Food & Beverage on Amazon
Amazon PPC for Food and Beverage Brands That Have Outgrown Generic Ad Management
SellTru manages Amazon advertising for food, beverage, and CPG brands doing $500K to $10M. Seasonality planning, Subscribe & Save strategy, and campaign structures built around CPG category realities, not copied from a software or electronics playbook.
The Real Problem
Most Amazon Agencies Run Food Brands Like Electronics Brands
The CPG category has its own rules. Agencies that don't know them burn your budget learning on your account.
No seasonality planning. Food and beverage demand is seasonal in ways most agencies never account for. Summer beverage spikes, holiday gifting windows, January health resets, grilling season. Agencies running static budgets and static bids through all of it are leaving peak revenue on the table. By the time they react to a demand spike, the best placements are already owned by competitors who planned ahead.
Subscribe & Save treated as an afterthought. For a consumable brand, the difference between a one-time buyer and a subscribed customer is the difference between a $30 sale and a $360 annual customer. Most agencies optimize for purchase conversion and stop there. They're not thinking about keyword intent signals that indicate Subscribe & Save likelihood, or how to structure campaigns that maximize subscriber acquisition, not just first-order ROAS.
Generic campaign structure that ignores CPG shelf dynamics. Food categories are brutally competitive at the keyword level. Top generic terms like "protein bars" or "olive oil" have CPCs that make profitability nearly impossible without a precise structure. The brands that win aren't necessarily outbidding competitors on broad terms, they're winning on specific, high-converting long-tail keywords and defending their brand search while competitors try to conquest them.
What We Manage
Full Amazon Advertising, Built for CPG
Every ad type, managed together, with a strategy that reflects how food buyers actually shop on Amazon.
Sponsored Products
The core Amazon PPC format. We build campaign structures segmented by keyword intent, match type, and product category. Auto campaigns for discovery, exact campaigns for profitable keywords, and ASIN targeting for competitor shelf conquest. Weekly bid management, not monthly check-ins.
Sponsored Brands
Brand-level placements at the top of Amazon search. Critical for food brands in crowded categories because they reinforce brand recognition alongside purchase intent. We handle headline copy, store page routing, and product selection to maximize click-through on these high-visibility placements.
Subscribe & Save Strategy
For consumable brands, Subscribe & Save subscriber count is one of the most important metrics on the account. We build campaigns specifically aimed at converting first-time buyers into subscribers, using keyword selection, product page alignment, and pricing strategy to maximize subscription conversion rate.
Seasonal Planning
We build a full seasonal budget and bid plan at the start of each engagement. Every major CPG demand window, 6 to 8 weeks out, gets a campaign plan with increased budgets, refreshed creative, and keyword additions targeting seasonal intent. You're set up before the spike, not scrambling during it.
Search Term Mining
We pull search term reports every week. High-converting terms get harvested into exact match campaigns. Irrelevant terms get negated immediately. For food brands in competitive categories, this ongoing process is the difference between a campaign that gets more efficient over time and one that bleeds budget indefinitely.
Monthly Reporting
Clear monthly performance reports showing ROAS, TACoS, revenue trend, ad spend efficiency, and Subscribe & Save impact. No vanity metrics. Just the numbers that tell you whether the account is moving in the right direction and what we're doing next.
How We Run It
The 90-Day Amazon PPC Process for Food Brands
Every engagement starts with a full audit of what's currently running and why it's performing the way it is.
Days 1–14: Full Account Audit
We pull your campaign data, search term reports, bid history, wasted spend, and product listing quality. For food brands we pay specific attention to seasonal spend patterns, Subscribe & Save conversion rates, and keyword gaps in long-tail product-specific terms. You get a written findings doc before we touch anything in the account.
Days 14–30: Rebuild Campaign Structure
We rebuild the campaign architecture from scratch or restructure what exists. Separate campaigns by match type, ad groups segmented by product line and keyword intent, Sponsored Brands campaigns for brand defense and category conquest, and negative keyword lists built from day one using your existing search term data.
Days 30–60: Baseline and Initial Optimization
With clean structure running, we let campaigns gather data. Weekly: search term pulls, negative additions, bid adjustments on keywords with enough data. Month-end: review by campaign type, budget pacing, TACoS trend. First optimization report at day 45. We also finalize the seasonal budget plan for the next demand window.
Days 60–90 and Ongoing: Scale What Works
By day 60 you have real data. We identify which keywords and campaign types are driving the best ROAS, which products have conversion rates worth scaling spend behind, and where Subscribe & Save acquisition is happening. We flag listing and main image gaps capping ad performance, because great campaigns can't overcome a weak product page.
Why SellTru
We're Not a Generic Amazon Agency Running Your Category as One of 40
Food and beverage is a category that rewards specificity. Generic ad management produces generic results.
Seasonality built into strategy from day one
We build seasonal budget plans 6 to 8 weeks ahead of every major CPG demand window: holiday gifting, summer beverage demand, January health resets, grilling season. By the time competitors are scrambling to increase budgets during a spike, your campaigns are already fully optimized and capturing the demand.
Subscribe & Save tracked as a top-line metric
For consumable brands, a subscribed customer is worth 3 to 5 times more than a one-time buyer. Most agencies optimize for first-order ROAS and stop there. We track subscriber acquisition alongside ROAS and TACoS because that's where the real LTV lives for food and beverage brands.
Flat retainer, not percentage of spend
We charge a flat monthly fee, not a percentage of ad spend. Our incentive is to get you the best ROAS, not to run your budget up. Percentage-of-spend pricing creates a structural conflict of interest we don't have.
Weekly management, monthly reporting
We review every active account every week. A competitor price drop, a trending ingredient, or a category shift can change keyword competitiveness in days. Weekly management catches these shifts before they become expensive problems.
One account manager, not a handoff chain
You work with one person who knows your account, your product line, and your margins. Not a sales rep who closed you and a junior analyst who runs the account. The person doing your weekly optimization is the person on your monthly calls.
Honest audits before any commitment
We audit your account before you decide whether to work with us. You see exactly where the budget is going, what's working, and what we'd do differently. The audit is the proof of expertise, not a pitch deck with stock photos.
Common Questions
Amazon PPC for Food Brands: What We Get Asked
Free Audit
Find Out What Your Amazon Campaigns Are Actually Costing You
We'll pull up your current campaigns, search term reports, and Subscribe & Save data, and show you exactly where the budget is going and what it should be doing instead. No pitch deck. No obligation.
For qualifying food and beverage brands doing $500K+ on Amazon
Related Resources
Amazon PPC for CPG Brands Guide →
Category-specific strategy for food and beverage brands on Amazon
Full Amazon Agency Services →
PPC, listing optimization, and full account management
Amazon Agency Pricing →
What Amazon agencies actually cost and how to evaluate them
How to Reduce Amazon ACoS →
The systematic approach to cutting wasted ad spend