Solved: PPC Strategy for Multiple Amazon FBM Products

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It’s a common question you've got there, and tbh the answer isn't as simple as just picking one option over the other. It really gets to the heart of how you should be thinking about growing your Amazon business. I'm happy to give you some of my thoughts on it, based on what I've seen work for other eCommerce businesses we've helped.

The short of it is you probably need a mix of both strategies. You need to pour fuel on the fire that's already burning (your bestseller) while also systematically looking for new sparks (your other products). It's about finding the right balance between exploiting what works and exploring what *could* work.

We'll need to look at why focusing on your bestseller makes sense first...

Okay, so let's start with the obvious route: doubling down on the one product that's already selling. There's a solid logic to this, and it's usually where I'd advise anyone to put the majority of their focus, especially when you're starting out. When you concentrate your PPC budget on a single ASIN, a few powerful things happen.

First, you feed the Amazon algorithm a concentrated stream of data. The algorithm loves data. The more sales and traffic you drive to a single listing through ads, the faster the algorithm learns who your ideal customer is. It gets better at finding more people like them, which can lower your ACOS over time. When you spread your budget too thin across many products, each one gets just a trickle of data, and the algorithm never really gets smart about any of them. It's like trying to teach ten dogs a new trick at the same time with only enough treats for one. None of them are going to learn very effectively.

Second, this approach manufactures momentum. In the Amazon world, sales velocity is a massive ranking factor. The more units you sell of a specific product in a short period, the higher Amazon will rank it in organic search results for your main keywords. So, your ad spend isn't just buying sales; it's buying organic visibility. Over time, you can actually reduce your reliance on ads for that product because the organic sales start to take over. This creates a really powerful flywheel effect that's difficult to get going when your efforts are diluted.

I remember one client we worked with, an eCommerce store selling cleaning products. They had a whole range of items, maybe 15 or 20 different SKUs. Initially, they were spending a little bit on ads for all of them, and the results were just okay. Nothing special. We came in and completely shifted the strategy. We paused everything else and funnelled their entire ad budget into their one, clear bestseller. The result? They hit a 633% return on their ad spend, and their overall revenue jumped by 190%. It was only *after* we'd established that product as a solid, profitable cash cow that we started to peel off some of the budget to test other products. They built their foundation on a proven winner first.

But there's a flip side to this. If you only ever focus on your current bestseller, you might be sitting on a potential goldmine without ever knowing it. Your current top seller might just be the best of a poorly advertised bunch. What if another product in your 'categorie' has a much higher potential ceiling but just hasn't had the exposure yet? This is the major risk of putting all your eggs in one basket.

So, why you should probably test your other products...

This brings us to the second approach: running PPC on every product. The main goal here isn't immediate profitability. The goal is data collection. Think of it as market research. You're trying to figure out which of your other products has commercial potential. You're looking for signs of life: a surprisingly high click-through rate (CTR), a decent conversion rate even with a small amount of traffic, or a manageable ACOS.

Without testing, you're just guessing. You might think a certain product is a winner, but the market might completely disagree. Running small, controlled ad campaigns across your catalogue is the only way to let the market vote with their wallets. We worked with a client selling high-ticket industrial components through an eCommerce setup, and this was exactly their situation. They had hundreds of products and no idea which ones to prioritise. So we set up a structure to run ads across different product categories. This allowed them to quickly identify which component types had the most search demand and commercial interest, which then informed their entire marketing strategy moving forward.

The danger with this approach, especially for someone new to FBM with a limited budget, is spreading yourself too thin. If you have £20 a day to spend and you split it across 10 products, that's just £2 per product. You'll barely get enough clicks on any single product to know if it's working or not. You might turn off a campaign for a potential winner just because it had a couple of unlucky, non-converting clicks. It's very easy to burn through cash this way without getting any statistically significant data to base your decisions on.

You can see the dilemma. Focusing gives you depth but no breadth. Diversifying gives you breadth but no depth. Neither strategy on its own is the complete answer.

I'd say you need a structured, phased approach...

So, what’s the solution? You need a hybrid strategy that gives you the best of both worlds. This is how I'd structure it:

Phase 1: Secure Your Base (80/20 Rule)

For the first month or two, you dedicate 80% of your total PPC budget to your current bestselling product. The goal here is simple: maximise sales and profitability from your proven winner. This is your 'Scale' campaign. Your focus should be on optimising this campaign relentlessly. You're refining your keyword targeting, adding negative keywords to cut wasted spend, and split-testing your main product image to improve CTR. This 80% chunk of your budget is your engine room; it's what pays the bills and funds your experiments.

The remaining 20% of your budget is your 'Explore' fund. You'll use this to run low-budget automatic campaigns on your other products. Don't split this 20% across all your other products at once. Group them into logical categories and test one category at a time for a week or two. The goal here isn't to make a profit. It's purely to gather data on which products get clicks and which ones convert.

Here’s an interactive tool to help you visualise how you might allocate your budget based on this 80/20 principle.

