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Transcript

Bruce Lee’s Amazon PPC Lesson: Stop Swinging at Keywords That Don’t Land · Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Selling on Giants podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Mr.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Will, and today we're talking about one of the most common problems I see inside Amazon ad accounts, which is the belief that more keywords, more campaigns, more structure, and more daily adjustments somehow equal better performance.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: They usually don't, most of the time, they just create noise.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: The title of this episode is simple.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Lee didn't throw a thousand punches, so why are you running a thousand keywords?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I know that sounds dramatic, but it is exactly how a lot of Amazon accounts look when we first open them.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Campaigns stacked on campaigns, hundreds, sometimes thousands of keywords running, match types layered everywhere, auto campaigns, manual campaigns, competitor campaigns, defensive campaigns, category campaigns, placement adjustments, bid changes, and a structure that looks very impressive in a screenshot, then you look under the hood and realize a lot of it should not exist.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is where Bruce Lee's philosophy becomes more than a cool quote on a gym wall.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you read Tao of Jeet Kunudu, the whole idea is not about learning every possible move.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is about stripping away what does not work.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Lee rejected rigid systems.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: He was not interested in memorizing techniques for the sake of having more techniques.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: He cared about what worked in real situations, under pressure when it mattered.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: His line was hack away at the unessential.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is exactly how high-performing Amazon ad accounts need to be managed.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not daily increases, but daily decreases, not more for the sake of more, but better.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: That idea has influenced how I think about advertising, operations, team building, and really the way we approach marketplace management in general.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Most businesses do not break because they are missing one more tactic.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: They break because they are buried under too many things that no longer serve the outcome.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Amazon advertising is a perfect example.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Every keyword is a punch.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Every campaign is a stance.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Every bid is a decision about where you are trying to land.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are running a thousand keywords, the question becomes: are those punches landing, or are you just swinging it air and hoping something connects?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can tell you what we see all the time.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: 30 to 40% of spend going to search terms that never convert.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Multiple campaigns targeting the same query and competing internally.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Budgets diluted across low-value traffic, daily bid changes being made on unstable data, reports that look active but accounts that are not actually getting stronger.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is motion without impact.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if Bruce Lee taught anything, it is that motion is not the goal.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Effectiveness is the goal.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: The reason operators keep adding is because adding feels like control.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: When performance dips, you launch more campaigns.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: When a cost creeps up, you add more keywords.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: When sales slow, you test another tactic.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like you are doing something, and in a business where everyone wants action, doing something feels safer than cutting things out.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: But Amazon does not reward effort.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon rewards outcomes.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is the part a lot of sellers struggle with.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Effort feels good internally, but the marketplace does not care how busy you are.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It does not care how many campaigns you launched.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: It does not care how elaborate your structure is.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: It cares whether the right shopper sees the right product at the right moment and converts profitably enough for the math to make sense.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else is decoration.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the Bellivix advertising lens comes in.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the phrase we come back to constantly is context over rules.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That matters because a lot of Amazon PPC management gets reduced to rigid playbooks.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Always negate after a certain number of clicks, always scale low A costs, always cap auto spend at a certain percentage, always do this, always do that.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is not that every rule is wrong, the problem is that rules without context are lazy thinking dressed up as discipline.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have seen keywords with zero sales turned into top performers once bids were adjusted and the listing improved.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have also seen keywords burn thousands of dollars with no realistic path to conversion.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Same surface metric, completely different reality.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is why the data does not tell you what to do.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It tells you what is happening, and then you still have to think.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is where a good operator earns their keep.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we actually subtract?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing is irrelevant traffic.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the search term does not match the product, it does not belong in the account.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: No debate.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: No long philosophical discussion.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you sell a premium skincare product and the traffic is looking for something unrelated, that spend should not be treated like an experiment.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: It should be cut or negated because it is not moving the business forward.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is non-converting spend.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is where people hesitate because they do not want to cut something too early and miss a future opportunity.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that instinct, but at some point the data stops being early and starts being clear.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: If something is spending and not producing, it needs to be addressed.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: That does not always mean deleting it.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it means lowering the bid, restricting the match type, changing the placement strategy, or isolating it differently.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But doing nothing is not a strategy.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing is overlapping structure.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: More campaigns do not always mean more control.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times they mean you are bidding against yourself, confusing budget allocation, and making it harder to understand what is actually working.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: A clean structure gives each campaign a job.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: It does not create five different campaigns all chasing the same customer with slightly different names.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth thing is low-value tactics.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not everything deserves budget because it exists inside an Amazon ad console.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: If competitor targeting consistently underperforms, stop pretending it is strategic because someone once told you conquesting matters.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: If a tactic cannot support the business objective, it does not get more time just because it sounds smart.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: It gets removed or resized.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: The fifth thing is over-optimization.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this one is subtle because it feels productive.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Daily changes feel like work.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: They feel like someone is paying attention.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is that if the data has not matured, you are not responding to trends.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: You are reacting to noise.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the best move is to leave the account alone long enough for the signal to become clear.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: That is hard for operators because restraint does not always feel like action.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: But restraint is often what separates discipline from panic.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Once you start removing the noise, what remains is usually much simpler and much more effective.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: You keep high-intent keywords that actually convert.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: You keep clear campaign roles tied to specific business goals.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: You keep bidding based on real math, not guesswork.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: You keep focus on non-brand growth, not just defending the easy branded traffic that was probably going to convert anyway.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You keep decisions grounded in context.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where Bruce Lee's idea of simplified execution really lands.