How To Promote Your Product On Amazon And Grow Sales

According to an Amazon study, 80% of shoppers use Amazon to try new products. This, combined with the sheer number of customers on Amazon, makes it an important marketing platform for brands.

According to the Wall Street Journal, large advertising companies like WPP and Publicis plan to spend 40% to 100% more on Amazon ads in 2018, compared with 2017.

Here I'll show some tips for you to promote your products on Amazon and increase sales.

Ranking high in Amazon search results is a key factor to drive sales. According to the previously-cited Amazon study, 70% of shoppers don't go beyond the first page and 35% click on the first listed product. So it's important for you to improve your products' search rankings.

Another important factor is grabbing customers' attention and providing all of the information they need to make a purchase.

You can accomplish both of these tasks by enhancing your product listings. Here are some aspects of your product listings that you can enhance to improve sales:

You can use keywords that buyers use to search for your product in titles. This will help improve your product's ranking in Amazon's search results for that type of product.

Here are some key features to include in your product titles according to AMZPromoter:

• Brand name

• Product name

• Product's primary benefit or use case

• Any distinguishing features like size, color, flavor, etc.

• Target keywords

To find examples of optimized product titles, just search on Amazon for any product category and then look at the product titles for the first few products. Here is an example:

You can find target keywords using the Amazon search function. Just start typing a product name and you will get some keyword suggestions. These suggestions are the most searched keywords in the category.

Here is an example:

You can also use specialized keyword finder tools like KWFinder and Serpstat. These tools not only provide a list of keywords, but also help you prioritize keywords. For example, Serpstat's text analytics tool can prioritize which keywords you should use in your product title, bullet points, and product description.

Images provide customers the first impression of a product, so it's important that they clearly depict the product.

Here are some tips for using the right images in your Amazon product listings:

• Ensure that the images have a high resolution so that customers can zoom in to see the product in detail

• Add pictures of the product from different angles, showing its exact shape and size

• Include an image of the product packaging

• Include pictures of the product in use

• Use infographics or charts to showcase product features

• You can also add a video of the product
  

Amazon allows nine images for any product, so you can include different types of images.

Here is an example of a Furbo dog camera, which includes several image types mentioned above:

Bullet points and product descriptions provide you another opportunity to convey the benefits and features of your product to increase conversions.

Amazon allows five bullet points for product features, so you should aim to cover the most important points there.

Here are a few tips on writing effective product features:

• Mention the most important features in the top 2-3 bullets
  

• Include materials or product quality details

• Include product warranties or guarantees that you're offering

• Provide product uses and benefits or mention any problems that the product will help solve

• Ensure that you cover all important features, but do not make the bullets too wordy

• Add any product keywords that you could not include in the title

• Mention any additional products or parts that come with the product
  

Here is an example of a brand that has effectively used bullets to convey the product benefits, features, and quality details:

While descriptions may not directly affect conversions, they can be used to provide any additional information and add more keywords. You should make it easy to read so people can easily process the information. Use bullet points or headings and subheadings instead of long paragraphs.

Here's a variant how to describe product features:

You can benchmark your product prices against those of your competitors to ensure competitive pricing.

Some sellers use repricing tools to continuously update their prices based on their sales performance and market conditions. These can be internal Amazon tools and services, such as Amazon's automatic pricing tool, pricing recommendations, and business report, or you can use external repricing tools, such as Repricer and Xsellco.

Reviews play an important role in customer buying decisions. According to a Podium survey, 93% of customers say that online reviews affect their purchase decision. Similarly, ratings also play an important role. Many consumers don't buy from brands rated less than 3.3 stars.

Here are two ways for brands to get more customer reviews.

You should follow-up with customers that purchased your products and ask for a review. It's a good practice to provide a direct link to make it easy for customers to review your product.

Since it's difficult for brands to track all of their customers, some brands use automated feedback tools to send email follow-ups. Some commonly used tools are AMZFinder, FeedbackExpress, and Kibly.

These are printed messages included in the product packaging that encourage customers to review your products.

Two important things to keep in mind while designing a product insert are:

• Keep it precise and do not overload customers with information

• Get creative to grab customers' attention.

While it's important to get more product reviews, it's also a good practice to respond to customer reviews. You can thank customers for good reviews and delve deeper into customer problems in case of negative reviews.

In a PPC campaign, you only need to pay when users click on your advertisement or complete certain actions.

Here are the different types of PPC campaigns that you can run for your Amazon product listings.

You can buy Amazon's sponsored ads to show your listing right at the top of Amazon product search results.

You can start an internal sponsored ad campaign from the advertising tab at Amazon's seller central.

There are two types of campaigns that you can run – manual and automatic. In manual campaigns, you need to enter the keywords yourself. In an automatic one, Amazon targets your sponsored ad to relevant customer searches based on your product description.

You can also analyze the effectiveness of your campaign using the campaign manager. Amazon provides various visualization tools to plot key performance metrics for your campaign.

Display ads are shown on the side or on the top of a page, alongside with various product listings. These are different from sponsored ads because these are brand advertisements, rather than product listings. See an example below:

According to another Amazon study, advertisers who launched display ad campaigns saw a 20% increase in sales and 20% more detail page views. This shows the effectiveness of display ads to drive sales for brands.

You can also opt for video ads to complement your display ads. Video ads can be posted on the Amazon website, the mobile app, and the Fire tablet wake screen. Here is an example of a video ad on various platforms:

Amazon provides detailed specifications on how to create and post video ads on various Amazon platforms.

Amazon provides brands the option to create their own multi-page website, with their own branded URL. Brands use these to showcase their product portfolio and brand story. Here is an example of a brand store on Amazon. You can measure the performance of your brand store, similar to the dashboard for sponsored ads, on seller central.

You can use pay-per-click advertisements, display ads, and other forms of advertising to drive traffic to your Amazon listing.

Here are some of the best options.

Build an email list of existing customers and send personalized promotions and product recommendations.

Partner with social media influencers or blogs that write about your product niche. You can get influencers to write about your products or review them in detail. You can even get them to post pay-per-click links that redirect users to your Amazon product listing.

You can use influencer marketing tools like Grin to manage all the influencers you collaborate with and track their individual performance. And you can track the ROI of your campaigns. You can also create assignments for influencers and manage payments right from this platform.

Buy display ads on various social media platforms. You can also place ads on search engines such as Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc.

When it comes to increasing sales, the easiest way is to incentivize customers to buy using promotions. These can be discounts, freebies, or any other offer that catches consumers' attention and encourages them to buy your product.

Some commonly-used promotional techniques on Amazon are:

These are time-limited, discounted products that are displayed in the "Today's Deals" section of Amazon. These deals create a sense of urgency because the discounts only last for a limited period of time.

The fact that customers can get the product at a discount for a limited time helps increase sales because they act on the fear of missing out.

Coupons and discounts are a great way to encourage your existing customers to purchase more or to get new customers. Amazon provides an option to generate coupon codes or create discounts through the seller central accounts.

Discounts, such as percentage off or money off can be created and will be displayed for all customers viewing your product listing.

Below is an example of how discounts are displayed in a product listing:

Brands can also generate coupon codes and use those to target specific customers. These can be created on Amazon itself.

Here's a screenshot of the interface to create Amazon coupons:

Apart from discounts and coupons, Amazon also provides some other types of promotions, e.g. giveaways or "buy one get one free."