Overview
A premium snack brand had been selling on Amazon for over seven years when the engagement started. The account was profitable but plateauing. Revenue had stopped growing year over year. The previous agency was running the account using a high-spend, broad-keyword approach that worked when the brand was scaling but had become inefficient as the catalog matured.
The thesis on intake was that the account didn't need more spend. It needed less. Specifically: fewer, better-targeted campaigns. Stronger negative keyword discipline. Reallocation away from non-converting traffic toward branded defense and proven keywords. The hypothesis was that organic sales would grow as paid sales became more efficient and listings climbed organic rankings.
Over 12 months, the account added $1.9 million in organic sales while reducing PPC spend by 44 percent. TACOS dropped from 5.5 percent to 2.8 percent. ACOS dropped from 15.7 percent to 11.3 percent. The brand's contribution margin on Amazon improved meaningfully without sacrificing revenue.
This case study is about what happens when a mature account gets disciplined diagnostic work instead of more aggressive ad spending. It's the opposite of the launch playbook.
Where the account was
Seven years on Amazon. Established category presence. Profitable but stagnant. The brand had grown a catalog across multiple snack lines and reached the kind of scale where revenue had stopped accelerating year over year. The previous agency was running the account with high PPC spend and broad keyword coverage that had become inefficient as the catalog matured.
The numbers looked healthy at first glance. TACOS at 5.5 percent. ACOS at 15.7 percent. Annual PPC spend was approximately $721,000. The structural picture underneath told a different story.
PPC spend had grown year over year as the agency tried to maintain revenue against increasing competition. Branded campaigns were unmanaged and under-funded. Non-branded campaigns were running broadly across hundreds of keywords without intent-based segmentation. The catalog had a clear top-performer concentration: a handful of SKUs were driving most of the revenue, with the rest sitting in low-single-digit conversion rates.
The previous agency framed the situation as steady-state success. The brand owner felt growth had stalled but couldn't articulate why.
What was broken
The diagnostic surfaced four specific structural issues.
- Broad-match non-branded spend leak. Approximately 35 percent of PPC spend was going to non-converting search terms across the long tail. No structured negative keyword review had been run in over a year.
- Branded keyword neglect. The brand's own name and product line terms were generating high-ROAS sales but were underfunded relative to non-brand acquisition. Branded campaigns ran in the same portfolio as non-brand, making efficiency comparisons impossible.
- Catalog underperformer drift. The bottom 60 percent of SKUs by revenue were converting at 2-4 percent while top performers ran at 12-16 percent. Listing quality on the underperformers had not been updated in 18 months.
- No portfolio structure by intent. All campaigns were in a single portfolio. The data couldn't be analyzed by brand defense vs. acquisition vs. catalog expansion because nothing was sorted that way.
What we changed
The interventions ran across four work streams.
Spend reallocation and negative keyword discipline
Audited every active campaign. Identified the non-converting search term spend leak. Built a comprehensive negative keyword list. Reduced broad-match exposure substantially. Reallocated freed budget toward branded campaigns and proven non-brand keywords with strong conversion history.
The result was significant. PPC spending dropped from approximately $721,000 annually to approximately $399,000 annually, a 44.65 percent reduction, while revenue continued to grow.
Portfolio restructure
Separated all campaigns into intent-labeled portfolios: Branded Defense, Non-Brand Acquisition, Hero ASIN Scale, Catalog Expansion, Competitor Conquest. This made every subsequent diagnostic possible. Branded ROAS could finally be measured separately. Non-brand efficiency became visible. Hero ASIN performance could be tracked without being averaged against tail SKU performance.
Catalog underperformer lift
Identified the elements driving top performers' conversion rates (image hierarchy, A+ content depth, review concentration, pricing relative to category). Ported these elements down the catalog one SKU at a time. The lifted SKUs saw conversion rate improvements that contributed to the overall organic sales growth of $1.9 million.
Branded campaign discipline
Built structured branded campaigns at the brand name, product line, and product category level. Funded them appropriately based on their ROAS profile. Branded campaigns became a meaningful share of total ad-attributed revenue without diluting non-brand performance.
PPC spend vs. organic sales growth
Annual PPC spend before and after engagement, with organic sales growth across the period. PPC spend reduced 44.65 percent while organic sales grew $1.9M.
PPC spend nearly halved while the organic engine added $1.9 million in sales. The point of the comparison isn't the absolute numbers. It's the directional inversion. Spend went down. Organic went up. That's the diagnostic shape we wanted.
Summary metrics
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual PPC Spend | $721,045 | $399,095 | -44.65% |
| TACOS | 5.50% | 2.80% | -49% |
| ACOS | 15.69% | 11.30% | -28% |
| Organic Sales Growth (period) | – | +$1,900,000 | – |
Results
- Organic sales grew $1.9 million across the engagement
- PPC spend reduced 44.65 percent (from approximately $721,045 to $399,095 annually)
- TACOS improved from 5.50 percent to 2.80 percent (a 49 percent reduction)
- ACOS improved from 15.69 percent to 11.30 percent (a 28 percent reduction)
- Multiple ASINs achieved best-seller status in their categories
- The account became more profitable with less spending
What we learned
Mature accounts often need less spending, not more. The default assumption that growth requires more budget breaks down once an account reaches catalog density and category presence. At that point, the unit of leverage is efficiency, not volume.
Negative keyword discipline is the most undervalued lever in the agency playbook. The leak is invisible in account-level reports but compounds month over month. A structured monthly negative keyword review is the cheapest, highest-ROI thing most accounts can do.
Portfolio structure by intent is the foundation everything else builds on. Without it, every analysis is blended and every recommendation is partial. With it, the diagnostic questions become specific and the answers become actionable.
Lifting the bottom 60 percent of the catalog matters more than optimizing the top 10 percent. The top performers are already doing what they can. The opportunity is in the long tail that's been ignored.
The right framing for mature accounts is "doing more with less," not "growing through spend." Brands and agencies that internalize this find compounding efficiency gains.
Detailed monthly performance data is available on request to qualified prospects.