June 15, 2022
Rebel Without ACoS
by Steve Susi

Real, actionable customer insights lower ad spend, increase traffic, and capture the Buy Box.

With Amazon Ads cost-per-click (CPC) rising 25% over the past two years, margins have suffered and brands of every size have found themselves asking if the Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS) is worth it.

Instead, the question should be: How to sell more with less spend?

True to Amazon, the answer comes in the form of your customers—or more specifically, your commitment to their experience. Ask any Amazonian, and they’ll tell you the customer owns the place, not the sellers or ad clients, and definitely not the shareholders. 

In a perfect world, for advertisers anyway, the playing field would be level, where only your brand equity, product quality, and Product Detail Page performance determined traffic, new customer acquisition, sales, and Best Seller Rank. This is e-commerce after all, where buying one channel’s inventory is critical to selling your own. Gotta pay to play.

For smaller, newer sellers with negligible budgets—and even household-name brands seeking more power from every pixel—it’s time to rebel. 

1. Optimize for Zero Dollars

For starters, what fuels Amazon’s algorithm extends far beyond SEO, Prime-eligibility, and Sponsored Ad spend. Injecting titles and bullets (within thresholds) with strategically selected keywords alongside dominant Voice of the Customer (VOC) themes is a proven approach, and costs you nothing to implement. 

2. Think Global, Act Mobile

Reward the mobile customer, who’s represented the majority for years, with optimized B+ and A+ imagery and right-scaled messaging. 

3. Some PDP Assembly Required

While A+ content typically sees a conversion increase of 10% just for existing, understanding how it’s assembled on the myriad screens across the Amazon universe is crucial.

4. Press Play: 6 Seconds Max

Introduce short, impactful videos and get rid of your :30 TV spots. Use VOCs for script direction.

5. Success in Store

Take your Brand Store seriously. Understand all the things you can do with it and give your customer every opportunity to discover new products and increase their basket size. A client of ours sees 93% higher return with a Store engagement vs. a non-Store engagement.

6. The Customer is Always Write [OR Voice of the Customer OR Feedback is Power]

Ignore the Request a Review button at your peril.

7. Friend with Benefits

And always think Amazonian: customer benefits over product specs. Shoppers will take the word of a complete stranger (Customer Reviews) over what you think about your own product all day, every day. “Get to the point,” they say, “and make it about me.”

Not surprisingly, just like inside Amazon itself, it’s your customers who show you the way and reward you right back with faster sales, more reviews, higher organic rank, and a dwindling ACoS. You rebel you.