Just 20%

Hey,
It's another beautiful summer's morning here in the UK; a little crisp as I sit out in the garden writing this email to you, but beautiful, none the less.

Today, I want to get a little less tactical and a little more strategic.

In particular, the strategy side of your mindset when working with Amazon Ads.

I have seen enough data now to clearly see the 80/20 Rule (also known as Pareto's Principle) in full swing with every Amazon Ads Account I've worked on or audited.

By this, I simply mean:

20% of your Campaigns will be generating 80% of your results (i.e. Orders and Page Reads)
20% of your Keywords will be generating 80% of your results
20% of your Targeted ASINs will be generating 80% of your results
So, if most of what you are doing doesn't appear to be working, that's ok. It's perfectly normal and it's not you. That's just how Amazon Ads works.

The 80/20 principle isn't an exact science, but what it's implying is that the minority will be generating the majority. It could be 70/30, it could be 90/10. The point I'm trying to drive home here is that most Campaigns, Keywords, ASINs and Categories, won't work. And you need to be ok with that.

Going into Amazon Ads expecting everything you test is going to be a home-run will leave you severely disappointed and you could end up throwing in the towel on Amazon Ads before you've really got started.

Speaking of testing, you need to test and collect data to figure out what that magic 20% is, which, yes, will result in some wasted ad spend.

But once you find that 20%, that's when you can really start to scale things up, because you know what works.

Another mindset shift here is what you see as an expense and what you see as an investment.

Personally, I see wasted ad spend, not as wasted, but as an investment into data collection so that I can quickly figure out what does and doesn't work.

I completely understand that you (and I) don't want to waste spend money willy-nilly, which is why I always drive home the relevance factor; everything you test needs to be as relevant as possible to your advertised book(s).

Amazon rewards relevance and the more you can show Amazon that you are relevant for a particular target, which you do primarily through driving conversions (sales), the more they will be inclined to show your Ads for that target, and you end up with this beautiful flywheel effect of more impressions, more clicks, more sales...

Find the 20% and you can't go wrong.

To Your Success

- Matt