A perfect example of this comes from Dr. Travis Zigler, who shared the story of his own brand on an episode of Firing The Man. He built a successful eye care brand, but ran into a common problem: his advertising was driving sales, but it was eating up too much of his profit. The core issue was focusing too narrowly on his Advertising Cost of Sale (ACOS) for individual campaigns instead of his Total Advertising Cost of Sale (TACOS), which measures ad spend against all sales (both paid and organic).
His strategy wasn't just about tweaking bids or finding new keywords for his Amazon PPC campaigns. It was a fundamental shift in thinking. He started using PPC as a tool to directly influence his organic search ranking. He explained that a surge in sales from a PPC campaign sends a powerful signal to Amazon's algorithm that a product is relevant and popular. This leads to a higher organic ranking for your most important keywords. Once that organic rank improves, you start getting more “free” sales, which improves your TACOS. At that point, you can strategically pull back on your ad spend for that specific keyword, letting the organic ranking do the heavy lifting.
This approach transforms PPC from a simple sales generator into a strategic investment in your Amazon SEO. Instead of being a permanent cost center, it becomes a temporary expense used to secure a long-term organic advantage. The goal is to create a flywheel where ads boost organic rank, organic rank drives more sales, and the increased sales velocity solidifies your position, all of which allows you to reduce your reliance on paid ads over time. This is how you control TACOS and increase profitability on Amazon, creating a much more sustainable and valuable business.
For a point of contrast, Brandon Buckner's appearance on the Actualize Freedom podcast provides the next chapter to this story. While Zigler’s method is about mastering the internal Amazon ecosystem, Buckner talks about growing by driving external traffic to Amazon listings. He detailed his strategies for using Google Ads to find customers and send them to his Amazon pages. This is a more advanced technique and it only really works once you have your Amazon listing completely dialed in, just like Zigler recommends. You need a high conversion rate, great reviews, and optimized content first. Trying to send expensive external traffic to a listing that doesn't convert is a quick way to lose money.
Together, these two stories paint a complete picture of a sophisticated marketing strategy. You start by mastering the relationship between Amazon PPC and SEO to build a profitable foundation on the platform itself. Once your
