What This Is (and What It Isn’t)
This is a weekly health check for your Amazon PPC account.
It is not:
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A full account rebuild
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A daily micromanagement routine
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A one-time cleanup
Instead, it’s a 30–45 minute process designed to:
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Catch waste early
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Protect profitability
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Keep winning campaigns scaling cleanly
Who Should Use This Checklist
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Sellers running Sponsored Products
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Brands spending $50/day or more on ads
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Anyone who wants predictable PPC performance without chaos
Works for both manual and software-assisted accounts.
How Often to Run This Audit
|
Account Stage |
Frequency |
|
New / Launch Phase |
Weekly |
|
Growth Phase |
Weekly |
|
Mature / Stable |
Every 7–14 days |
Consistency beats intensity.
Before You Start (5 Minutes)
Pull reports for the last 7–14 days:
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Campaign performance
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Search term report
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Placement report (optional but helpful)
Ignore data with very low clicks — weekly audits focus on meaningful signals, not noise.
The Weekly PPC Audit Checklist
1️⃣ Spend & Budget Control (10 Minutes)
Goal: Make sure budget is flowing to the right places.
☐ Any campaigns out of budget before midday?
☐ Any campaigns spending heavily with poor results?
☐ Budget aligned with business priority ASINs?
☐ No runaway auto campaigns?
Actions to Take:
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Increase budgets only on proven campaigns
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Cap discovery campaigns (auto / broad)
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Pause or limit campaigns bleeding spend
📌 Rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t scale it today, don’t feed it more budget.
2️⃣ Performance Snapshot (10 Minutes)
Goal: Identify what’s working and what’s broken.
Review by campaign:
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Spend
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Sales
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Orders
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ACoS / ROAS
☐ Any campaigns above target ACoS?
☐ Any campaigns driving most of the revenue?
☐ Sudden performance swings vs last week?
Actions to Take:
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Tag winners for scaling
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Flag losers for deeper review
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Investigate sudden changes (price, stock, reviews)
3️⃣ Search Term Review (Core Step – 10–15 Minutes)
Goal: Eliminate waste and harvest winners.
For search terms with enough data:
☐ High spend, no sales → Negative Exact
☐ Irrelevant intent → Negative Phrase
☐ Converting terms in auto → Harvest to manual
☐ Duplicates across campaigns → Clean overlap
📌 This step alone often saves 10–30% of wasted spend.
4️⃣ Keyword & Bid Adjustments (5–10 Minutes)
Goal: Align bids with performance.
☐ High ACoS but relevant → Lower bid
☐ Strong performance → Small bid increase
☐ Stagnant keywords → Leave or pause
Avoid:
❌ Large bid swings
❌ Bid changes on low-data keywords
📌 Small, consistent changes > aggressive resets.
5️⃣ Placement & Match Type Check (Optional)
Goal: Prevent hidden inefficiencies.
☐ Top of Search performing better than other placements?
☐ Broad match spending too much?
☐ Exact match underfunded?
Actions:
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Adjust placement multipliers carefully
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Shift budget from broad → exact if needed
6️⃣ Listing & Conversion Reality Check (5 Minutes)
Goal: Avoid fixing ads when the problem is the listing.
Ask:
☐ Did price change this week?
☐ Any stock issues?
☐ Review count or rating changes?
☐ Images or content recently updated?
📌 Ads amplify listing quality — they don’t fix it.
7️⃣ Document & Plan (5 Minutes)
Goal: Build consistency over time.
☐ Record changes made
☐ Note hypotheses (why changes were made)
☐ Set focus for next week
This prevents reactive decisions later.
Beginner vs Advanced Weekly Audit
🟢 Beginner Sellers
Focus on just 3 things:
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Stop obvious wasted spend
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Don’t let auto campaigns run wild
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Don’t touch low-data keywords
Beginner Rule:
“If it spent more than I’m comfortable losing and didn’t sell — fix it.”
Skip advanced placement and bid fine-tuning early on.
🔵 Advanced Sellers
Add these layers:
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Different ACoS targets by product
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Separate brand vs non-brand audits
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Match-type-level performance checks
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Incrementality thinking (defense vs growth)
Advanced Rule:
“Every dollar should be intentional — discovery, defense, or scale.”
Common Weekly Audit Mistakes
❌ Auditing daily
❌ Over-optimizing low data
❌ Pausing campaigns instead of fixing them
❌ Ignoring listing conversion issues
❌ Making too many changes at once
Example: A Real Weekly Audit Scenario
Problem:
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Auto campaign spending $40/day
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No sales in 7 days
Audit Actions:
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Add negatives for irrelevant terms
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Reduce auto budget
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Harvest 1 converting term to manual
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Review listing relevance
Result:
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Lower wasted spend
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Manual campaign starts converting
This article pairs well with:
Final Takeaway
Weekly PPC audits are not about perfection.
They are about:
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Control
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Consistency
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Catching problems early
If you run this checklist regularly, you’ll avoid most PPC disasters before they happen.
Please find a fillable full checklist PDF attached!