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If you've ever ventured into Amazon Ads, you may have come across the term "Single Keyword Campaigns" or SKCs.

Some advertisers love 'em, others can't stand 'em.

Today, I'd like to dive into what Single Keyword Campaigns are, the pros and cons of them, how I use them and whether they are right for you. 

What Are Single Keyword Campaigns (SKCs)?

In short, they are exactly as they sound... an Amazon Ads Campaign that contains ONE (yes, one) keyword.

This keyword is often an Exact Match keyword (meaning that the keyword is only triggered when a reader's search term exactly matches the keyword) and the main purpose of SKCs is to appear on Page 1 of the search results for a specific search term.

Another way to use SKCs is to pick a high-level root keyword, such as "fantasy" and target it in Broad Match, with a low bid ($0.30 - $0.40).

This type of SKC will act as a discovery campaign and find new keywords, related to your root keyword you could target in an Exact Match SKC.

For example, when we ran a SKC for "fantasy", we discovered a handful of keywords that converted well, such as:

– scifi fantasy books for adults

– Kindle books store fantasy

A word of warning about this Broad Match SKC is that you'll need to keep a close eye on what the Campaign is spending money on.

A lot of keywords it discovers may be completely irrelevant and you'll need to nip those in the bud quickly with negative targeting to avoid wasted Ad Spend.

But these types of SKCs can help you discover new keywords you would have never thought of yourself.

What Keywords Should Be Used In SKCs?

Some advertisers fill their Amazon Ads Accounts with SKCs; it's the only type of Campaign they run.

I've tried this approach myself and it gets very cumbersome to manage. I wouldn't recommend it.

Also, some keywords are just not good candidates to use in SKCs.

So what keywords are good candidates?

What you're really looking for are keywords that have a LOT of search volume and are highly relevant to your advertised book.

I use Publisher Rocket* (affiliate link) to do this, as it shows me how many searches specific keywords on Amazon receive.

By "high search volume", I'm looking for keywords with 5,000+ searches per month.

For example, keywords that have performed well for Lori's books as SKCs include:

– Fantasy Books For Adults

– Science Fiction Fantasy Books

Even if a keyword has high search volume though, expect to pay a pretty penny for clicks.

Even at $0.73 bids, we're not getting impressions on some of our SKCs, let alone clicks.

When Not To Use SKCs

There's no doubt about it that SKCs can be very beneficial to you as an advertiser.

But, there are times when SKCs are just not the right strategy.

These times are when you have a bunch of relevant keywords, but they don't have high search volume.

Finding keywords with 5,000+ searches per month (one of my criteria for SKCs), is tough; there aren't many keywords with that amount of traffic.

And the keywords that do have that amount of traffic tend to be pretty broad, loose keywords.

This can sometimes result in lots of traffic but low conversions.

If you have lots of relevant keywords you want to target, but they don't have 5,000+ searches per month, there's a good chance they will fall flat on their face in an SKC.

We'll discuss what to do with these keywords in a future newsletter (coming very soon).

Are SKCs Right For You?

As with most things in life... it depends.

I know, not the answer you want to hear. But there are so many factors at play here.

The biggest one being your budget.

Remember, with SKCs, using Exact Match, you're going to have to bid $0.70+ just to get impressions, just to stand a chance of your Ads even delivering.

Then you'll need to dedicate budget to every single SKC, even if it's $5-$10 per SKC, that can soon add up.

And finally, you need to find highly relevant keywords that have high search volume (5,000+ is my criteria for SKCs).

But if you tick all those boxes, go for it, and test out SKCs.

Wrapping Up...

SKCs can be a powerful strategy to work into your Amazon Ads, but I wouldn't recommend using SKCs exclusively.

I would suggest you find 5-10 highly relevant, high-search volume keywords and run these as SKCs.

You'll need to bid high; I suggest starting at $0.70 - $0.80, then let the Campaign run for 7-14 days.

If you're not seeing any impressions after 7 days, increase the bids by at least $0.10 and run for another 7 days.

I also recommend you use Fixed Bids as your bidding strategy to prevent Amazon from messing with your bids (which will be the case with Dynamic Bids Down Only and Dynamic Bids Up and Down).

If Amazon Ads is something you're interested in learning more about, please go ahead and join the Wait List for Amazon Ads Mastery For Authors (coming Spring 2025).

For now though, I hope this helps, and if you're going to give SKCs a go, have fun with them :)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and thank you so much for reading.

To Your Success
– Matt