Amazon PPC Bid Optimization: Macro vs. Micro Changes for Maximum Efficiency

Your Amazon PPC campaigns are running, but you’re spending way too much time tweaking bids and still not seeing the results you want. You’re stuck in the weeds, making tiny adjustments that barely move the needle.

This is a common problem for Amazon sellers juggling multiple campaigns and product lines. Most sellers don’t realize there’s a more efficient way to manage bids.

In this article, we’ll break down the difference between macro and micro bid changes, and how to strategically use both to maximize efficiency and improve your Amazon PPC performance. Let’s dive in.

Understanding Macro vs. Micro Bid Changes on Amazon PPC

What exactly are macro and micro bid changes? It’s simple: macro changes are big, strategic adjustments, while micro changes are small, incremental tweaks. Here’s a closer look:

• Micro Bid Changes: These are small adjustments, typically between 5-10 cents, that you make frequently to fine-tune your bids.
• Macro Bid Changes: These are larger, more strategic adjustments, often involving changes of 20% or more, based on broader campaign goals or performance trends.

Here’s why understanding the difference matters: treating all bid adjustments the same leads to wasted time and missed opportunities. It’s like trying to steer a ship with a tiny rudder.

When to Use Macro Bid Changes for Amazon PPC

Macro bid changes are best used when you need to make significant shifts in your campaign strategy. Here are a few scenarios where macro changes are the way to go:

• Launching New Products: When launching a new product, you might start with aggressive bids to gain visibility quickly. This often involves increasing bids by 50% or more initially.
• Restructuring Campaigns: If you’re completely restructuring your campaigns – for example, moving keywords between campaigns or changing match types – macro bid changes are necessary to reset your baseline.
• Reacting to Major Performance Shifts: If you notice a sudden drop in impressions or a spike in ACOS, a macro bid change can help you quickly course-correct.

Let’s look at a real example. One of our clients launched a new product with a $2.00 default bid. After a week, they weren’t getting any impressions. We increased the bid to $4.00 (a 100% increase), and impressions immediately started to climb.

When to Use Micro Bid Changes for Amazon PPC

Micro bid changes are ideal for fine-tuning your campaigns once you’ve established a solid baseline. Here are some situations where micro changes are most effective:

• Optimizing for ACOS: If a keyword is performing well but slightly above your target ACOS, a small bid decrease can help bring it in line. For example, if your target ACOS is 30% and a keyword is at 35%, try decreasing the bid by 5-10 cents.
• Improving Conversion Rates: If you’re seeing a decent click-through rate but a low conversion rate, micro bid changes can help you find the sweet spot where you’re getting enough traffic without overpaying.
• Maintaining Position: In a competitive market, micro bid changes can help you maintain your ad position without constantly overbidding.

Most sellers don’t realize how powerful micro adjustments can be over time. For instance, decreasing a bid by just 5 cents on a keyword with 1,000 clicks per month can save you $50 per month – and that adds up!

The Secret to Efficient Bid Optimization: Combining Macro and Micro Changes

The real secret to efficient bid optimization isn’t choosing one over the other, but strategically combining both. Here’s a framework to follow:

1. Start with Macro Changes: Use macro changes to establish your baseline bids and react to significant performance shifts.
2. Fine-Tune with Micro Changes: Once you have a stable baseline, use micro changes to optimize for ACOS, conversion rates, and position.
3. Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor your campaign performance and be prepared to make macro or micro changes as needed.

Here’s why that matters: by using macro changes to make strategic shifts and micro changes to fine-tune your campaigns, you can optimize your bids far more efficiently than by treating all adjustments the same.

Automating Bid Changes with AdLabs

Manually making macro and micro bid changes can still be time-consuming, especially if you’re managing multiple campaigns. This is where a tool like AdLabs comes in.

AdLabs calculates the bid optimization process, allowing you to set rules for macro and micro changes based on your specific goals and performance metrics.

For example, you can set a rule to automatically increase bids by 20% on keywords with a conversion rate above 5% (macro change) and decrease bids by 5 cents on keywords with an ACOS above 30% (micro change).

Here’s the thing: by automating these changes, you can save countless hours each week and ensure that your campaigns are always optimized for maximum efficiency. As Scott H. put it in his Trustpilot review: “AdLabs is by far the best… Most importantly, results have been very good; TACOS is down significantly while sales are now happening across our entire catalog.”

Stop Wasting Time on Inefficient Bid Adjustments

By understanding the difference between macro and micro bid changes and strategically combining both, you can optimize your Amazon PPC campaigns far more efficiently. Don’t waste time making tiny adjustments that don’t move the needle; instead, use macro changes to make strategic shifts and micro changes to fine-tune your performance.

Want to save even more time and automate your bid optimization? Check out AdLabs and see how it can help you maximize efficiency and improve your Amazon PPC results.

Key Discussion Points from the Episode

Here are some of the most valuable insights Andrew and Stephen shared during the full episode discussion:

So that’s yeah, big chunk of spend. Because of such a small timeframe, when we come here, we are not going to optimize placements. Just because it’s going to be way too small of a timeframe, the placement calculations will likely be incorrect or just not very statistically reliable or relevant.

Now, when setting the max bid decrease, this is where we’re gonna make much larger changes. Maybe 50% decrease, I actually prefer to leave it off. And the other thing that you gotta keep in mind is when you’re doing these reactionary changes, you usually want to be unilateral, meaning one sided in the type of adjustment you’re trying to make.

You are either, if you’re doing a small timeframe, it’s because you’re reacting to a problem. And that problem is either going to be high ACOS or low spend low sales. So you’re either trying to really quickly drive up the performance or you’re really trying to pull back on some underperformance.

So in this case, let’s just say we’re trying to really focus on getting that ACOS down. So we will go to, because we’re seeing shoot spend spiked, it’s up almost 25%. We got to react to that.

So we’re gonna come here, optimize bids. I’m gonna turn off the max bid decrease. We’re gonna go ahead and optimize everything.

Technically we could actually just focus on these high ACOS and high spend low sales keywords, because that’s likely where most of the problems are. Actually, we will go ahead and do that. So we’re gonna come here and preview these results.

Now again, you can sometimes increase bids on high ACOS keywords, but in this case, the problem that we’re currently experiencing is related to a high ACOS problem. So we really only want to focus on decrease opportunities. So we’re just gonna say spend is less than zero.

Sorry, the delta is less than zero. Look at this. It’s really not a lot of keywords, right?

It’s only seven keywords. And you know what, I actually had the wrong target ACOS in here. 20% ever gonna say reduce ACOS and let’s hit this one more time.

And then put that filter back on for, yeah, we gotta save filter here.

This article is based on Episode 104 of That Amazon Ads Podcast. Subscribe for weekly Amazon PPC strategies.