Phase 2: Analyse and Promote

After a few weeks, you look at the data from your 'Explore' campaigns. Has any product shown promise? Maybe one has a fantastic CTR of over 0.7%, or it's had 5 sales with a reasonable ACOS. Any product that shows these positive signs gets 'promoted'. You move it out of the 'Explore' group and create a dedicated 'Scale' campaign for it, just like your original bestseller. You might need to adjust your 80/20 split now to be more like 70/15/15 to accommodate this new contender.

Phase 3: Cull and Rotate

What about the products that didn't perform? The ones that got clicks but no sales, or had a terrible ACOS? You have to be ruthless. You pause the ads for these products. They failed the test. Then, you rotate in the next category of products from your catalogue into the 'Explore' fund and start the process all over again. Over a period of months, this systematic approach allows you to test your entire product range without ever taking your foot off the gas of your main money-makers.

This entire process can be visualised as a continuous loop. Here's a flowchart that lays out the decision-making process.

You'll need to get the foundations right first...

Now, everything I've just said is completely useless if your product listings aren't up to scratch. This is probably the single biggest mistake I see new sellers make. They spend a fortune on ads to drive traffic to a product page that simply isn't built to convert. It's like spending thousands on a grand opening for a shop with dirty windows and no prices on the items. All the traffic in the world won't help if the destination is a mess.

Before you implement the strategy above, you must do an honest audit of your listings.

• -> Images: Are they high-resolution? Do they show the product from multiple angles? Do you have lifestyle images showing the product in use? Are you using infographics to call out key features? Your main image is the first thing people see in the search results; it has to be perfect. For one client selling handcrafted goods, we saw a huge jump in CTR just by getting proper photography with models using the products.
• -> Title: Does your title include your main keywords? Is it easy to read and understand? Does it clearly state what the product is and who it's for? Don't just stuff it with keywords; make it compelling.
• -> Bullet Points: This is where you sell. Don't just list features; sell benefits. Instead of saying "100% Cotton," say "Made from 100% Ultra-Soft Cotton for All-Day Comfort." Use the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework here. What problem does your product solve? Agitate that problem a little, then present your product as the perfect solution.
• -> Description / A+ Content: Do you have a proper description? If you're Brand Registered, are you using A+ Content? This is a massive opportunity to build trust and tell a story about your brand and product. A cluttered or empty description makes a seller look untrustworthy. I've seen so many stores that don't look all that credible, which means I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable ordering from them.
• -> Reviews: I know it's hard when you're starting out, but getting those first few reviews is critical. Use the Amazon Vine program if you're eligible. Good reviews are social proof and one of the biggest drivers of conversion rate.

Optimising these elements is not optional. It's the foundation of everything. A 1% improvement in your conversion rate can have a bigger impact on your profitability than a 10% reduction in your click costs.

You probably should understand your numbers, especially ACOS...

The last, and maybe most critical, piece of the puzzle is knowing your numbers. You can't run profitable PPC campaigns if you don't know what 'profitable' actually means for your specific products. The key metric on Amazon is your ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale), which is your ad spend divided by the ad revenue. But your goal isn't just a low ACOS; it's a *profitable* ACOS.

To figure this out, you need to calculate your break-even ACOS. This is the maximum ACOS you can have before you start losing money on a sale. The calculation is based on your product's profit margin *before* ad spend.

Here's the breakdown:
Profit Margin = (Sale Price - Cost of Goods - Amazon Fees) / Sale Price
Your break-even ACOS is simply your pre-ad profit margin. For example, if your product sells for £30, your cost is £8, and Amazon's fees are £7, your profit is £15. Your margin is £15 / £30 = 50%. This means you can spend up to 50% of your sale price on ads and still break even. Your ACOS can go up to 50%.

Of course, you don't want to just break even. You want to make a profit. So you need to set a *Target ACOS* that is lower than your break-even point. If you want a 20% net profit margin on each sale, your Target ACOS would be 50% (Break-even) - 20% (Desired Profit) = 30%.

Here’s a calculator to help you work this out for your own products. Playing with these numbers will give you a much clearer picture of what you need to achieve with your ads.

Once you know your Target ACOS, you have a clear benchmark. You can now manage your 'Scale' and 'Explore' campaigns effectively. For your 'Scale' campaigns, the goal is to stay at or below your Target ACOS. For your 'Explore' campaigns, you can be a bit more lenient, as you're buying data, but you still need to see a path to eventually hitting your target.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this all up, running a successful PPC operation on Amazon isn't about one single decision. It's about building a system. A system for allocating your budget, a system for testing new products, and a system for measuring profitability. Here are the main actionable recommendations I have for you, laid out in a table.

As you can probably tell, this all takes quite a bit of work and careful management. It's not just a 'set it and forget it' kind of thing. It involves ongoing analysis, strategic adjustments, and a deep understanding of how the different pieces fit together.

This is often where sellers find they can benefit from expert help. While you're busy with the thousand other things involved in running an FBM business—sourcing, inventory, customer service—a specialist can be focused purely on this system. They can run the analysis, manage the campaigns, and implement these kinds of advanced strategies much faster and more effectively, helping you avoid common and costly mistakes along the way.

If you'd like to have a chat about how this could be applied specifically to your account, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could have a look at your products and campaigns together and I could give you some more tailored advice. It's often a really helpful session for sellers to get a clear sense of their opportunities and a path forward.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh