Automation – Other example rules to get you started

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In this article you will find some template rules you can implement in PPC Automation. Important: Theses are generic rules and are no guarantee of success for each campaign. This is because each product and campaign is unique. Please also read this article on setting your rule parameters based on your own metrics and goals.

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Terminology used:
KW = Keyword
PT = Product Targeting
ST = Search Term
NE = Negative Exact
ACoS = Average Cost of Sales

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What rules can I easily implement to get my campaign automation started? #

There are generally 4 types of campaign setup:

• Standalone Automatic campaign
• Manual campaign with one match type
• Automatic campaign used for discovering keywords (and then moving these to a Manual campaign)
• Manual campaign with multiple match types (also called “Search Term Isolation”)

We strongly recommend you create on Rule Group per Campaign, and maybe even per Ad Group, depending on the setup and objectives that you have. This will enable you to greater management control over your campaigns and to avoid possibly creating chaos.

For more help, check out our free training centre on Facebook and Youtube. Make sure to follow and subscribe to both to keep up to date on the latest webinar videos to help you become more successful selling on Amazon.

1. Type 4: Automatic campaign used for discovering keywords (and then moving these to a Manual campaign) #

Considering this this the most popular PPC campaign design on Amazon right now, we’ll cover these rules first.

Use Trendle’s Reverse ASIN tool to find hundreds of keywords with little effort.

Create an automatic campaign. Place top 50 keywords from Reverse ASIN as Negative Exact.

Create a manual campaign with 4 ad groups: Exact, Phrase, Broad, PT (Product Targeting).

Place those same top 50 keywords in Exact, Phrase and Broad Ad Groups in Exact Match, Phrase Match, Broad Match respectively.

In the Broad and Phrase ad group, make those same 50 keywords Negative Exact. You want to do this so that you can discover related search terms. This is often referred to as “Search Term Isolation”.

It will allow you to discover new Search Terms without bidding against yourself 3 times for the same keyword.

Automation Rules you can implement:

Create Rule Group for the Automatic campaigns

Rules for the automatic campaign:

Create one Rule Group with the following rules

Rule #1: Keyword as Search Term: If 1 order after 1 day, move to Manual campaign

1. move to Manual Campaign, Exact ad group as Exact match
2. move to Manual Campaign, Phrase ad group as Phrase match
3. move to Manual Campaign as Broad match
4. and Negative Exact in Auto campaign and in Manual Campaign Phrase and Broad ad groups (you do this to stop bidding on that keyword in Automatic Campaign as you now only want to bid for that keyword in the manual campaign)

Rule #2: Ad Group: If clicks = 0 after 5 days, increase default bid by 10%

Rule #3: ASIN as Search Term: If Orders >= 1 after 1 Day, Move To:
1. Manual Campaign, PT Ad Group as Exact
2. Auto Campaign, Ad Group as Negative

Rule #4: Keyword as Search Term: If Orders = 0 after x clicks, then set as Negative Exact

The ‘x’ is determined by your conversion rate. For example, if you have a 10% conversion rate then you should expect a sale every 10 clicks. For PPC, you may want to wait less, the same or more clicks (ie 8 or 10 or 12 clicks for example) as each PPC keyword will convert at different rates.

Rule #5: ASIN as Search Term: If Orders = 0 after x clicks, then set as Negative

Your Rule Group should look something like this once you’re done:

Rules for the Manual campaign:

We’ll create one Rule Group per Ad Group

Rule Group 1: For the Broad Ad Group

Rule #1: Keyword as Search Term, If Orders >= 1 after 1 day, then Move To:
1. Manual campaign, Phrase Ad Group as Phrase match
2. Manual campaign, Exact Ad Group as Exact match
3. Auto campaign & Manual Campaign Phrase and Broad ad groups as Negative Exact

Rule #2: Keyword as Search Term, If Orders = 0 after x clicks, Move To:
1. Manual Campaign & Auto Campaign, Select All ad groups, set as Negative Exact match type

Your Rule Group should look something like this:

