Setting up your first PPC campaign can feel daunting, but the process is straightforward once you understand each step. This walkthrough takes you from start to launch.
Step 1: Prepare Your Listing
Before spending money on ads, ensure your listing is ready to convert. Your main image should be high quality on a white background. Your title should include your primary keywords. Bullet points should highlight key benefits. And your price should be competitive. Sending traffic to an unoptimised listing wastes your budget.
Step 2: Navigate to Campaign Manager
In Seller Central, go to Advertising > Campaign Manager. Click "Create Campaign" and select "Sponsored Products." This is the most common and effective ad type for most sellers.
Step 3: Campaign Settings
Name your campaign something descriptive — "Auto - Blue Water Bottle" is more useful than "Campaign 1" when you have 20 campaigns running. Set your daily budget (£10–£20 is a good starting point). Choose "Dynamic bids - down only" for your bidding strategy — this lets Amazon reduce your bid when a click is less likely to convert, protecting your budget.
Step 4: Choose Targeting Type
For your first campaign, choose Automatic Targeting. Amazon will match your product to relevant customer searches based on your listing content. This is the best way to discover which keywords actually drive sales for your product.
Automatic campaigns have four match types that Amazon manages: close match (similar to your product), loose match (broadly related), substitutes (competing products), and complements (products bought together with yours).
Step 5: Set Your Default Bid
Your default bid is the maximum you will pay per click. Start with Amazon's suggested bid or slightly below it. For most UK products, £0.30–£0.75 is a reasonable starting range. You can adjust this later based on performance data.
Step 6: Select Products
Choose which products to advertise. Start with your best-performing product or a new product you want to launch. It is easier to optimise one product's campaigns before expanding to your full catalogue.
Step 7: Launch and Wait
Click launch and let the campaign run for at least 7–14 days before making changes. You need enough data to make informed decisions. Checking daily and making constant adjustments based on limited data leads to poor optimisation.
Step 8: Review and Optimise
After two weeks, download the Search Term Report. This shows exactly which customer searches triggered your ads and resulted in clicks and sales. Identify your best-performing search terms — these are candidates for a manual campaign where you can bid more aggressively. Identify poor performers — add these as negative keywords to stop wasting money on irrelevant clicks.
The Ongoing Process
PPC is not set-and-forget. Review performance weekly, adjust bids based on ACoS targets, add new keywords from your search term reports, and negate underperformers. Over time, your campaigns become more efficient as you concentrate spend on the keywords that actually drive profitable sales.