3 Secret Amazon PPC Strategies That No One Will Tell You

Amazon PPC strategies are everywhere. It is not new to read about the same strategies wrapped in a fancy gift paper on an everyday basis. In this blog post, we will talk about 3 secret strategies that can help boost your Amazon business’s advertising performance and organic sales by making your campaigns more predictable, better performing, and strategic.

Without further ado, let's dive straight in.

3 Amazon PPC Strategies for 2025

If you’ve tried all Amazon PPC strategies but haven't seen a higher ROAS, you need these three secret strategies no one talks about.

Save that bulk sheet

Before running a large experiment, save your bulk sheet. This will save your snapshot bids and daily budgets for each campaign. Even if your experiment fails, you will have enough data in the bulk sheet. As a result, you don’t have to wait for weeks to get back to your previous ROAS. You can get to it in a fraction of a second. 

This brings predictability to your advertising model and gives you the freedom to try new strategies for brands ads and headline search ads. You know that you have a fallback option if the experiment does not work. 

Let’s talk about the bulk sheet in detail.

Q: What is a large experiment?

A: An experiment that runs across multiple campaigns and keyword lists.

Q: What exactly is a bulk sheet?

A: If you’re an Amazon seller who hasn’t used bulk sheets, know that bulk sheets are spreadsheets found in Amazon’s ‘campaign manager’ tab that contains valuable data—from campaign name to advertising budget, ad group, campaign status, placement type, bidding strategies, and more. 

Bulk sheets might be overwhelming initially, but once you understand the data, you can improve campaigns and ensure high conversion rates. 

Q: Why should I save the bulk sheet?

A: Saving the bulk sheet will keep track of your current bids and budgets for all your campaigns.

This is important because, as you know, once you make changes to your account, you will lose the history of existing bids and budgets. These bids and budgets are essential as they may have already shown great results for you. Plus, you can plan your future campaigns considering the budget constraints. 

Q: Ok, but why should I save it before running a large experiment OR before making a large number of changes on my Amazon PPC account?

A: So that you can preserve the bids & budgets from a period of certainty. i.e. a period when your account was performing well. 

Q: What will I do with this saved bulk sheet?

A: First run your experiment. If the experiment succeeds, congratulations, you are good. If the experiment fails, don't panic. Simply upload your saved bulk sheet. It will reinstate your previous bids and budgets in an instant. And so will your ACOS. 

Q: Is this a tried and tested strategy? 

A: We have tried this strategy for Amazon PPC advertising exactly 12 times in 5 different accounts. Consistently hit the same ROAS and went ahead with experimentation with better data points. 

Q: When does this strategy not work? 

A: This strategy works best in the short term, within the same month or the same quarter. You cannot re-upload a February bulk sheet in October. 

Q: How do bulk sheets help optimize ads?

A: Bulk sheets help you manage different campaigns in one place. It helps in Amazon PPC optimization by allowing you to make large-scale updates to campaigns, ad placements, bids, and keywords. It also streamlines PPC campaigns in just a few clicks, saving time and effort.

Here are a few more tips for using bulk sheets to optimize and manage Amazon PPC campaigns:

• Implement negative targeting by adding negative keywords in bulk to improve ad relevance and reduce wasted ad spend.

• Identify profitable search queries and terms and move them to manual campaigns.

• Conduct keyword research and use bulk sheets to manage keywords across campaigns, ad groups, and products.

• Adjust keyword match types like broad, phrase, or exact match and bids for keywords to improve ad targeting.

• Analyze bulk sheet data to gain insights into campaign performance, track high impressions for specific products, improve conversion rate, and drive sales.

The 5-50 Rule

The top 5 selling ASINs should get min. 50% ad spend. This is one of the most underutilized Amazon PPC strategies that helps increase brand awareness. Top-selling ASINs not only have the best ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) but also help rank products at the top of search results. They help attract potential customers. Thus, the higher the spend on top-selling ASINs, the better the ACOS and the higher your total sales. 