Rule Group 2: For the Phrase Ad Group

Rule #1: Keyword as Search Term, If Orders >=1 after 1 day, Move To:
1. Manual Campaign, Exact Ad Group as Exact match type
2. Auto Campaign & Manual Campaign, Broad and Phrase and Auto ad groups, as Negative Exact

Rule #2: Keyword as Search Term, If Orders = 0 after x clicks, Move To:
1. Manual Campaign & Auto Campaign as Negative Exact

Your Rule Group should look something like this:

Rule Group 3: For the Exact Ad Group

Rule #1: Keyword, If clicks = 0 after 5 days, increase bid by 0.10, max bid 2.00

‘5 days’ , ‘0.10’ and ‘max bid 2.00’ should be adjusted to your personal preferences

Rule #2: Keyword, If orders = 0 after x clicks, decrease bid by 0.10, min bid 0.50

To define ‘x’ look at your current Conversion Rate and wait at least that number or clicks, or maybe 1.5 and 2x more.
For example, you have a conversion rate of 30%, this means every 3.3 clicks you generate a sale. Therefore you could wait between 4 or 8 clicks before making a term negative. You want to give the keyword enough time to assess if this keyword is really relevant or not.
‘0.10’ and ‘min bid’ should be adjusted to your personal preferences.
The goal of this rule is to increase the bid in order to generate clicks

Rule #3: Keyword, If orders = 0 after y clicks, Set bid to 0.12 –> Add the Stop Rule to this: If rule 3 is triggered then stop Rule 1. This will avoid the bids bouncing up and down infinitely. To do this, go to Rule 1 and select Rule 3 in the stop rule drop down:

‘y clicks’ is a higher value than the ‘x clicks’ from rule 2. This could be 2x or 3x for example. The goal is to set a limit of how many clicks you want to buy without any conversion before you decide to either make the keyword negative or set a really low bid.
‘set bid to 0.12’ is random value. The idea is just to keep it really low and with luck get some cheap clicks on sales in the middle of the night for example. The alternative is to make the keyword negative.

Rule #4: Keyword: If ACoS > Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid

Target ACoS: This is the ACoS calculated in the Product Cost table based on your selling price, unit cost, VAT (if applicable) and Amazon fees

Rule #5: Keyword: If ACoS < Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid

‘ACoS’ uses weighted ACoS formula to avoid radical changes.
‘5 clicks’ can be adjusted to suit who often you want the changes to be made. You can even change to saying ‘every x days’.

Your Rule Group should look something like that:

Rule Group 4: For the PT (ASIN) Ad Group

The rules for the PT Ad Group follow the same pattern as for the Exact ad group.

Rule #1: ASIN: Keyword, If clicks = 0 after 5 days, increase bid by 0.10, max bid 2.00

Rule # 2: ASIN, If orders = 0 after x clicks, decrease bid by 0.10, min bid 0.50

Rule #3: ASIN, If orders = 0 after y clicks, Set bid to 0.12 –> Add the Stop Rule to this: If rule 3 is triggered then stop Rule 1. This will avoid the bids bouncing up and down infinitely. To do this, go to Rule 1 and select Rule 3 in the stop rule drop down

Rule #4: ASIN: If ACoS > Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid

Rule #5: Keyword: If ACoS < Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid

Your Rule Group should look something like this:

We recommend you read about how Weighted ACoS and Auto Adjusting Bids works in Trendle.

Use the CPC sheet to set and adjust your targets such as Max Bid and ACoS. More information in this blog post.

2. Type 3: Manual campaign with multiple match types #

Info: You would use this structure if you already have a long list of keywords that you’ve research manually but that you have not yet optimised.

We assume you will have on Ad Group or one Campaign for Keywords and another for Product Targeting (also known as “PAT” or “PT”). You can use the below rules and simply change them to apply to an “ASIN” rather than to a “Keyword”.

Use Trendle’s Reverse ASIN tool to find hundreds of keywords with little effort.

Create 3 ad groups: Broad, Phrase and Exact. Only have one match type per ad group.

