Your best PPC keyword is probably sitting in your pause pile right now
By Steven Pope · July 2, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Your best PPC keyword is probably sitting in your pause pile right now
Sellers kill winning campaigns every single day
because they only look at the first sale
That is amateur hour
Your ACoS report shows you one transaction
It does not show you the customer who keeps coming back
Month after month, ordering again and again
Judge a campaign on day one and you will pause
the exact keywords paying your bills
A high ACoS on the first order looks like a loss
But that buyer signs up for Subscribe and Save
and comes back five times
Your real acquisition cost just collapsed
The keyword you nearly killed was your moneymaker
They run their entire PPC strategy on a number
that ignores repeat buyers
They chase break even on order one
Pat themselves on the back
Then wonder why growth flatlines
CAC is what you pay to win the customer
LTV is what that customer pays you back
Track the wrong one and you are flying blind
So track this instead
Repeat purchase rate by campaign
Pull your Subscribe and Save data
Your Brand Analytics repeat buyer report
Find the campaigns that bring people back
not the ones that look pretty on day one
Lifetime value by keyword
Some search terms pull in one and done shoppers
Others pull in buyers who restock every month
Same ACoS
Completely different value
Bid like you know the difference
Profit over time, not profit per order
Pick your window and measure the full customer
not a single click
PPC is not a vending machine
Where you drop a dollar and judge
The candy that falls out
It is the front door to a relationship
Winners spend to acquire
Then bank the reorders
Everyone else stares at the first sale and calls it strategy
Spend for the second purchase
Not just the first