In the below image, you can see 2 cases. Case 1 is when the advertiser is spending the same amount of ad $ on top, medium, and bottom-selling ASINs. Case 2 is when they spend 46% of ad spend on top-selling ASINs and only 20% on bottom-selling ASINs. 

| Related read: ASIN Targeting Guide: Boost Sales with Targeted Ads

Notice the difference in ACOS. In case 1, where the spend is equal on all ASIN types, the ACOS is high—16.2%. In case 2, where the spend on top-selling ASINs is higher, the ACOS is lower—14%. So, the ACOS in case 2 is noticeably better, with no significant change in any other Amazon advertising strategy. 

One of the best-kept secrets of good agencies is how they distribute their ad spend on various ASIN bands. 

If you use Amazon ads software, ensure you can measure your spend % by ASINs and ASIN groups. You will be able to get this data on atom11 on their Ad spend profile module. 

When to increase bids

One of the rookie mistakes in rule-based optimization that sellers and agencies make is:
"Increase bids on keywords whose ACOS < target ACOS.” That is NOT how it is done!

Why?
1. You will end up increasing bids for a LOT of keywords (Thousands). CPCs will increase, and you will end up increasing your ACOS.

2. If CPC = 1$, and Bid = 5$. What happens if you increase bids further?  

NOTHING, and in the long term, it'll raise CPC without changing # ad orders.
Bid increases only help when the CPC/Bid ratio is higher than 0.5.

Here's what you do:

If ACOS < Target ACOS * 0.4
AND Clicks > Clicks to Conversion
AND CPC/Bid > 0.5

Then increase bids!

Increasing bids has to be taken very, very seriously. Any unwanted bid increase will land you in a high CPC zone. High CPC means a high cost of advertising. 

CPC/Bid as a feature is not available on many Amazon Ads software. It is, however, available on atom11 while you create rules for bid optimization. 

Here are a few tips on when to increase bids:

• Increase the bid or budget for keywords with low ACOS. You can even increase the bid and budget when the keyword performs well.

• Increase the bid for keywords with low impressions. You can move the search term to its own campaign for more control and visibility.

• Adjust bid modifiers based on ACOS and your campaign goals. The right bidding strategy would be to increase the bid modifier for placements that perform well.

You do not hear about these strategies daily on LinkedIn and the web. If you want to supercharge your Amazon Ads strategy, implement tools like atom11. While strategy alone can’t help you boost conversions, having the right tool increases the likelihood of positive outcomes. 

atom11 helps automate and scale Amazon ads with real-time actionable insights. Using atom11’s Amazon’s PPC software, you can:

• Analyze sales metrics and campaign performance, identify trends, track product suppressions, etc. and ensure effective decision-making.

• Get insights into ads with retail signals like inventory, PPC cannibalization, and competition. 

• Set up ad automations like automatic targeting based on real-time market signals and control ads using historical and real-time data.

• Create customized reporting dashboards, download ad campaign and search term reports, and set up reports using integration with other tools like Google Sheets, Zoho Analytics, etc.

Want to learn more about how atom11 can help your advertising optimization? Book a demo.

FAQs

What are the different types of PPC on Amazon?

Amazon has three types of PPC ads. They are: Sponsored Product Ads, Sponsored Brand Ads, and Sponsored Display Ads. You can use atom11’s advanced tools to automate Amazon’s PPC ads and improve your campaign performance.

How does Amazon use PPC?

Amazon’s PPC advertising is a part of its entire advertising system. Using Amazon’s PPC ads, brands and sellers can target specific keywords and create ads highlighting their products that are displayed in Amazon search results or competitor product listings.

What is the strategy of PPC?

Effective Amazon PPC strategies include targeting the right keywords, especially long-tailed keywords, and creating compelling ad copies to attract relevant traffic. Plus, filtering negative keywords helps eliminate irrelevant searches.