How to Audit Your Amazon PPC Before the Prime Day Rush

Chris: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Seller Performance Solutions. We have a guest today. I know lately I’ve been going back and forth with Leah about different compliance things and mistakes we see people making on appeals ahead of Prime Day. But let’s talk about PPC management for a moment, and let’s do so with Elizabeth Greene of Junglr.

How are you?

Elizabeth: I’m doing well. Doing well. Thanks for asking.

Chris: You’re welcome. I haven’t seen you since Vegas, which feels like years ago. It’s actually only two months ago, the Prosper Show. Um, and since that time, I guess we’ve gotten a bit more specif- specificity on when Prime Day will be.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Chris: Which is in June this year, for anyone who’s been under a rock or been asleep for the last five months.

How does that… I- and also, I see your name pop up. You’re either hosting or managing or appearing on all these PPC summits. [00:01:00]

How is this all kind of forming your plan for how you’re working with people that you already work with, and also maybe even talking to people that you haven’t worked with yet on how they need to strategize current day PPC and of course, in lieu of Prime Day?

Elizabeth: Yeah. Really what we find is that the structure that needs to be in place needs to be in place ahead of time. I tell people, I- I’ve said it pretty much every year, but I shall say it again because there’s certain people who have not heard it or haven’t internalized it or haven’t worked on it is that any sort of tentpole event or pivotal moment, The goal is to leverage the structure, the ads, the things that perform that you already have in the account. And a long time ago, people used to like, “Oh, I’m gonna set up my Prime Day campaigns.”

Don’t do that. Like, your Prime Day, you know, quote Prime Day campaigns should be set up [00:02:00] already. You need to have something for people to lean in and on. And so with these days, it’s really about, budget management and managing your ads to make sure that you are surfacing your products where you are most confident that they already perform.

Chris: Okay. So we’re already at that point.

Elizabeth: We are already at that point.

Chris: A handful of weeks in advance.

Elizabeth: Yes. If you do not have the structure yet, you still probably have a little, not much time, not much time. You should start working on it, like, this week, ASAP, yesterday kind of thing. But, a- and it might be helpful to understand, like, what a good structure is.

Or maybe it’s best illustrated by what it isn’t, meaning you cannot have your entire account run on auto campaigns.

Chris: Okay.

Elizabeth: It’s not gonna work well. Believe it or not, 2026- … there are still accounts [00:03:00] that I audit where they’re like, “Oh yeah, we just have a whole bunch of auto campaigns set up.” Scary.

Chris: But they can still tweak things.

I mean, maybe the structure’s built, but there’s still tweaks that happen month of or month before. Yes. Correct?

Elizabeth: That is true.

Chris: Yeah.

Elizabeth: It’s mainly going through and making sure that you don’t have settings that’ll come back to bite you. Good sort of like pre-cleanup is going to be looking at bidding strategies, placement percentages, keywords that have a ton of clicks with no orders, unintentionally high bids.

This is a huge one.

Elizabeth: Huge one. It’s really- Unintentionally

Chris: high bids, let’s define for those who are not.

Elizabeth: High bids on targets that are getting low, no impressions, or very few clicks, you haven’t quite had the traffic enough to notice that something is amiss and could waste budgets.

Chris: Okay. ‘

Elizabeth: Cause the thing with Prime Day [00:04:00] is that we get a ton of traffic which is great. That’s why we see sales go up, right? You get a ton of traffic, that traffic converts well. Fantastic. What happens when you have a target that maybe there hasn’t been enough traffic on the platform for you to really get clicks? Or maybe, historically there just wasn’t enough traffic for your bid or your campaign structure, or your budgets haven’t been high enough historically for it to trigger.

And so of course we’re increasing budgets for Prime Day, all of a sudden that thing triggers, and all of a sudden you end up with like $8 clicks. That happens. So the easiest thing to do, go into your targeting tab. You can sort the bids column highest to lowest and just look. I’ve seen some crazies, because a very common scenario in either a lot of keyword research or keyword optimizations or sometimes in tools is if we’re not getting impressions, increase the bid to get impressions.

What happens when even like 2 cents, 3 cents, like, dang, it’s like [00:05:00] impressions, impressions, get impressions, right? Right. And then what happens when nobody is taking a look at how high the bid gets? I’ve seen some like $20 bids and stuff in accounts and it’s like, well, okay, it wasn’t getting impressions.

It’s not like it was wasting money, but like what happens when that thing triggers? You’re out a lot of money.

Chris: I assume you’re auditing stuff all the time. Do people, you give them an audit, “Hey, this isn’t looking great,” or, “You could improve a lot here,” and then they like don’t come back for a while because they don’t wanna make any changes until they- go over everything themselves, or do they just throw the doors open and say, “You seem like you know what needs to be fixed.

