The best way to optimize your bid on Amazon

Optimizing your bid on Amazon is a must if you want to have a growing revenue from advertising. So what is the best way to optimize your bid?

The best time to optimize your bid is at least once a week but still you would need to check on your bids every day because some keywords can go out of control and spend too much in one day. Remember, Amazon has 72h data delay so you can see the spend for specific keywords but you will have to wait to see the sales. 

Adjusting bids by placement 

You can also adjust your bids by placement and optimize them every two weeks. If ACoS for your campaign is low you can increase your placements bid for the top of search and product page in order to boost your sales. 

Placements are positions across Amazon where your ads may appear. You can differentiate your bids and view performance of your sponsored products ads by three placement groups: top of search (first page), rest of search, and product pages.

• Top of search (first page) refers to the Sponsored Products ads at the top row on the first page of search results.
• Rest of search refers to Sponsored Products ads shown in the middle or at the bottom of search results, and all Sponsored Products ads in the second page of search results and beyond.
• Product pages refers to Sponsored Products placements on the product details page, and all non-search placements such as the add-to-cart page.

Choose your bidding strategy

In order to get the most of ads on Amazon, you should wisely choose your bidding strategy: 

• Dynamic bids (down only) – Amazon lowers your bids in real time when your ads are less likely to lead to a sale. We recommend using this strategy as they allow you to spend even less than what you stated as a max bid.

• Dynamic bids (up and down) – Your bid can sometimes be raised or decreased by 100% depending on the possibility of ad converting to a sale. Use this bidding tactic when you have a new campaign, don’t know how much to bid or if you want to make campaign keywords more visible and get the best ad spots. 

• Fixed bids – Amazon won’t change your bids or any manual adjustment you set, but you will still be able to see the suggested bids. Here, you will have total control over how much money you spend on advertising. 

If you don’t know which strategy to choose, start by thinking about your budget and if you are able to keep up with dynamic bids. If not, you can always choose fixed bids and not spend a cent more than you invested. 

Bulk file – the best way to optimize your bid 

The best and also the fastest way to optimize your bid is through a bulk file. Just download the file for the time range what you want and delete all sheets except the sheet with sponsored product campaigns. When you delete them, you will have all your bids and keywords in one place. 

Next step is to filter all of your keywords: 

• That have spend w/o sales
• With high ACoS
• With low ACoS
• That have no spend 

After you filtered and increased or decreased bids on your keywords, the next step is to upload a bulk file and in the end all your bids will be changed. If you have Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display ads you will need to optimize them in Sellers Central using filters the same way as in bulk files. This way you won’t miss a thing while optimizing. 

Conclusion

If you are optimizing your bids regularly, it is best to have a ,,step by step” approach and to change the bids up to 10% or 20% week by week.  The best option is that you choose a “down only” bidding strategy because if you choose ,,up and down” tactic, keywords will probably spend more and it will be more difficult to optimize their bids. Also, remember to adjust your bids by placement to ensure the best position on Amazon and increase sales.

While optimizing, be sure to use bulk files which will help you have your bids optimized in no time. Just choose a bid, upload it to the platform via bulk file sheets and that’s it. Don’t be scared to try new ways to optimize your bids and increase sales and always do A/B testing for best results. 

If you want to learn more about advertising on Amazon, read this article about Product and category targeting.

About the author

Miroslav is a certified PHP Web Developer with strong passion for PPC advertising. He is a junior PPC specialist at Sellers Alley and has two years of experience working on small and medium clients. Optimization and growing ad accounts are his main duties. He enjoys writing and sharing his knowledge with other PPC enthusiasts.