5 easy ways to reduce Amazon ACoS

This saved our clients $1000's

Author

Adam Weiler
November 02, 2024

Welcome Back to the Emplicit Weekly Newsletter!

Every Saturday, we'll share an actionable Amazon & TikTok growth guide with practical tactics and strategies to help you dominate your competition and scale your Amazon sales. This newsletter will remain free forever. We hope you enjoy!

At Emplicit, we've helped over 500+ eCommerce brands earn $550 million in sales through Amazon.

Want to boost your sales using Amazon & TikTok? Click here to book a call & claim a Free audit of your store/brand.

Are you an Amazon seller bleeding money on PPC?

Here's how to quickly lower your ACOS

(You can read below or watch a video here)

1️⃣ Pause high ACOS campaigns

Turn off auto campaigns, individual keyword campaigns, and most sponsored brand/display ads. Keep exact match video ads and purchaser retargeting.

Let's break this down:

Auto campaigns: These often have higher ACOS because they cast a wide net. Pausing them can quickly reduce spend.

Individual keyword campaigns: If these aren't performing well, they're prime candidates for pausing.

Sponsored brand/display ads: These typically have higher ACOS, so pausing them can significantly reduce spend.

What to keep running:

  • Exact match video ads: These usually perform well and maintain brand visibility.

  • Purchaser retargeting: This targets people who've already shown interest, often leading to better ACOS.

One of our clients was spending $500/day on auto campaigns with a 50% ACOS. By pausing these, they immediately saved $250 daily while only losing about 20% of their sales volume.

2️⃣ Pause underperforming ad groups

If you have multiple ad groups, pause those with higher ACOS while keeping the better-performing ones active.

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to your campaign manager in Seller Central
2. Sort your ad groups by ACOS (highest to lowest)
3. Identify ad groups with ACOS above your target
4. Click the status toggle to pause these ad groups

Pro tip: Before pausing, check the sales volume. Sometimes a slightly higher ACOS is acceptable if the ad group drives significant sales.

3️⃣ Pause child SKUs

For multi-product ad groups, pause children with higher ACOS or inventory issues.

Why this works:

  • Focuses ad spend on your best-performing variants

Helps manage inventory by reducing demand for low-stock items

How to do it:

1. In your ad group, click on the "Advertised products" tab
2. Sort by ACOS or check inventory levels
3. Select underperforming or low-stock SKUs
4. Click "Pause selected"

Sales can still occur for paused child SKUs if customers click on the parent listing. This method reduces visibility without completely stopping sales.

4️⃣ Adjust placement modifiers

Sort by ACOS descending and reduce bids by 30% for keywords above your threshold.

Step-by-step guide:

1. Go to your campaign or ad group
2. Click on the "Placements" tab
3. Sort by ACOS (highest to lowest)
4. For placements above your target ACOS, reduce the bid adjustment by 30%

If your top of search placement has a 50% ACOS and you're targeting 35%, reduce the bid adjustment from 0% to -30%.

This method fine-tunes your bids without completely stopping ads, allowing you to maintain some presence while reducing spend.

5️⃣ Lower campaign budgets

Reduce daily budgets, especially for higher ACOS campaigns you want to keep running.

Why it works: This allows you to keep campaigns active for data collection and maintaining some presence, but with controlled spend.

How to adjust budgets:

1. Go to your campaign manager
2. Sort campaigns by ACOS (highest to lowest)
3. For high ACOS campaigns, reduce the daily budget by 50-80%

If a campaign has a $100 daily budget and 50% ACOS, you might reduce it to $20-$50 per day.

Pro tip: Monitor these campaigns closely. If ACOS improves due to reduced competition, you can gradually increase budgets again.

These tactics have saved our 400+ brand clients thousands in ad spend over the past 10 years. Want to learn more? Check out the video below:

That’s all for this week,

Adam

If you found this useful here are some more

Whenever you are ready, here’s how we can help you:

Grow Your Brand on Amazon & TikTok with 100% hands-off marketplace management

We've helped over 500 clients earn more than $550 million on Amazon. If you need help making the most of the Amazon opportunity, click here to book a call & claim a Free audit of your store/brand.