Seems like there’s a problem here. Why don’t you do it?” What’s the common- That’s a good question.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I do get that question a lot, like brands who are waffling between, like, “Okay, I need somebody to fix this for me, but, like, should I go through and fix it myself and get it in a good position to be able to hand it over?

Like, what do we need to do?” My recommendation is if you have somebody you trust, again I trust my team. I know we know what we’re doing.

Chris: Right, right, right.

Elizabeth: I would [00:06:00] say you’re going to get a lot better performance, a lot less missteps, if you allow somebody who knows what they’re doing to fix your account.

Chris: Yeah. We deal with this too, right? Because sometimes people… And I try to give them the chance to say, “Well, you sound confident like you’ve done it before, so maybe you can take a crack at it.” But then sometimes they come back.

Like, “Well, we have done it before, but it looks like the ground shifted under our feet, and it’s not 100% the way it w- used to be.”

Yeah. And that, that just happens a lot in the appeals space, right? Because things do change. Yeah. And they, they’re not static over two months- Yeah … or two years of doing it.

Elizabeth: And oftentimes there’s this thought, like, okay, if I, maybe don’t have the right structure, or I haven’t figured out which targets convert best, or, you know, I know I’ve just been operating off of autos, and I know I need to switch to, like more manual structure.

Like, is anyone gonna know my product as well as I can? I’m sure you probably get that in the appeals. It’s like nobody can know my [00:07:00] product as, as well as I can, and so ergo, I worry about handing it over because there’s, you know, if somebody doesn’t understand it correctly, they’re gonna do the wrong thing, or they’re not gonna pick the right keywords, whatever.

And you’d be surprised, like, I can get into… I hesitate to say almost any account, but-

Elizabeth: virtually any account, and I’m sure you and your team can do the same as well, and it’s like, because we know how to read data very well, I can probably understand your shoppers better than you do almost. Not because I understand the product better, but because we can read the data better.

If you can read the data better, there’s a lot of times where I’ll get into an account, and especially if it’s, like, self-managed, so they’ll be like, “Oh, yes, well, I’m spending on that because that’s my best keyword.” It’s like, “Well, actually- Yeah … if you look at the conversion rate, it’s not. You’re not converting there.”

“But here’s this other subsection of keywords, and [00:08:00] actually, if you cross-analyze these, there’s a, there’s, like, a semantic core or a specific way in which these all describe the product, and they’re very similar. So actually, your buying audience is here, not where you thought it was. But if you let the data sort of lead you to the product understanding, you can also end up with the right conclusions as well.”

Chris: Yeah, you’re more objective as well. You don’t have… They might be operating from some institutional memory which doesn’t reflect the data.

Elizabeth: Exactly.

Chris: And it’s a memory but it’s a- Yeah … memory of, of a moving target that they haven’t been tracking, I guess.

Elizabeth: Um,

Chris: which is c- yeah, it is kind of like appeals.

A lot of people think, “Oh, we did one of these six months ago. We’ll be fine.” Yeah. And then they don’t realize that Amazon changes over six months, and how they- Yeah … flag things, their logic, they’re tweaking that. Um, kind of the same thing. It’s parallel example because, um, they have an [00:09:00] idea, “Oh, we did that previously and we did it in-house.”

Previously and today aren’t necessarily the same thing. I mean, last year’s Prime Day, how similar to this year’s Prime Day do you think it’ll be with all the changes that have happened in the last 12 months?

Elizabeth: I would say, like the, the overall, like, arc of it, the understanding and the anticipation of the first two days right before Prime Day goes, everything’s gonna go down.

Conversion rate- Mm-hmm … is gonna go down. Everybody… The new sellers are gonna be posting on all the forums. “Why are my sales down today?” Yeah. And we’re like, “It’s two days before Prime Day. It’s three days before Prime Day. Everything just kind of grinds to a halt.” And then you’re gonna have the ramp-up period.

So again, if you’re not positioned for that, we know, okay, budgets are gonna run out very quickly. We need to know where we’re positioned. We need to have our ads set up in a way that’s gonna capture that traffic. We know day two, sometimes day two is a little bit better than day one. Sometimes [00:10:00] it’s worse.

It g- does depend on by year. We know that that’s gonna happen, right? And then we also know that as soon as the last day of Prime Day goes off, sales are gonna slump again, and everybody’s gonna be like, “Why are my sales worse than they were?” And we’re gonna have about two to maybe three days of that.

It’s probably a solid two days of that. Yeah. Varies by account. You know, sometimes it’s a little bit more extended, sometimes not. But, and then we’re gonna kind of get back into that status quo. So the shape of how the traffic behaves, how the shoppers behave, how we can anticipate it, what we need to do to anticipate it, those are very reoccurring, I’ll be honest with you.

So, which is helpful because it under- you know how to position it, right?

