The Marko Playbook
How to make more money with Marko.
Marko helps Amazon brands make more money when you give him the right inputs, the right guardrails, and enough autonomy to handle routine PPC work every day. He is not just a chat assistant. He runs a native operating rhythm, works inside hard safety limits, and is designed to show you what he is doing, why he is doing it, and when he is not ready to act.
Table of contents
- 01Start with the setup that unlocks value
- 02Choose the right operating mode
- 03The settings that matter most
- 04What to upload in chat or file upload
- 05Use chat to control Marko precisely
- 06Mission Control comments are not hidden rules
- 07Native cycles vs custom automations
- 08What daily, weekly, and monthly are really for
- 09The fastest path to real profit
- 10How to judge whether Marko is making you money
- 11The one-sentence rule
01 · Setup
Start with the setup that unlocks value.
The first job is not "turn on automation." The first job is to unlock truthful data and profit-aware context.
Connect Amazon Ads. Connect SP-API. Then upload or maintain COGS / product costs so Marko can reason about profit, not just spend and sales. Without them, Marko can still help, but he will be limited.
Do not confuse Connector Health with Operational Readiness. Your connectors can be healthy while Marko is still syncing data, rebuilding foundation artifacts, or missing important decision context. The real truth source is the Operational Readiness state.
The six readiness states
Ready
Marko can review and execute.
Review Only
Marko can analyze, but should not make live changes.
Ingesting
Data is still syncing.
Repairing
Marko is rebuilding foundation context.
Blocked
A hard dependency is missing.
Unknown
The system cannot confidently determine readiness.
02 · Operating mode
Choose the right operating mode.
Marko's control state is built around a simple idea: start cautious, then graduate into automation where it has earned trust. The backend exposes operating mode, primary autonomy posture, advanced overrides, capability definitions, and system cadence state so the UI reflects the real posture, not a made-up summary.
For most brands, the best rollout is:
- 1Start in Ask me first.
- 2Let Marko review and propose.
- 3Watch how he handles your account for a week or two.
- 4Move repetitive, low-drama work into Handling it.
- 5Keep structural work gated.
That last point matters. Campaign Structureis manual-only and always approval-routed. It is not an "always-on autopilot" surface.
03 · Settings
The settings that matter most.
Not every setting is equal. A few settings drive most of the money impact.
Performance targets
Your main targets tell Marko what "good" means. If you only set one thing, set the target that matches how you actually judge success. If you care about profit, not just top-line growth, POAS and cost context matter a lot.
- Target ACOS
- Target POAS
Risk and speed limits
These settings stop good automation from becoming reckless automation. If you want Marko to move fast without creating budget shock, these are the first fields to dial in.
- Maximum bid
- Daily bid change limit
- Daily budget change limit
- Emergency brake / circuit breaker ACOS
- Max budget increase / decrease
- Max changes per cycle
- Daily bid quota
- Daily budget quota
- Daily and weekly spend increase limits
Search term and confidence settings
These settings determine how aggressive Marko should be when blocking waste or auto-executing actions. If you are nervous about over-automation, tighten the confidence thresholds first before you start neutering the rest of the system.
- Click threshold for blocking search terms
- Confidence threshold for blocking
- Expected conversion rate
- Spend threshold multiplier
- Auto-execute minimum confidence
- High confidence threshold
Profitability and inventory
If you have a consumables business, repeat-purchase behavior matters. If inventory gets tight, PPC should react. These are not "nice to have" if your margin or stock position changes how aggressively you should advertise.
- Repeat purchase rate
- Lifetime ACOS / LTV behavior
- Subscriber value multiplier
- Low-inventory thresholds
- Critical inventory thresholds
- Critical inventory bid reduction
Campaign strategy
Marko has a seller-facing campaign-strategy layer. This is one of the highest-leverage areas in the product. The workflow is simple:
- 01Tell Marko which campaigns are which
- 02Set targets by campaign type
- 03Mark hero products
- 04Mark launch products
Brand defense, discovery, conquest, launch, and retargeting should not all run under the same posture. The UI explicitly supports campaign-role assignment and role-based defaults.
04 · Uploads
What to upload in chat or file upload.
The best uploads are the ones that sharpen Marko's money decisions. Marko can carry seller files, seller notes, exclusions, ASIN guardrails, and other seller inputs into decision provenance. The system tracks which seller files were actually referenced in decisions. That means your uploads should help Marko make better operating decisions, not just create extra reading.
