3 weeks into my Amazon launch (beauty/personal care, $17.99): ads at 87% ACOS, ~7% conversion. What would you change?
Looking for honest feedback from people who've launched in beauty/personal care. I'm about 3 weeks in and I want to make sure I'm not wasting money.
THE PRODUCT
A small, single-SKU beauty/personal care product. FBA, US marketplace. Listed at $17.99. COGS is $2.70 landed, FBA + referral fees are $6.56, so about $8.73 profit per sale before ads. Currently 13 reviews, 4.5 stars.
LAUNCH
I used Vine for the first batch of units, so my first week of "sales" isn't real demand. Real, paid orders since then: 8.
ADS (Sponsored Products, \~$20/day budget per campaign, started Sept 17)
\- Auto, Manual (exact/phrase/broad), and Product Targeting (competitor ASINs)
\- Lifetime: $94 spend, 88 clicks, \~$1.07 CPC, 6 ad orders, \~$108 ad sales
\- Ad ROAS 1.14 / ACOS 87%. Total ACOS including organic is around 65%
\- Break-even for me is about 48% ACOS (ROAS \~2.06)
\- Click to order is about 7%. Listing conversion in Business Reports is roughly 6 to 9%
\- Best campaign: Manual (ROAS \~1.7). Worst: Product Targeting (ROAS \~0.6)
WHAT I'VE ALREADY DONE
\- Added negative keywords for unrelated products and for variants I don't sell
\- Paused competitor ASIN targets that spent with zero sales
\- Raised the bid on my best exact keyword to $1.55
\- Top-of-search bid adjustments: 10% on PT, 25% Auto, 50% Manual
\- Rewrote title, bullets, and backend terms, and I'm building A+ content now
\- Ran a 15% coupon (redeemed once so far)
WHERE I'M STUCK
- Price: a friend says I'm underpriced. The bigger brands in my category charge $22 to $30 for a comparable size, while the cheap small ones are $8 to $10. I'm thinking of testing $21.99 to $22.99. Should I wait for reviews first, or test now?
- Prime event timing: it's Prime deal days right now. I'm leaving my price alone until it ends, because I don't want to test during deal-hunter traffic or confuse my coupon. Is that right, or should I raise the price during the event while traffic is high?
- How many real reviews do you want before you scale ad spend? I'm at \[X\].
- Is $1.00+ CPC realistic for this category, or am I bidding too high? Amazon's suggested bids for my main terms are $1.50 to $3.
- Is Product Targeting worth keeping at this stage, or should I put that budget into Manual/Exact?
- Any tools or guides you'd recommend for keyword research? I scraped autocomplete and page-1 results, but I don't have search volume data yet.
- What would you focus on in the next 2 weeks?
I'm not promoting anything. I'd rather hear what you got wrong in your own launch. Thanks in advance for any tips or links to good guides.