In each ad group enter all the keywords.

In the Broad ad group, make those same keywords Negative Exact, and in the Phrase ad group, make those same keywords Negative Exact. You want to do this so that you can discover related search terms. This is often referred to as “Search Term Isolation”.

It will allow you to discover new Search Terms without bidding against yourself 3 times for the same keyword.

Rules you can implement:

• Broad Ad Group:
  1. Create Rule Group for the campaign and only the ‘Broad’ ad group

Then create these rules:

1. Keyword as Search Term: If Orders >= 1 after 1 day, move to:

• Exact ad group as Exact
• and Phrase ad group as Phrase
• and make Negative Exact in the Broad and Phrase Ad Groups

2. Kill Rule: If Orders = 0, after x clicks, Move to: Make Negative Exact in Broad, Phrase, Exact, and Auto Ad Group (if applicable)

• Phrase Ad Group: Follow the same steps as the above Broad ad group:
  1. KW as ST: If orders >= 1 after 1 day, move to:
     • Exact ad group, as Exact
     • and make Negative Exact in Phrase and Broad Ad Group
  2. Kill Rule: If Orders = 0, after x clicks, Move to: Make Negative Exact in Broad, Phrase, Exact, and Auto Ad Group (if applicable)
• Exact Ad Group:
  • Create Rule Group:

Then create the following rules:

1. KW: If clicks = 0 after 5 days, increase bid by 0.10, max bid 2.00
   • ‘5 days’ , ‘0.10’ and ‘max bid 2.00’ should be adjusted to your personal preferences

1. KW: If orders = 0 after x clicks, decrease bid by 0.10, min bid 0.50
   • To define ‘x’ look at your current Conversion Rate and wait at least that number or clicks, or maybe 1.5 and 2x more
   • For example, you have a conversion rate of 30%, this means every 3.3 clicks you generate a sale. Therefore you could wait between 4 or 8 clicks before making a term negative. You want to give the keyword enough time to assess if this keyword is really relevant or not
   • ‘0.10’ and ‘min bid’ should be adjusted to your personal preferences.
   • The goal of this rule is to increase the bid in order to generate clicks

1. KW: If orders = 0 after y clicks, Set bid to 0.12 –> Add the Stop Rule to this: If rule 3 is triggered then stop Rule 1. This will avoid the bids bouncing up and down infinitely.
   • ‘y clicks’ is a higher value than the ‘x clicks’ from rule 2. This could be 2x or 3x for example. The goal is to set a limit of how many clicks you want to buy without any conversion before you decide to either make the keyword negative or set a really low bid
   • ‘set bid to 0.12’ is random value. The idea is just to keep it really low and with luck get some cheap clicks on sales in the middle of the night for example. The alternative is to make the keyword negative.

1. KW: If ACoS > Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid, min bid 0.23

1. KW: If ACoS < Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid, max bid 2.00
   • ‘ACoS’ uses weighted ACoS formula to avoid radical changes
   • ‘Target ACoS’ is what is calculated by Trendle based on your selling price, Amazon fees and Unit Costs to calculate your margin. More info on our Product Costs here.
   • ‘5 clicks’ can be adjusted to suit who often you want the changes to be made. You can even change to saying ‘every x days’

• PT Ad Group: Create a new Rule Group for the PT Ad Group. You apply the same rules as for the Exact Ad Group (see above) except the rules apply to “ASIN” rather thank Keyword. You can also customise the rules so that the number of clicks in rules 1-3 are not the same as for Keywords. ASINs and Keywords often convert at different rates.

We recommend you read about how Weighted ACoS and Auto Adjusting Bids works in Trendle.

Use the CPC sheet to set and adjust your targets such as Max Bid and ACoS. More information in this blog post.

3. Type 1: Standalone Automatic Campaigns #

Info: These are automatic campaigns that you are looking to optimise.
You are not using these campaigns to harvest new keywords for other campaigns.

