How I Manage 150 PPC Campaigns in Just 2 Hours a Week

2020 has been a huge challenge for most of the world’s population.  

For every step forward, it sometimes seems that there are two steps back. 

It’s this feeling that makes me want to focus my attention on the positive things that DO happen. 

One of those positive things that has happened for me is having the time and bandwidth to fully dive into PPC management. As I’ve said in my previous podcasts, blogs, and livestreams, in my time as a consultant for Amazon sellers before my Helium 10 days, PPC was something I had very little experience with. 

5 Ways that ADS Speeds Up Your PPC Optimization

For the 400 products I launched in those days, I did not manage one PPC campaign. I left that chore to the others I worked with, or to outside companies. PPC was simply too overwhelming for me to have to worry about. It seemed too daunting of a task to learn how to do it on my own, let alone find the time to manage it. 

Perhaps some of you feel the same. 

All that changed in 2020 for me. Once the beta version of ADS from Helium 10 was released, I decided that it was time to learn the ropes of Amazon Sponsored ads. Particularly since 2020 has been the year of case studies for me as well, namely Project X, and Project 5K. 

Helium 10 offers an in-depth Amazon PPC tool, try it out!

Fast forward to the present time where I am fully managing and optimizing 150 PPC campaigns with thousands of dollars of monthly spend, requiring only 1-2 hours a week only. 

That’s how good Helium 10’s ADS is!

Helium 10’s Bradley Sutton

That might seem mind boggling to some of you, so in this article, I am going to go over the top 5 ways that ADS helps me save precious time, compared to managing PPC the traditional way in Seller Central. 

Search Term Report View (ADS) vs. Downloading Search Term Excel File (Seller Central)

Why is it important to see your search terms? 

Because, when you’re talking about PPC, that’s the name of the game.  

You need to be able to identify the keywords that are making money for you and which ones are losing money. It’s also important to compare the time frame as well. Looking at the last week versus the last month helps you to identify trends and fine tune your research. 

How would you do that in Seller Central?

Your steps would be:

1. Specify the campaign type that you’d like to download the search term report for, then generate a report for each of the time frames you are interested in. 

2. Run the report.
3. Download the report.
4. Open in Microsoft Excel.

5. Once in Excel, set up the filters so that you can sort by what you have determined to be the preferred results. 
6. Do all of the above AGAIN for any other time frame (ex. 30 days).
7. Create pivot tables to be able to compare the different time periods.

For advanced sellers, the process would be even more involved. To do this for Project X and its 25 plus campaigns would take hours.  

Here’s how it works in ADS to do the same thing:

1. Go to the search terms tab under Analytics.

2. Ensure that you have another tab open with the other time frame. (For example, your  two tabs might be 7 days and 30 days).
3. With one click you can sort metrics such as ACOS, ad spend, clicks, and more.  
4. With just a couple more clicks you can sort through the in-depth metrics of your different campaigns. 

What would take me hours in Seller Central takes a few minutes in ADS! 

How cool is that! Pretty cool I think. 

Adding Negative Keywords to Campaigns

You might be wondering what exactly is a negative keyword. 

The implementation of negative keywords refers to the process of putting search terms in your campaigns as a negative match so that Amazon stops showing your ad for those keywords. Many of those might have been discovered from the above exercise after reviewing your reports.   

Let’s imagine that after doing your research in Seller Central, you have your list of keywords. 

What’s the process to add it in Seller Central as a negative match?

1. Find the specific campaign where you want to negative match. 

2. Click through to the negative targeting tab within the campaign.

3. Select add negative keywords, then paste the keywords you want to negative match. 

4. Repeat this process 10-20 times for each of the campaigns that you have. 

How do you add negative keywords to an ADS campaign?  

If you are working with the same search term report I mentioned in the example above, all you have to do is select the “minus” button next to the keyword that is reflecting negative metrics, then each campaign in which that search term appears will pop up, and you can easily click the ones you want to negative match.  

THAT’S IT!

You think that’s easy?  

It gets even easier. If you want Helium 10 to follow a set of rules that you’ve designed for negative matching keywords (For example; 10 clicks without a sale or spend X amount of dollars without a sale), Helium 10 will actually AUTOMATE the process of negative matching these search terms without you having to lift a finger!

Updating Keyword Bids to Achieve Target ACoS

What is your target ACoS? 