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was not trying to win by knowing the most moves.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: He was trying to win by using the right movement at the right time.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is how we think about bidding.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not endless rules, not complicated playbooks for the sake of sounding sophisticated.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just four basic situations that require clear action.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: If A cost is high, we bid down based on the economics and the revenue per click.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: If spend is high with no sales, we get conservative and tie the bid back to average order value and realistic conversion expectations.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: If A cost is low, we scale gradually, not aggressively, because a profitable keyword can become unprofitable very quickly when you push it too hard.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: If visibility is low but the opportunity is real, we increase bids to gain access to traffic.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Simple, adaptable, effective.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: That does not mean easy.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Simple and easy are not the same thing.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Simple means the logic is clear.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Easy means anyone can do it well, and that is usually not true.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: The hard part is judgment.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because every account is different, different margins, different competition, different life cycle stage, different review count, different price point, different organic rank, different category behavior.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: That means the same tactic can be smart in one account and stupid in another.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Lee talked about being like water, and people love quoting that line because it sounds cool, but the practical meaning is adaptability.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Water takes the shape of its container.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: It responds to the environment.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It does not force one rigid form everywhere it goes.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most ad accounts are the opposite.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Templates get followed even when they stop working.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Campaign structures get preserved because they are familiar, not because they are effective.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Reporting gets built around what the team is used to seeing, not what the business actually needs to understand.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is not strategy.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: That is inertia.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: A better account behaves more like water.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It adapts to the product, the category, the margin profile, the competition, and the customer.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: It still has structure, but the structure serves the outcome instead of becoming the outcome.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: This applies beyond advertising too.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: More tools do not fix a broken process.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: More hires do not fix unclear leadership.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: More meetings do not fix poor communication.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: More reports do not fix weak decision making.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: More effort does not fix bad direction.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You do not scale by stacking complexity.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You scale by focusing on what matters and removing what does not.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is one of the things we spend a lot of time on at Bellavics.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of brands come to us with accounts that are not necessarily undermanaged, they are overlayered, too many campaigns, too many unclear priorities, too much spend leaking into areas no one has challenged in months.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The work is not always about adding a brilliant new tactic.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the work is having the discipline to say, this does not belong here anymore.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Bellivix has helped brands generate over$500 million on Amazon, and we are a verified ad partner.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the real value is not just access to tools or ad structures, it is operator judgment.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is knowing when to push, when to pull back, when to cut, and when to leave the account alone long enough for the data to mean something.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: If your Amazon ad account feels busy but not sharp, or if your team is managing a lot of activity without clear performance improvement, you can learn more at Bellovix.com.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about what happens when you actually apply this subtraction mindset.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing that happens is the account gets easier to understand.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds simple, but it is powerful.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: When you remove wasted spend, overlapping campaigns, irrelevant traffic, and unnecessary complexity, the signal gets clearer.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can see what is actually driving growth.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can see where conversion is strong.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can see which keywords deserve more budget and which ones were just absorbing spend because nobody wanted to touch them.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that happens is budget starts working harder.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: You do not always need more spend to grow.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you need the existing spend to stop doing dumb things.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you remove budget from search terms that never convert and reallocate it toward keywords that already show intent, revenue can improve without increasing total spend.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is the part sellers miss.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Performance can improve without adding anything new.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know that is not as exciting as launching a shiny new campaign type, but it is usually more profitable.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing that happens is decision making speeds up.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Complexity slows teams down because every decision requires more interpretation.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: When the account is simplified, the team can move faster because the structure is cleaner, the campaign roles are clearer, and the data is easier to trust.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: That matters because Amazon does not sit still.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Competitors move, CPCs change, conversion shifts, inventory affects momentum, pricing changes behavior.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: If your account is too bloated to understand quickly, you are already behind.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is why simplicity scales and complexity breaks.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: The more moving parts you have, the harder it is to identify what is working, fix what is not, and move quickly when conditions change.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And most brands do not realize their account is too complex until something breaks and nobody can explain why.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the takeaway is not that keywords are bad.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Keywords are essential.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Campaigns are essential.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Structure is essential.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is that everything in the account needs to earn its place.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: You do not need more keywords.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You need better ones.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: You do not need more campaigns.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: You need clearer ones.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: You do not need more strategy stacked on top of a cluttered system.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: You need less of what is not working.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So take a look at your account and ask a different question.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not what can we add, but what can we remove?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: What traffic does not belong here?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: What spend is not earning its place?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: What campaign exists because of habit?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: What rule are we following without understanding why?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: What are we changing too often?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: What are we protecting because it used to work, even though it does not work anymore?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is where the opportunity usually is.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Lee did not win because he knew more moves.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: He won because he stripped away the moves that did not matter and kept what worked under pressure.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your ad account works the same way.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is simple.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are you throwing punches that land, or are you just hoping one eventually does?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this episode of the Selling on Giants podcast.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: If this gave you a better way to think about Amazon PPC, keyword stuffing, or the way your team manages complexity, share it with another founder, operator, or ad manager who needs to hear it.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are getting value from the show, I'd appreciate a quick review.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us reach more sellers who are trying to build smarter, cleaner, and more profitable marketplace businesses.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Mr.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Will, host of the Selling on Giants podcast.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening and keep moving forward.