Rules you can implement:

1. KW as Search Terms: If 0 orders after x clicks, negative exact at campaign level
   • To define ‘x’ look at your current Conversion Rate and wait at least that number or clicks, or maybe 1.5 and 2x more
   • For example, you have a conversion rate of 30%, this means every 3.3 clicks you generate a sale. Therefore you could wait between 4 or 8 clicks before making a term negative. You want to give the keyword enough time to assess if this keyword is really relevant or not.

2. ASIN as Search Term: Same as rule 1, except you apply it to an ASIN rather than a Keyword

3. Ad group: If ACoS is greater than target ACoS after 10 clicks, Decrease bid by 10%

4. Ad group: If ACoS is smaller than target ACoS after 10 clicks, Increase bid by 10%:
10 clicks is a generic number, you can use any time value. You could even say every 1 or every 2 days

5. Ad Group: If no clicks after 5 days, increase default bid by 0.1, to max of 2.52

5 days could be any number. 0.10 as well, adjust this to your preferences. Same for the max bid. The goal of this rule is to increase the bid in order to generate clicks

Use the CPC sheet to set and adjust your targets such as Max Bid and ACoS. More information in this blog post.

3. Type 2: Manual campaign with one match type #

Info: We assume here that the only match type being used is Exact. If you have a manual campaign with only Broad then we recommend you make adjustments to add an Exact match type ad group. For this, see the Type 3 campaign structure below

We assume you will have on Ad Group or one Campaign for Keywords and another for Product Targeting (also known as “PAT” or “PT”). You can use the below rules and simply change them to apply to an “ASIN” rather than to a “Keyword”.

Use Trendle’s Reverse ASIN tool to find hundreds of keywords with little effort.

Create one campaign with Exact Match only keywords. Also create one ad group or a separate campaign for PT targeting.

Rules you can implement:

1. KW: If 0 clicks after 5 days, increase bid by 0.10, max bid 2.00
   ‘5 days’ , ‘0.10’ and ‘max bid 2.00’ should be adjusted to your personal preferences

2. KW: If 0 orders after x clicks, decrease bid by 0.10, min bid 0.73.

• To define ‘x’ look at your current Conversion Rate and wait at least that number or clicks, or maybe 1.5 and 2x more.
  For example, you have a conversion rate of 30%, this means every 3.3 clicks you generate a sale. Therefore you could wait between 4 or 8 clicks before making a term negative. You want to give the keyword enough time to assess if this keyword is really relevant or not
• ‘0.10’ and ‘min bid’ should be adjusted to your personal preferences.

3. KW: If 0 orders after y clicks, Set bid to 0.12 –> Add the Stop Rule to this: If rule 3 is triggered then stop Rule 1. This will avoid the bids bouncing up and down infinitely.

• ‘y clicks’ is a higher value than the ‘x clicks’ from rule 2. This could be 2x or 3x for example. The goal is to set a limit of how many clicks you want to buy without any conversion before you decide to either make the keyword negative or set a really low bid
• ‘set bid to 0.12’ is random value. The idea is just to keep it really low and with luck get some cheap clicks on sales in the middle of the night for example. The alternative is to make the keyword negative.

4. KW: If ACoS > Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid, min bid 0.23

5. KW: If ACoS < Target ACoS after 5 clicks, Auto Adjust Bid, max bid 2.00

• ‘ACoS’ uses weighted ACoS formula to avoid radical changes
• ‘Target ACoS’ is what is calculated by Trendle based on your selling price, Amazon fees and Unit Costs to calculate your margin. More info on our Product Costs here.
• ‘5 clicks’ can be adjusted to suit who often you want the changes to be made. You can even change to saying ‘every x days’

We recommend you read about how Weighted ACoS and Auto Adjusting Bids works in Trendle.

You should end up with the Rule Group looking like this:

Info: These automatic campaigns are used purely for harvesting keywords which you then move to a manual campaign so that you can increase/decrease bids on each keyword for greater control and better results.

Use the CPC sheet to set and adjust your targets such as Max Bid and ACoS. More information in this blog post.