15%, 25%, 35%? Regardless of the number, a big part of PPC optimization is adjusting your bids to help you get to your goal.  

If you are getting 40% ACoS on a search term with a bid of $1, but your target ACoS is 30%, what do you need to do? You need to lower the bid to get closer to your ACoS goal.

How do you do that in Seller Central? 

Once again, you have to go through all of the steps that I described above and then once you have your list of keywords you’d like to change the bid on, you’ll have to follow these steps:

1. Find the campaign the keyword(s) is in. 
2. Click through to the keywords or targeting section.
3. Find the keywords you want to change, then edit the bid there.

4. Repeat the process for all of your campaigns. 

This is a long, complicated task. In ADS, we make it much easier. When you set up your campaigns in ADS, you are able to designate your target ACoS, then ADS will constantly monitor your campaigns and will send you suggestions specifying what you need to do to get closer to your target ACoS.

It works in both directions as well. If your ACoS is LOWER than your target, we will suggest you RAISE your bid in order to make sure you’re getting the max number of impressions!

All you have to do is click once if you agree with the suggestions, and all of the bid adjustments will be applied! Plus, once you’ve verified that ADS is giving you the bid suggestions you want, you can AUTOMATE that process, saving you even more time!

By now, is it becoming more clear to everyone out there why it only takes me an hour or two to do what it takes others 20 hours or more?

Creating Campaigns in ADS vs. Seller Central

I have always subscribed to the methodology of launching new products with three ad campaigns: 

1. An Auto Campaign, where you allow Amazon to decide how they want your product to show.  
2. A Broad Campaign, or “Research” campaign where you specify your short tail keywords, then tell Amazon to show you for those keywords as well as long tail versions of those keywords. 
3. An Exact Manual or “Proven” Campaign where you target the EXACT search terms that you want Amazon to show you for. 

In Seller Central, the process isn’t too bad. You just hit “Create Campaign” and follow all the prompts to set up the campaign. The drawbacks however are twofold. 

To begin with, you have to do that entire process three separate times for each of the three campaigns. Secondly, there is no way to tell Amazon what your target goals are for your campaign. 

How is it different in ADS? 

You can save time by creating all three campaigns simultaneously in ADS, while letting ADS know your campaign goals as well as the rules you want it to follow. Then, ADS will be able to automatically help you optimize your campaigns in the future with things like New Keywords and Negative Keyword suggestions.

You can even initiate Sponsored Brand campaigns from within your ADS campaign builder if you are Brand Registered. 

Even if you don’t create your campaigns in ADS, we’ve included the ability to add your existing campaigns into our rule sets. 

Once again, ADS simplifies the process and puts you in a position to crush it on Amazon. 

Comparing TACoS and ACoS Metrics

No, we aren’t talking about everyone’s favorite food on Tuesdays.  

We have written in the past about the importance of monitoring not just your ACoS, but your TACoS (total advertising cost of sales) to better understand how your advertising campaigns affect your overall sales. 

Amazon does not show you the TACoS metric anywhere in Seller Central. In order to find it, you not only have to download your PPC reports using the archaic methods in Excel we demonstrated above, but then you would have to download your sales reports separately as well in order to run the formulas in order to get to your TACoS.  

In Helium 10 ADS, TACoS is front and center stage on your Dashboard so that you can see on specific dates and historically, how your advertising strategy is affecting your entire account. 

Each of these five ways that ADS helps me optimize my listings doesn’t just save me countless hours, they also save me money. 

How many keywords might I have missed due to trying to rely on Excel spreadsheets and formulas?  How many Search Terms would have continued to waste spend?

Time Equals Money

What is your time worth to you? 20 dollars an hour? 50 dollars an hour? If ADS saves you 10 hours a week, the math is easy to do.  

It’s exciting to think about how much money you might save each year by having ADS help you with your PPC. 

If you are interested in giving it a try, upgrade now to the Diamond Plan, and take a test drive for a couple of months. We are so sure that you will love it, we offer a 7-day money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied, just ask for your money back, and return to your Platinum plan.  

For those of you already using ADS, I’d love to see a screenshot of your top level ADS data that shows your PPC spend and TACoS!  

Take a screenshot and post it on your instagram then tag @helium10software and @h10bradley. 

We’ll give you a shout out!