Q4 is HARD on Amazon.
CPCs spike, budgets vanish, and even 5x sales can end with $0 profit.
But one campaign that's helped me while everyone else fights for expensive clicks: Catch-All campaigns.
They work because Q4 is messy. Competitors go out of stock, out of budget, etc. When their bids disappear, auctions soften. Your ads slip in and scoop cheap clicks.
How I set them up:
• Sponsored Products → Manual
• Pull in all of Amazon’s Suggested Keywords
• Exact + Phrase (skip Broad)
• Bids at ~10% of Amazon’s suggested bid (go 5–8% in brutal niches)
• No placement multipliers
• Down Only bidding
• Small daily budget per hero ASIN (think $10–$30)
• Don’t import aggressive negatives; let it fish for soft auctions
What to expect:
• Volume is low by design
• Efficiency is excellent - think ACOS well below account average
• Blended profitability improves because these lean sales pull your overall ACOS down
• Bonus: cheap sessions that help stabilize organic rank during the surge
My cadence:
• Check 2-3x/week
• If ACOS is great and CPC is ultra low, nudge bids up 1-2¢
• If spend rises and ACOS drifts, pull back 1-2¢
• Trim any keyword with 20-30 clicks and no sales
• Later, harvest winners into your main structure at normal bids
Common ways people ruin it:
• Turning on top-of-search multipliers (now you’re overpaying)
• Using “normal” bids (this is a sniper, not a ranker)
• Over-negativing and choking discovery
• Judging it by volume instead of efficiency and blended impact
Real example: $16 ad spend → $1,500 sales (≈1% ACOS). Not every day, not every product, but often enough to matter in Q4.
Give each hero ASIN one Catch-All campaign through the holidays. It won’t create fireworks. But it will create clean, quiet profit.
How I can help:
👉 Book an Amazon strategy call.
Tools I use in my business (with discounts):
👉 Scale Insights for PPC automation (10% off for life)
👉 DataDive for in-depth keyword research ($50 off per month)
👉 Finaloop for amazingly clean bookkeeping (50% off for 3 months)
Keep building,
Evan
113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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