Chris: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Some people will say, “Okay, we need to, you know, front load a lot of our budget right before because, you know, we’re catching window shoppers.” Don’t do that. You will waste your money. Horrible decision. That’s great for DSP if you wanna capture window shoppers and retarget.

Not good- You’re right.

Chris: [00:11:00] Right …

Elizabeth: um- I haven’t

Chris: heard that one so much. Um, but you’re right. Sellers aren’t mentally prepared for a slowdown right before Prime Day, and they should be

Elizabeth: Yes

Chris: But we, I mean, we’ve worked with people who their listing goes down right before Prime Day because- Oh my gosh … someone’s screwing with them, and then they lose all sales, probably thinking if they didn’t- Oh

Elizabeth: yeah

Chris: keep up on their account health or read their notifications, they might not even realize it’s because the listing was taken down. They might just think- Yeah … “Oh, it’s the slump before Prime Day.”

Elizabeth: Yeah, pay attention to catalog, 100%.

Chris: Very,

Elizabeth: very close attention to catalog. Um-

Chris: So tell us more about these PPC summits.

This is kind of more of maybe a personal- Sure … maybe there are people out there that know way more about these than I do, but I see you guys, not, not always you, not always the same group, but there’s- I’m always, like, a part of them … always a summit. No,

Elizabeth: I get it. My name pops up everywhere. That’s kind of the- Yeah

some of the intentionality on it. You know, if I can get myself associated with- Right … Amazon PPC, I feel like I- It’s always

Chris: a [00:12:00] summit, you know? Yeah. It’s like, um, I just, I love the word summit just because it’s, you know, you think of two political figures meeting- Yeah … in a neutral country and hashing out, like, a new treaty.

Um, what, how are these different from each other? ‘Cause they seem to be, you know, every couple of months or maybe more- Mm-hmm … frequent, but, um, I mean, what are the main object- objectives of the summit, is to reel in people who are, like, way, way behind and get them caught up to speed? Or- Yeah, I think that’s it

yeah.

Elizabeth: It’s, uh, typically the summits, and I, I believe we’re gonna be putting on one in the next couple months or so. Cool. Um, it’s a way to, ’cause, like, webinars are great, but they are typically, you know, specifically timed webinars.

Elizabeth: You have to be able to be available within that time slot, right?

Chris: Yep.

Elizabeth: And then also depending on, i- it’s difficult ’cause, like, you want to cram in a ton of, you know, great speakers to those, but then that also [00:13:00] means that it’s really long. So, like, who has time to sit, like, for, like, four hours, right? Yeah. And it’s not really a, a choose your own path kind of thing or who you’re interested in-

or what you’re interested in. And so, um, we’re, uh, I just put out something as, as part of a summit. So it’s basically a way to, like, um, congregate a bunch of really amazing minds in the space. I’m blessed to be recognized as part of that. Um, to allow us all to, you know, kind of share our best tips, our best things which are ever-evolving, right?

Things are a little bit more competitive. There’s new ad types that came out. The things that are getting results for sellers now, while there are some very fundamental underlying things, and I’ll be honest, I believe, like, the last summit that I was a part of, I shared some, like, very fundamental strategies that I feel like are tried and true and bulletproof and have served me well over the last eight years and just still rings

Chris: true.

Okay. So- So evergreen stuff … like, some of [00:14:00]

Elizabeth: it, some of it is that- Mm … but it’s like actually what I, what I did is I went through and I really, um, like, codified- What it was and tried to make it digestible and a, a little bit more obvious- Mm-hmm … to things that a lot of times us as ads managers, we do, like, very intuitively, and we’re like, “Well, we know this because we know this,” but really dissecting, like, why is it, what are the fundamental principles?

How do you, as somebody beginner, learn to do this on a level of somebody who’s been doing it for many, many years, right? Yeah. So that, that was… But that was the, the presentation that I shared on the very last summit that I did.

Chris: Okay.

Elizabeth: Sometimes it’s like a, a tip or something, and so again, but that’s… I’m bringing my best, right?

Because I want to help educate. Well, everyone who’s a part of the summit is bringing their best as well. And so you get basically a congre- you know, congregate of all of that. And because it’s put over the course of a couple days, and I believe a lot of times they’re, [00:15:00] you know, like day one speakers, day two speakers.

But it’s, um, an on-demand pre-recorded, which is beneficial because then you can decide, okay, which of these, you know, you might have time to watch all of them. Maybe you decide to get the replays, and so you have… But it, it becomes a very, very… I, I have personally, um, because I get access to them ’cause I’m a part of them- Right

I find them very beneficial, and I will be going in and clicking around and, you know, listening to different speakers and… ‘Cause there’s always some tip or something that you can get.