The highest-value uploads are usually:
- COGS or unit-economics sheets
- Promo calendars
- Launch calendars
- Hero-ASIN and launch-ASIN priorities
- Inventory constraints
- Category or keyword exclusions
- Brand-protection rules
- Notes about products you want pushed, protected, or left alone
A good rule of thumb: upload the documents that would change a PPC manager's bidding or budgeting decisions this week.
05 · Chat control
Use chat to control Marko precisely.
Marko's chat path is not a vague freeform memory system. It has deterministic draft-and-confirm flows for a real set of seller controls. Explicit chat intents include:
- Excluding a campaign, keyword, or ASIN
- Restricting Marko to only one ASIN
- Pausing automation on an ASIN
- Resuming automation on an ASIN
- Setting an ASIN to a conservative, balanced, or aggressive preset
- Capping max bid for an ASIN
- Protecting brand terms
- Saving a seller feedback note for later use
Trust point
Marko does not silently apply these. He creates a draft and asks for confirmation. The right way to use chat is to give direct operator instructions, then confirm the durable change when prompted.
06 · Mission Control
Mission Control comments are not hidden rules.
This matters for trust and for workflow.
A plain comment in Mission Control stays a plain comment. It does not secretly become a rule, a goal, an exclusion, or training data. If you want something durable, you use an explicit save-as-intent path. Even saved seller feedback notes remain advisory unless you intentionally promote them into a stronger durable control.
That means sellers can collaborate in Mission Control without worrying that every comment is secretly reprogramming the system.
07 · Native cycles
Native cycles vs custom automations.
Marko runs a platform-managed native operating rhythm with four phases: daily tactical checks, weekly portfolio review, monthly business review, and urgent signal response. This is not just product copy. It is backed by one canonical native system cadence. Daily, weekly, and monthly manual triggers all reuse that same system cadence row while still enqueuing the real requested path.
Custom automations are separate from Marko's native cadence. Use them as supplements, not as replacements for Marko's core operating rhythm. The practical rule: let native cadence do the routine work. Use custom automations only when you want extra scheduled or event-driven behavior on top.
08 · Cadence
What daily, weekly, and monthly are really for.
The money comes from using the right cadence for the right kind of work.
Daily
Tactical maintenance. A bounded loop for routine PPC upkeep. Daily must not become a backdoor for broad budget reallocation, placement writes, or structural changes.
Weekly
The portfolio-control loop. Cross-campaign budget thinking, strategic rebalancing, conservative placement work, harvest and structural review, and the deeper strategic modules.
Monthly
Business review and adaptation. Not for pretending to be the daily cycle. Review-only monthly runs can still produce useful insight without forcing unsafe strategic mutation.
Important nuance
Dayparting and B2B are advisory-only in the daily path. Their actionable strategic proposals belong to the weekly loop, and some weekly strategic proposals are review-only rather than direct replayable writes.
09 · Fastest path
The fastest path to real profit.
The brands that get the most out of Marko usually follow this sequence.
Step 1
Get to a truthful readiness state
Connect Ads and SP-API. Upload COGS. Do not confuse Connector Health with Operational Readiness.
Step 2
Set the core guardrails
Target ACOS / POAS, max bid, bid change limit, budget change limit, emergency brake, spend limits, confidence thresholds.
Step 3
Tell Marko which campaigns are which
Assign campaign roles (brand defense, discovery, conquest, launch, retargeting). Mark hero products. Mark launch products. This is where most PPC systems fall apart because they treat every campaign and every product the same.
Step 4
Start in Ask me first
Let Marko prove judgment before you expand autonomy.
Step 5
Graduate the boring work into Handling it
Move repetitive, low-risk work into autonomous handling once the account behavior looks sane. Keep campaign-structure work approval-only.
Step 6
Keep the context fresh
Use chat and Mission Control to add real business context as things change: launches, inventory issues, promos, exclusions, brand rules, and ASIN-specific exceptions.
10 · Signals of success
How to judge whether Marko is making you money.
Do not judge Marko by how much activity he creates. Judge him by whether he makes the account healthier with less manual work.
- Waste gets found faster.
- Bid and budget moves stay inside sane limits.
- Hero and launch products get the right posture.
- Exclusions and ASIN-level exceptions become durable and respected.
- Weekly reviews find real portfolio-level shifts.
- The account gets more consistent, not more chaotic.
If you are still early, judge him by unlock progression too. The first-value model treats connected accounts and COGS coverage as part of what determines how much value Marko can actually deliver.
11 · The one-sentence rule
You make the most money with Marko when you give him clean data, clear rules, clear product priorities, and enough autonomy to handle the boring PPC work every single day.
FAQ
Common operator questions
Ready to put Marko to work on your account?