Amazon Advertising - Daily, Weekly & Monthly Account Management Process

Do you find yourself being more reactive than proactive when it comes to managing your Amazon advertising? The problem could be that you don’t have an established management process in place. 

“Amazon advertising is dynamic because PPC managers need to fight day-to-day battles whilst keeping long-term goals front of mind,” says Bobsled Advertising Director Stefan Jordev.

“Bobsled utilizes the suite of optimization services that Pacvue offers, and this allows us to automate a lot of PPC-related grunt work. We also follow a strict daily, weekly and monthly account maintenance and reporting schedule. This ensures we comprehensively analyze every piece of ad performance data so we can smash our targets every quarter.”

In this blog post we’ve outlined the broad strokes of Bobsled’s PPC management process and which important ad metrics you should be tracking.

Amazon Advertising Account Daily Review

Check for out-of-budget campaigns

The best way to make sure you aren’t losing out on potential sales is to check for out-of-budget campaigns. You can also set a filter for ‘Almost or Out of Budget’ and review any campaigns that meet that criteria. Adjust budgets as necessary given the rate of spend. 

One should always look to achieve consistent spend levels on a day to day basis, that when extrapolated to a weekly or monthly timeline, align with advertising budget expectations.

💡 Note: refrain from tweaking your ad strategy too much day to day. Typically you need ~2 weeks worth of data to confirm a strategic hypothesis. If you keep tweaking campaigns aggressively every day it will be difficult for you to keep track of all the changes.

Amazon Advertising Account Weekly Review

1. RoAS / Spend Level Checks

Even if you’ve established a steady habit of completing an account review every day, things inevitably fall through the cracks. By looking at total RoAS and spend levels carefully once a week, you’ll be able to see all the peaks and troughs.

2. RoAS Tracker Data Upload

Campaign manager only allows you to see RoAS data for the last 18 months in detail. To prevent losing any of this data over the long term, create a tracker sheet and upload performance data weekly.

💡 Check out the Bobsled Case Study for Barcel featured
on Amazon Advertising

3. Catalog Review

Check for products that you should be advertising but are NOT. This might be happening because the campaign is out of budget, you’ve run out of inventory, lost the Buy Box, or the budget cap of the portafolio has been reached.

Similarly, check if you need to create ad campaigns for any ASINs that have been recently added to the catalog.

4. Negative Keywording

Conduct negative keywording using the prior week’s data from your Search Term Reports. Negative KWs can be added at a campaign level and also at a Ad Group level, however, it’s more efficient to target them as ‘negative exact’ at the Ad Group level. 

5. Keyword Harvest

Harvest converting and high performing (CTR) terms from the search query report. You should consider adding a new keyword if it has a) generated sales and b) has a RoAS that aligns with your profit margins and c) a strong click through rate. 

If a newly harvested search term comes from an auto campaign then we can either create a new manual targeting campaign or fold it into an existing campaign if that makes sense from an operational perspective.

6. Bid Optimization

Bid Optimization is an integral piece of the Amazon advertising optimization process. Checking for bid inefficiencies, and comparing bids with CPC rates against ROI on a keyword level, are core responsibilities for an Amazon advertising manager.

💡 Check out Bobsled Case Study: Rebuilding PPC From Scratch

Amazon Advertising Account Monthly Review

1. Listing Review - Click Through Rate

The goal should be to improve your ads’ appearance and CTR on mobile and desktop. Review listings in each of the following areas and record updates:

• Main Image
• Title
• Bullets
• Description
• Backend Search Terms
• Category (aka “browse node”)
• Star Rating - should be 4.3 or higher. 
• Reviews (it’s generally difficult to achieve good CTR for products with only a few reviews - Amazon recommends at least 15 reviews before you start advertising)

2. Listing Review - Conversion Perspective

Is a customer going to be compelled to buy your product after they click on your ad? Review listings in each of the following areas and record updates:

• Visual Appeal.  How does the listing come across on mobile and desktop?
• Reviews. Look at those reviews that are the newest or have been rated as most helpful by Amazon customers. These reviews, along with high quality authentic reviews with uploaded customer photos, have the biggest impact on conversion.
• Pricing. Where does this product fit in the market ecosystem as it stands today? Is it priced appropriately? 
• Main Image. Could it be improved to showcase the product in a better way?
• Bullets. Are they lacking in any way?  Are they being used to their full extent? Pay particular attention to the first 3 bullets (mobile optimization).

💡 Learn more by taking Bobsled’s Amazon SEO Crash Course

3. Review Amazon Storefront

There are usually aspects of the brand page that can be improved on a monthly basis. Are there new bestsellers we could be pushing on the page? Is there a new video which describes the products better? Are there recently launched products which could be included?  

4. Promotion Opportunities

Promotions, such as coupons, can be boosted by PPC campaigns. Once a month, review the performance of any promos that ran over the last month. Look to see if any promos are on the calendar for the month ahead, tweak your PPC campaigns accordingly.

💡 Check out Which Amazon Promotions Work Best?

5. Data Analysis & Updates:

• Update RoAS tracker with monthly results. 
• Compare MoM account performance with the RoAS tracker - bear in mind any recent changes to the account, seasonality, competitor behavior etc
• Compare PPC influence on organic performance of the account. Accounts relying on PPC to generate 70% or more of total revenue are typically having brand recognition problems.
• Monthly vs Lifetime performance comparison shows if an account is experiencing any drastic ups and downs. Once again, it’s important to review any performance fluctuations in context, but even, steady growth generally illustrates a healthy account with functioning ad campaigns.