How to Lower Your Amazon ACoS Without Killing Your Sales

Every seller wants a lower ACoS. But if you just slash bids and pause everything that looks “expensive,” you usually end up with something worse than a high ACoS: no sales and no growth.

The real challenge is this: How do you reduce ACoS while keeping (or even growing) your revenue?

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In this article, we’ll walk through a structured way to bring ACoS down strategically, without suffocating your best keywords or ruining ranking momentum.

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Step 1: Know Your Numbers – Break-Even and Target ACoS

Before touching bids, you need to understand where “too high” actually starts. That means calculating:

• Break-even ACoS – the ACoS where you make zero profit (you’re not losing money, but not earning either).
• Target ACoS – the ACoS that gives you the profit margin you actually want.

Simple way to think about it:

• If your ACoS is above break-even → you’re losing money (unless you’re in launch/ranking mode and doing it intentionally).
• If your ACoS is between break-even and target → acceptable, but you might be able to do better.
• If your ACoS is below target → good, maybe even a signal to scale that keyword/campaign.

Without these two numbers, you’re just guessing which ACoS is “bad” and which is “actually okay”.

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Step 2: Stop the Bleeding – Fix Obvious Leaks First

Don’t start by lowering all bids 20%. Instead, fix the obvious leaks that drive up spend without bringing sales.

1. Audit Search Terms (Not Just Keywords)

High ACoS often hides in search terms, not the keyword itself. Look at your search term report and find:

• Queries with many clicks and zero sales.
• Queries with very high ACoS (far above your break-even).
• Irrelevant queries (wrong intent, wrong product type, different use-case).

Actions:

• Add obvious losers as negative keywords (exact or phrase).
• Lower bids on broad or phrase keywords that trigger too many irrelevant queries.

2. Remove Bad ASIN Targets

In product targeting campaigns, some ASINs simply don’t convert for you. Maybe they’re too cheap, too different, or way stronger on reviews and social proof.

Actions:

• Identify product targets with high spend and weak or zero sales.
• Pause the worst ones or reduce their bids significantly.

You’ll be surprised how much ACoS improves just by removing these obvious drains.

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Step 3: Separate High-Intent and Low-Intent Traffic

Not all clicks are equal. Some people are ready to buy right now. Others are just browsing. If you mix these in one campaign, your ACoS will always look chaotic.

High-intent keywords usually look like:

• Very specific (long-tail)
• Include size, color, material, or exact model
• Include “for [use case]” or a clear problem

Low-intent keywords usually look like:

• Super generic, 1–2 word searches
• Broad category terms (e.g. “pillow”, “t-shirt”, “charger”)
• Very vague or informational intent

Strategy:

• Group high-intent keywords into their own “performance” campaigns with tighter ACoS targets.
• Keep generic/low-intent keywords in separate campaigns, often with lower bids and a higher ACoS tolerance.

This way, your best traffic gets the budget and bid focus it deserves, and you don’t let generic searches ruin your ACoS.

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Step 4: Use Match Types and Bids Intelligently

Match types are powerful levers for both ACoS and volume. A simple restructure often improves results without changing total budget.

General Roles for Match Types

• Exact match: Best control over ACoS; ideal for high-performing search terms you already know work.
• Phrase match: Good balance between control and discovery; can still generate new variations.
• Broad match / auto campaigns: Discovery machines; great for finding new search terms but ACoS can spike if not managed.

Simple, effective structure:

• Run auto/broad for discovery → regularly harvest good terms.
• Move proven converting search terms into exact match campaigns.
• Set higher bids on exact, **lower bids** on broad/auto.

This alone can drop ACoS, because your highest bids are now focused on keywords that are already proven winners.

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Step 5: Tweak Placements and Budgets Instead of “Killing” Campaigns

Sometimes ACoS is not bad because of the keyword itself, but because you’re overpaying for certain placements or letting the campaign burn through budget at the wrong times.

1. Placement Adjustments

Look at performance by placement:

• Top of Search – usually has higher CTR and better conversion, but also higher CPC.
• Product Pages – can work great for some products, terrible for others.
• Rest of Search – often cheaper, sometimes lower conversion.

Actions:

• Reduce placement multipliers where ACoS is consistently high.
• Increase multipliers for placements with strong conversion and acceptable ACoS.

2. Budget & Dayparting Logic

If your campaigns hit budget caps too early in the day, you may be missing cheaper conversions that happen later. On the other hand, if performance is bad at certain hours, you’re wasting money.

Ideas:

• Make sure top-performing campaigns don’t constantly go out of budget.
• Consider lowering bids or budgets on consistently weak campaigns instead of just pausing everything.
• If you use dayparting tools, reduce bids in low-performing times instead of cutting traffic completely.

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Step 6: Fix the Real Conversion Problem – Your Listing

Sometimes the ads aren’t the issue at all. The problem is the listing. If your product page doesn’t convert, ACoS will always suffer.

Check the basics:

• Main image: Clear, high-quality, stands out in search; product is obvious at a glance.
• Price: Competitive for your category and review level.
• Reviews: Star rating and review count high enough to compete.
• Title & bullets: Clear benefits, not just keyword stuffing.
• A+ Content: Visual explanation of benefits, use cases, and differentiation.

If your conversion rate is weak, every click will feel expensive. Improving the listing often reduces ACoS more than any bid tweak.

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Step 7: Use the Right Date Ranges and Enough Data

One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is adjusting bids based on too little data. A keyword with 3 clicks and no sales is not “bad”; it’s just not tested yet.

Good habits:

• Always look at at least 7–14 days of data for normal decisions, more for lower-traffic products.
• Use a minimum click threshold before you judge a keyword, such as:
  • 20–30 clicks with no sales → consider lowering bid or pausing.
• Compare short-term (last 7 days) vs longer-term (30–60 days) trends.

This helps you avoid overreacting to a few bad days and destroying campaigns that are actually fine overall.

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Putting It All Together: A Simple ACoS Optimization Routine

You can turn everything above into a weekly routine:

1. Check your current ACoS vs break-even and target per campaign.
2. Fix obvious leaks – bad search terms and non-converting ASIN targets.
3. Harvest winners from auto/broad into exact match performance campaigns.
4. Adjust bids based on ACoS, conversion rate, and click volume.
5. Fine-tune placements & budgets instead of just pausing campaigns.
6. Review listings for low-converting products and improve images, copy, and price.

Done consistently, this approach lowers ACoS in a sustainable way—without killing the very traffic that brings you sales, ranking, and long-term growth.