Chris: Yeah. There’s… And then sometimes you hear not great advice or misinformation. This is one of the curses or hexes of what we do because-

Elizabeth: Yes

that

Chris: can cripple an account or cripple an appeal, and it’s not just- Yeah … losing a few bucks and, and that sounds dismissive, like, “Oh, you might lose a few bucks.” Obviously everyone needs as much revenue as they can get in these competitive- Mm-hmm … crazy times. But when we [00:16:00] hear these things sometimes or see them, it’s not just a webinar.

If we see it on LinkedIn and we’re just, like, cringing, um- Yeah. Yeah … then it’s just like reaching out, you know. If you need us to mop this up, you have to kind of clean up the damage before you even start to reorient their appeal.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Chris: It’s kind of crazy because it’s a two-step process, neither one of which is pleasant.

Yeah. So-

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah …

Chris: I’m imagining people are going to understand that if they get this, not what we do, but what you do, if they get this wrong, um, there are gonna be consequences that are financial, and they’re going to need that revenue and those resources to continue to compete throughout the rest of this year into next.

Otherwise, they’re really gonna start feeling it.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So- Yeah. I think honestly, in this day and age, regardless if you’re self-managed, if you’re working with an agency, if you are leveraging freelancers or whoever, however you are choosing to manage your [00:17:00] Amazon ads these days, you really need- Someone who is dedicated to it- Mm-hmm

who either has the expertise, I would say if you’re spending a lot of money, you definitely need somebody who has expertise. Yeah. And then you need to be able to have somebody who can dedicate the time to it. For sure. So that’s why I believe where a lot of the summits are for is for either, like, a brand manager, maybe it’s an e-com manager, maybe it’s somebody who’s managing ads themselves and they just wanna, like, further their own education or, um, again, however, however you can leverage those to have the dedication.

And I think where it becomes really scary, and I, I talk to these brand managers all the time, they’re like, “Oh, somebody didn’t like their agency,” and so they just, like, threw the internal person, like, “All right. You’re the one managing ads now.” And oftentimes they’ll reach out to me for, like, coaching or help or going over the account.

Mm-hmm, And a lot of the times [00:18:00] my conversation… and most times it’s a, it’s an internal, um, you know, some e-com director or, um, you know, marketing manager’s decision just to say, “Oh, no, we can handle it in-house.” But when I’m often looking at the ads, going back to, like, you need a good fundamental structure here, a lot of times you would…

Like, I’m like, “Oh, I know why the ads aren’t doing what you want ’em to,” ’cause it’s a structure- Yeah … and strategy problem. Yeah. And I can tell you exactly how to fix it, but sometimes really getting the account turned around without significantly damaging sales is often like threading a needle. Which again, you can do it very well if you know what you’re doing and how to do it, and transition a structure in a way that doesn’t hurt sales.

Yeah. Or, you know, you can try it out yourself, but you might end up with something that- You might,

Chris: you might need a little help. Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Chris: Um, last question. Are [00:19:00] you thinking of going to this, um, Amazon’s finally doing an event in New York, the Growth Summit. Speaking of summits. That’s in July. Concentrating it.

I’m starting to ask everybody this because they’re finally doing something in the Northeast.

Elizabeth: I know. I know. Yeah.

Chris: So it’s handy for, for us, and you’re not that much farther, so. Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah. That’s true.

Chris: Let us know if you’re going. I will. Where do you want people to reach you with any questions on anything you’ve said today or beyond?

Elizabeth: Absolutely. Um, probably, so if you just wanna know what I’m going on about, um, we put out the most content on LinkedIn or YouTube. We do a… Actually, if you have any questions on Amazon PPC, show up on Thursdays 12:00 PM EST. Um, YouTube’s probably the best way to find us. I do a weekly live Q&A. You show up, you can ask any Amazon ad question you want.

I’ll pull it up and get you answers. This w- that’ll give you the best, most in-depth answer. Um, although if you’re struggling with your [00:20:00] account, if you’re like, “Maybe I’m ready for management, I’m not really sure-” Mm-hmm … um, the best place is going to be our website, which is junglr.com, J-U-N-G-L-R.com.

There is a calendar at the bottom. You can get in touch with us. We’ll actually go over your ad strategy and structure, let you know where the misalignments are. Um, obviously our goal there is to, like, pick apart your account so well you’re like, “Oh my gosh, you know what you’re doing. Please handle it for me.”

I mean- Mm … I’ll be honest with you, the intention of the call. But at the very least, um, you can get insights into, you know, kind of where that strategy’s off or where the structure’s off.

Chris: Awesome. Thanks for the conversation today.

Elizabeth: Of course.

Chris: Um, I’m sure we’ll catch you again soon somewhere, if, if not online, then off.

And, uh, anyone has any questions for Elizabeth, you know where to find her. Thanks again for listening to Seller Performance Solutions. We will catch you next time. Take care.