5 Bible covers nobody was working on: orders from 2.9 a day to 7

A seller of Bible covers had 5 covers making $47 a day, with most of them getting almost no ads. A month after the growth agent took them over, they made $106 a day over the last 2 weeks, leaving out one order of 20 covers. Orders went from 2.9 a day to 7.0, and ACoS went from 43% to 36%. Searches for these covers fell 13% over the same weeks, and last year the same covers went from $115 a day to $104 over the same stretch.

Superfuel runs a growth agent on Amazon brands' ads, prices, listings and images, and logs every change with why, what it expects and when it checks. Here's what it did on these 5 covers, how it checked its own work, and what it's doing next.

The 5 covers

4 are women's covers and 1 is a blue jean canvas cover for men, all at about $14 to $19. The seller asked for a 40% ACoS.

3 of the 4 women's covers had no ads at all. They had stock that would last a long time at their pace: 153 days on one, 248 and 267 days on two others. One of them, a women's cover with a printed verse, sold 102 units last October. By 17 Oct this year it had sold 7.

The women's covers also turned only about 2 in 100 ad clicks into orders, so at the seller's 40% goal a click could cost only about $0.11.

The agent made 79 changes on 22 days: 43 on ads, 25 on the listings, 9 on images and 2 on price.

Week 1: test the biggest searches, with a stop rule

10 Oct, ads. The biggest women's searches had no keyword from this seller: "bible cover case for women" (search volume about 63,200 a month), "bible cases for woman" (31,200) and "bible covers for women" (30,400). Shoppers were already finding these covers on some of them without ads, and the 3 women's covers with no ads had sold about $915 in 4 weeks, mostly without ad support. So the agent opened an exact campaign on the 6 biggest women's searches, and set a stop rule before launch.

12 Oct, ads. The 6 searches took 115 clicks and $27.85 in 3 days, with no order. Sessions to the women's covers went from about 54 a day to 78, but sales didn't move. The agent paused all 6, as the stop rule said.

Week 2: a cheap route for the covers that had stock

21 Oct, ads. 2 women's covers had plenty of stock and no ad clicks in 4 weeks: the verse cover, with 109 units, and a large leather-look cover, with 69. So the agent put just these 2 covers in a small automatic campaign at $0.16 a click, $5 a day. The upside it went after: the verse cover alone sold 102 units last October, about $1,600 of sales, against 7 by mid-October this year.

In the week to 1 Nov, this campaign brought 15 orders for $25 of ads, $230 of sales at 11% ACoS. By 8 Nov it had 26 orders on 379 clicks at 15% ACoS, well under the seller's 40%. The purple cover joined it on 28 Oct.

26 to 29 Oct, images and listing. New image sets went live on all 5 covers, each image answering one question shoppers ask before they buy, with the 2 size images first, since "Will my Bible fit?" is the top question. The listings were rewritten around fit for the same reason.

What it changed after checking the results

19 Oct, ads: checked its own 12 Oct pause. Orders kept arriving after those clicks. 2 had come in: 1 on "bible cover case for women" and 1 on "bible case for women". It turned those 2 back on at a lower bid that fits the seller's 40% goal, and kept the other 4 off, since they had 49 clicks and no order. At $0.16, the 2 searches have since sold at 31% to 39% ACoS, inside the seller's goal.

2 Nov, ads: checked its top of search test on the floral cover. It had tried the floral women's cover at top of search on 2 big searches. After 51 clicks it had 1 order at 110% ACoS, past the stop it set before launch. It paused the test and kept the floral cover on the 2 women's searches that sell at 31% to 35%.

4 Nov, ads: checked the shared women's campaign. The floral cover was taking 102 of the campaign's 119 clicks for 1 order, while the large leather-look and purple covers took 17 clicks for 3 orders. It took the floral cover out, so the 2 covers that convert get those clicks, and gave the floral cover its own small automatic campaign.

4 Nov, ads: checked the automatic campaign's budget. It had spent its whole $5 on 31 Oct, 1 Nov and 2 Nov at 11% ACoS, so it raised the budget to $6.50 a day. On 8 Nov it raised bids on its 3 biggest groups, since they sold at 16% to 18% ACoS against the seller's 40%.

Where the growth came from

Sessions went from 71 a day to 156. Ad orders went from 13 to 44 in 2 weeks, and the orders that didn't come through ads went from 28 to 54, while searches for these covers fell 13%. So the ads brought new shoppers, and more of the covers' sales came without ads too.

The growth is spread across the covers, not one product: in the week to 8 Nov, all 5 sold. The large leather-look cover went from $2 a day to $32, the verse cover from $7 to $15, and the purple cover from $3 to $17. One order of 20 covers on 31 Oct is left out of the $106 a day.

What it plans next

Men's and floral covers, ads. Cap their bids at what a click can earn back on each cover, and move that money to the searches that already sell, like the exact "bible case" keyword for the large leather-look cover, which runs at 17% ACoS.

Large leather-look cover, listing. Find out why more of its units come back, since its returns are mostly "not compatible": the Bible didn't fit. Fit is already the first thing its images and listing answer.

Men's cover, price. Move it from $15.99 to $16.99, so each sale keeps more, since it sold more a day at $16.99 before and it's deeper than every similar cover listed.

What works, what doesn't, and why

• A cheap automatic campaign is the right first ad for products with stock and no traffic. It started with 2 covers that had no ad clicks in 4 weeks and took 26 orders on 379 clicks at 15% ACoS, because automatic targeting finds the long searches and product pages where a low-converting product still sells.
• The biggest searches don't pay when only 2 in 100 clicks buy. 115 clicks on the 6 biggest women's searches brought no order in 3 days, because at that conversion a click can cost about $0.11 and these cost $0.24.
• Wait for late orders before you call a search dead. 2 of the 6 paused searches had orders arrive in the week after, and at a lower bid they now sell at 31% to 39% ACoS.
• One product can eat a shared campaign. The floral cover took 102 of 119 clicks for 1 order, so the covers that convert got 17. Give it its own campaign.

Which of your products has stock for months and no ad of its own?