As Q4 begins, it’s crucial for sellers to prepare for the inevitable rise in advertising costs. With increased competition driving up Cost-Per-Click (CPC), managing your Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) becomes more important than ever. A well-structured approach to Amazon PPC bid automation can help keep ACoS under control, ensuring advertising budgets are spent wisely during this busy season.
The Q4 advertising challenge
During Q4, sellers often ramp up their advertising budgets to capture the surge in holiday shoppers. As more advertisers compete for visibility, CPC tends to rise, making it easy for ACoS to increase rapidly. In this context, manual bid management can be time-consuming and difficult to optimize, leading to inefficiencies in ad spend.
Automating bid adjustments can help mitigate this challenge by continuously optimizing bids based on campaign performance. Rather than adjusting bids manually, automation allows sellers to react quickly to changes in market conditions, ensuring that they are spending efficiently even as competition heats up.
How sellerboard helps control ACoS
With sellerboard’s PPC module, sellers can set a target ACoS, and the system works to achieve that target through gradual bid adjustments. Depending on the strategy chosen (fast, moderate, slow), bid changes are made incrementally over time, allowing sellers to maintain a steady trajectory toward their ACoS goals without overreacting to short-term fluctuations.
Additionally, sellerboard’s new feature takes campaign optimization a step further by allowing sellers to apply Amazon’s campaign budget recommendations directly from the Alerts tab. Amazon identifies campaigns with a ROAS above 3 that have used more than 80% of their budget and suggests increasing the budget to avoid missed impressions and sales. By integrating these recommendations directly into sellerboard, sellers can react quickly to high-performing campaigns, ensuring their ads remain competitive without overspending.
This combination of bid automation and budget optimization is particularly valuable in Q4, where rapid changes in CPC are common. By automating the process of adjusting bids and leveraging Amazon’s data-driven insights, sellers can focus on the bigger picture—growing sales while maintaining profitability.
Best practices for ACoS efficiency in Q4
To make the most of PPC bid automation during Q4, consider the following best practices:
Set clear ACoS targets
Determine your profit margins and set a realistic ACoS target that aligns with your business goals. Automating bids based on this target ensures that you’re consistently working towards profitability, even as advertising costs rise.
Use gradual bid adjustments
sellerboard’s bid automation allows you to select how quickly bids are adjusted. In a high-stakes period like Q4, opting for a gradual approach can help avoid sudden spikes in costs, giving campaigns time to adapt to changing conditions.
Leverage Amazon’s budget recommendations
With the new ability to apply Amazon’s budget recommendations directly from sellerboard’s Alerts tab, sellers can ensure their best-performing campaigns stay active. Increasing budgets strategically can capture more impressions and sales without interrupting performance.
Monitor performance regularly
Even with automation in place, it’s essential to keep an eye on your campaign’s performance. Regularly reviewing the results ensures that your automation strategies are working as expected and allows you to make any necessary adjustments.
Optimize by keyword and placement
Adjust bids differently based on keyword performance and ad placements. Higher-performing keywords may benefit from more aggressive bids, while lower-converting terms might need to be scaled back to maintain ACoS efficiency.
Conclusion
As Q4 brings higher costs and more competition, PPC bid automation and budget optimization can help maintain a profitable ACoS by continuously adjusting bids and acting on Amazon’s recommendations. Using sellerboard’s tools, you can set clear targets, make gradual bid adjustments, and keep your ad spend efficient, even in the busiest season of the year. By automating key processes, you’ll have more time to focus on what matters most—growing your business.
