can accurately gauge their performance and identify strengths and weaknesses.

Broad keywords are often cheaper to bid on, while exact keywords tend to be more expensive. This cost difference may lead some sellers to opt for broader keywords. Additionally, sellers may rush to reach all their targets by cramming multiple keywords into a single campaign. Needless to say, this approach yields unsatisfactory results.

The solution lies in clarity and conciseness. Build campaigns around a limited number of keywords to facilitate better analysis of results. By proceeding methodically and gradually, you can maintain momentum without sacrificing the performance of your top-performing keywords.

 

Understanding the Impact of Exact Keywords on ACOS and Order Volume

While advertisers are aware of the variety of Cost-Per-Click (CPC) keywords available on Amazon, they often fail to grasp the significance of broad-range keywords on sales volume.

Segmenting and optimizing your campaigns may require considerable effort, but the results are worth it. By testing different segments of the market, you can allocate budgets to keywords based on their performance. High-performing keywords receive a larger budget, while poorly performing ones are moved to the negative keyword list.

In contrast, starting with a multitude of keywords in a single PPC campaign prevents you from comprehending the data effectively, hindering your business growth. Though it may seem daunting to fine-tune and separate everything from the outset, the long-term results will be satisfying.

Branded Keywords Don't Guarantee Higher Conversion Rates

Branded keywords typically yield higher conversion rates compared to non-branded terms. Marketing experts often recommend using non-branded keywords to boost brand awareness and branded keywords to engage with those already familiar with your brand.

However, relying solely on campaign-level performance reports can lead to incorrect assumptions. For instance, an overall campaign may display a 30% ACOS, but a deeper examination of search term reports might reveal that non-branded terms account for a 90% ACOS while branded terms maintain a 10% ACOS.

 

You might wonder why not keep them in the same campaign? As mentioned earlier, segmenting keywords enhances performance analysis. Even with branded keywords, it's advisable to create separate segments.

 

Segmenting keywords offers several benefits, including:

 

Better budget control: Separate campaigns allow you to set specific budgets for branded and non-branded keywords, providing greater control.

Enhanced reporting: Segmenting campaigns provides more insightful data, enabling better decision-making and quicker adjustments to ACOS and click-through rates (CTR).

Monitor Spending on Non-Converting Keywords

Each brand has its unique characteristics, necessitating continuous optimization and monitoring. Neglecting to track spending on non-converting keywords is a common mistake that can be easily avoided by regularly checking your campaigns.

No matter how optimized your Amazon PPC campaigns are, it's essential to review and assess them monthly to identify areas that are underperforming. For instance, you might discover that you're not converting in a particular category.

Understanding non-converting keywords often requires extra effort, but starting at a granular level can help. You may have keywords with orders but need to dig deeper to identify keywords with zero orders but greater potential. By doing so, you can optimize your campaigns and achieve better results.

 

Harness Data from Automatic Campaigns

While manual PPC targeting provides total control over your campaigns, incorporating automatic campaigns can help you test the market and identify valuable keywords to improve your manual campaigns' visibility.

To gather data for your manual campaigns, allow an automatic campaign to run for at least ten days. Then, analyze the data by downloading search term reports to identify the keywords used by buyers to find your products.

 

Automatic campaigns have minimal budget impact since they primarily serve as test campaigns. Leveraging them effectively can significantly enhance your campaign's performance.

 

Evaluate ACOS and TACOS

Analyzing your campaigns may reveal products that are causing losses, unbeknownst to you. It's important to delve into your database and evaluate the actual performance beyond surface-level observations.

As you gain experience with PPC campaigns, combining ad revenue and organic revenue data becomes crucial for transparency and effective decision-making. Detailed information will help you optimize your future advertising budget and maximize profitability.

 

Relying solely on overall account ACOS without considering per-product ACOS and Total ACOS (TACOS) is a common mistake. Analyzing numbers at a deeper level enables you to allocate resources more efficiently and drive profitability.

Avoid Frequent Campaign Structure Changes

Modifying your campaign structure without sufficient understanding of the impact on results can be highly risky. If your campaign is performing well, avoid making excessive changes to it.

Establishing a solid campaign structure is crucial for maintaining control over all aspects of your campaign. This is especially important when dealing with campaigns that include multiple ad groups, as you need to ensure that control is maintained.

 

Changing a broad ad group to an exact keyword or identifying underutilized keywords in the current structure are common examples. Poor campaign structure changes can have a negative impact on other ad groups and diminish your campaign's overall performance.

 

Signs of an unproductive campaign structure include:

 

Inconsistent results

Insufficient inquiries from PPC visitors

Attracting the wrong type of clients

No significant improvements despite optimization efforts

Utilize Video Ads to Boost Campaigns

According to HubSpot, video content is highly influential in capturing shoppers' attention. Shoppers prefer to learn about new products through videos, and videos have a convincing effect on purchase decisions.

To maximize your campaign's potential, it's crucial to leverage all available ad types, including Sponsored Video Ads. Neglecting to utilize these creative ad types can hinder your rankings and limit your campaign's performance.

 

Remember, Amazon doesn't force you to use these services; rather, not utilizing them can be just as detrimental as overusing them. Balancing your ad features and deploying them strategically is key to success.

 

Ensure Conversions Align with Good Numbers

Sponsored Display Ads with low ACOS may initially appear successful due to their low cost. However, a closer examination reveals that the low ACOS only indicates views and clicks, not conversion rates. Relying on Sponsored Display impressions to determine account-level ACOS or campaign ACOS is misleading.

Understanding the significance of numbers and their relation to good or bad performance empowers you to create more effective ad campaigns.

 

Pay Attention to Conversion Rates:

Track and analyze conversion rates over time to gain insights into your product's market fit and seasonality. Avoid the common mistakes of neglecting conversion rates or tracking them only at the account level.

Conclusion:

Optimizing your Amazon PPC campaigns is an ongoing process that requires attention to detail and data analysis. By addressing these key reasons for decreased effectiveness, you can enhance your campaigns, improve performance, and maximize profitability. Stay proactive, monitor your campaigns regularly, and adapt your strategies based on data-driven insights.

Read More:

"Unlocking the Shopping Extravaganza: How Many Times is Amazon Prime Day?"

Enhancing Your Amazon Product Listings with Amazon A+ Content: Boost Sales and Engagement