Amazon’s advertising revenue just topped an all-time high during the third quarter, coming in with $3.5 billion—and there are no signs of slowing down— even with this year’s short holiday season.
If you are an active seller on the e-commerce platform, you understand how powerful PPC has become for your brand. The increase in advertising revenue shows how many sellers are investing in PPC to bring in customers. Although this means higher CPC, and higher demand for your products; it also means expecting higher ACoS scores as the PPC wars continue.
Today I sat down with Luke McGinnis—PPC expert, and Sales Director at Pacvue. Before joining the Pacvue team, Luke spent five years working for the PPC team at Amazon. The main objective of his former team was to streamline advertising and campaign processes for sellers.
He’ll be sharing with us his insights on how Amazon, and other e-commerce sellers can lower their ACoS and still get ahead of their competition.
-Let’s jump into it, what is Pacvue and what made you want to leave Amazon to join them?
Pacvue is a SaaS platform that streamlines the manual advertising processes a seller would have to do on their own. This means anything from monitoring data, optimizing keywords by bidding on the best ones, adding negative keywords, maintaining a certain ACoS, and more.
The number one thing I noticed while working at Amazon is that all of the sellers lived in excel documents. Many spent hours combing through data and reports, trying to figure out how they could get their PPC to bring in the biggest revenue without increasing ACoS. When I realized Pacvue was able to pack all these pain points into a streamlined, easy-to-use software, I knew this was a revolutionary company I needed to be a part of.
-A nightmare-inducing process that the bulk of sellers are still using today! I know you’ve worked with popular software like Teikametrics and Sellozo while at Amazon. What sets Pacvue apart?
Teikametrics and Sellozo are great platforms, but Pacvue has some of the better advanced features that I’ve seen.
What I mean by this is that they offer solutions that other platforms don’t. For example, daypartying is a huge strategic benefit for sellers. It allows you see what hours your product is selling the most. Say you find out your product sells best on Wednesday mornings. With this information, you can tell Pacvue to increase your bids on Wednesday mornings and then the software will automatically bring them back down when peak hours are over.
How else does Pacvue work?
Pacvue works by connecting sellers accounts to an API, and from there you’ll get a clean, accessible dashboard that will allow you to visualize how your data adds up. Take control of your campaigns by checking how big of an impact your campaign is making on Amazon, and keeping your strategy up to date.
You mentioned Pacvue is run by AI, does this mean the software does all the work for sellers?
The incredible thing about this software is that you can completely automate your entire PPC strategy. You can come in, tell the software you want an ACoS of 40%, and our AI will take care of getting you to that target, and maintaining it. But, if you are into the excitement behind running PPC campaigns, there is the option to take full control. Pacvue’s support team will work with you on a personalized campaign strategy that you can control, every step of the way.
What’s the most significant benefit your customers have seen since they starting using your platform?
Overall, it definitely has to be lowered ACoS. Every customer that has come in with a certain ACoS target in mind has been able to hit that goal with Pacvue’s platform.
Speaking of lowering ACoS, do you think using software like Pacvue is important? Is it possible to meet your goal without using a third-party software?
Lowering ACoS and maintaining it at a certain target is a lot of work. It involves adding negative keywords, adjusting bids, constantly monitoring your campaign budgets, etc. So, it’s possible to do it all without software. But, software like Pacvue’s, gets rid of that tedious work. We understand the importance of how impactful your ACoS score is, because Amazon will hit you with fee after fee and eventually spread your margins thin if you aren’t strategizing your PPC correctly. We allow sellers to focus on other important aspects of their brand, which is our goal.
Ok! One last question from me. What are your recommendations for those who are still skeptical about outsourcing PPC?
If you are knowledgeable on PPC, strict on keeping up to date with Amazon, and have a successful strategy; then it makes sense to keep your PPC in-house. However, if you want to keep the bulk of your PPC in-house and outsource certain aspects like ACoS target, or daypartying, then using Pacvue’s platform can be beneficial.
Ready to meet your ACoS target?
Make the most out of your holiday listings and get 10% by mentioning “Tactical Logistics” when you email Luke! If you still aren’t convinced, try their 14-day free trial, or request a demo with the Pacvue team to see the magic behind this platform yourself.
Final Thoughts
I’m just a marketing manager for a logistics company, but after speaking with Luke—I might just start selling on Amazon solely to use Pacvue’s platform. Thank you for sharing your insights Luke!
Say goodbye to never-ending excel sheets, guessing which keywords will optimize your listings, unpredictable PPC campaigns—and get ready to automate the hard stuff while lowering your ACoS with Pacvue.
source: Luke McGinnis – Director of Sales
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pacvue/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PacvueCorp
