Strategic SKU Prioritisation for Large Amazon Catalogues: Why Selective Investment Wins

Managing large Amazon catalogues is a complex task. Activating advertising across the entire product range at once is rarely beneficial. Instead, businesses with varied product portfolios typically achieve much stronger performance by concentrating advertising spend. This investment should focus on the SKUs that deliver the highest commercial contribution and the clearest relevance signals. It should also target products with the strongest potential for improved ranking.

External agencies often inherit accounts with excessively dispersed spending. This approach dilutes signals, results in weak conversion metrics, and delays progress across the most important categories. Therefore, effective catalogue growth necessitates establishing leaders first. Only after this initial step should expansion proceed in structured waves.

The Commercial Importance of Prioritisation

In most product catalogues, only a select few products possess the necessary margin structure, conversion potential, demand indicators, and competitive viability to achieve high rankings. Consequently, these specific SKUs form the foundation for sustainable growth. Once Amazon recognises their importance and these items gain significant traction for key keywords, they naturally generate better visibility across the broader assortment. This positive influence stems from strengthened customer intent signals, improved product contribution, and the overall cumulative effect of increased engagement with related products.

Depth Before Breadth

Focusing investment allows the Amazon algorithm to clearly identify which SKUs deserve visibility. By concentrating spending on commercially viable products, businesses provide the algorithm with clear, consistent signals. These signals relate to relevancy, customer behaviour, and conversion. As a result, this method helps improve rankings for high-intent search terms and makes advertising performance more stable.

Furthermore, once these SKUs achieve stability, they often generate a “halo effect”. This benefit extends to variations, complementary products, and related categories, regardless of whether a brand uses direct sales or distribution partners.

Conversion Readiness Is a Prerequisite for Scale

Catalogues often experience underperformance in advertising when retail readiness issues hinder strong conversion. For instance, small deficiencies in content sequencing, comparative pricing, customer reviews, or variation structures can significantly limit ranking momentum. Therefore, establishing conversion quality and ensuring category alignment is vital before significantly increasing advertising spend. This approach ensures that investment in the future leads to genuine incremental performance, preventing inefficiency or stagnation.

Scaling in Waves Supports Long-Term Profitability

Once the leading Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) show stable ranking and predictable sales contribution, the catalogue can be expanded systematically. This involves introducing additional SKUs in controlled, structured phases.

This staged approach helps control the Total Advertising Cost of Sales (TACoS) and ensures the budget is distributed effectively. Furthermore, it helps maintain ranking stability across the entire product portfolio. By implementing this method, higher-intent items can support lower-volume or new products, ultimately protecting overall commercial returns.

Market Rocket’s Role in Large Catalogue Strategy

Market Rocket assists brands by assessing their catalogue’s complexity, margin tiers, demand indicators, and the size of category opportunities. This work allows for the identification of which products should receive the most investment. It also helps determine how quickly the product range can be scaled and where the most sustainable long-term contribution gains are achievable. Therefore, a strategic prioritisation model offers brands with large catalogues both clarity and structure. This reduces risk while accelerating sustainable growth.

Want to see your Amazon performance skyrocket?  Book a call with our team or email us at amazon@marketrocket.co.uk to take your brand to the next level.