Many Amazon sellers struggle with the same dilemma: their automatic campaigns generate numerous keywords, but they're unsure which ones to transfer to manual campaigns. Should they rely on intuition or focus solely on ACOS? The truth is, both approaches often lead to wasted effort. Instead, adopting a data-driven strategy can significantly improve ad precision and efficiency.
Beyond Basic Metrics: Identifying Your Top Performers
Most sellers mistakenly believe that keywords with low ACOS and high order volume automatically qualify as "good" keywords for manual campaigns. However, these metrics only reveal part of the story. Truly high-performing keywords must meet three critical criteria:
- Above-average sales: The keyword should generate more revenue than your automatic campaign's average.
- Above-average click-through rate: The keyword must attract more clicks than your campaign's average, indicating strong customer interest.
- Below-average CPC: The keyword's cost-per-click should be lower than your campaign's average, ensuring cost-efficient traffic.
To identify these top performers, export your automatic campaign data from the past 30-60 days (14-day periods may lack sufficient accuracy) and calculate averages in Excel. This simple analysis will reveal which keywords meet all three criteria.
Strategic Implementation: Match Types Matter
Once you've identified your best keywords, the next step involves adding them to manual campaigns with careful consideration of match types. Experts recommend using both:
- Broad match: Expands your reach to related search terms, increasing potential traffic.
- Exact match: Targets specific searches, improving conversion quality.
To prevent competition between automatic and manual campaigns for the same keywords, implement phrase match negatives for these terms in your automatic campaigns. This allows your manual campaigns exclusive access to these valuable keywords, enabling more precise bid control and optimization.
Managing Underperforming Keywords
Automatic campaigns inevitably generate some underperforming keywords. The standard approach suggests negating keywords when either their ROAS or conversion rate falls below 30% of the campaign's 30-day average. However, for keywords with strong product relevance, consider testing them in manual campaigns with lower bids before complete negation.
The Power of Strategic Optimization
This methodology emphasizes systematic optimization over random testing. By applying these scientific standards to keyword selection and campaign management, sellers can maximize advertising effectiveness while minimizing waste. This approach represents a proven strategy for enhancing ad performance and driving sustainable business growth.