Once the domain of a lucky few, the world of Amazon selling is now on the mind of many. With over half of all eCommerce sales coming from Amazon and 2 in 3 Amazon customers being prime subscribers, this shouldn’t be surprising to anybody.
But standing out amongst the crowd of Amazon sellers continues to get more and more difficult as the competition continues to grow. After all, unless you have a brilliant idea for a brand new product, it is almost certain that many people are already using the platform to sell what you’re offering.
Fortunately, as anyone who’s worked with us or regularly reads our blog will know, success in Amazon is still very achievable.
In this post, we have put together 10 top tips for unsticking Amazon sales and boosting your Amazon business to the next level.
Let’s jump right in:
Ensure Your Product is Positioned Correctly
While there are many tricks to boost Amazon sales, from boosting your organic ranking to growing your reviews or revamping your PPC strategy – you are fighting an uphill battle with all of them if your product isn’t positioned correctly. After all, this is what will push potential customers to finally click that buy button and win you a sale.
This is where skills in effective Amazon listing optimization and more traditional skills such as copywriting will come in handy.
Imagine you’re a potential customer looking at your product for the first time ever – but you’re not the type to read the full text of the listing, and you know absolutely nothing about the product. What kind of question would you be asking?
Questions such as:
- Who is this product for?
- Why does it exist and who is it beneficial for?
- What problems can be fixed by this product?
- What makes it unique compared to similar products sold by competing sellers?
- Why should people trust you?
- What is your target market thinking about or looking for right now?
You need to be able to answer these questions clearly and simply within the text of your listing. If you can do this effectively, then people can see your product listing and immediately know whether or not it’s worthwhile for them. If you can’t, then in most cases your product won’t be of much appeal to anybody.
Consider Improving your Product Packaging
Product packaging should always be visible in your main product photo in Amazon. This is because it plays a major part in making a first impression to the viewer and making a good first impression to any potential customer.
There are a lot of good guides to designing product packaging online if it’s something you’re new to – but if you’re prioritizing a specific keyword or set of keywords then it could be a great idea to look at the other results and pick a colour or design that will catch the eye.
Some other tips include:
- Using uniquely convenient packaging such as one that is very easy to open
- Keep product design and colours relatively simple to emphasize your brand
- Give something surprising that is valuable to the buyer. For example, if selling a smoothie maker, throw in a free smoothie recipe book.
Use a Limited Time Promotion to Gain Attention
If you want to get more eyes and wallets looking at your product immediately, a limited time promotion is a great way to do this. From a temporary price reduction to throwing in a freebie or extra item, this can encourage people who’d usually be on the fence to purchase, or fans of the product to share it with their friends.
A recent study found that over 60% of people are more likely to make a first time purchase if they’re offered some type of discount or saving. You may also find that the increase click through rate and sales from this helps to improve your organic ranking briefly, meaning more people will see your product than before – but remember, discounted sales only count for so much in the algorithm, so don’t run a sale for this purpose alone.
Work with Influencers
Influencer marketing is in many ways a sign of the times we live in and should be on the radar of most people who sell something online.
The main reason for this is that in our oversaturated society, most people have become accustomed to being bombarded with marketing messages, and generally disregard them immediately.
Influencers, however, are people who are taken seriously by people within their niche and often have a large following that is very relevant to that specific industry. By getting an influencer to promote your product, you can be shown to this following in a way that is much more natural, honest and believable than traditional marketing text.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean throwing a large amount at money at someone with a huge amount of followers. In some niches, working with multiple smaller influencers can be more effective – as they will often be willing to promote your product for a fraction of the cost, or even just for the product itself.
You can even combined this strategy with the previous one, giving influencers a unique discount code, allowing them to give something back to their followers and earn some money for themselves at the same time.
Optimize your PPC Strategy
Most Amazon sellers will have tried PPC at some point, but if you’re just placing random bids on the suggested keywords you aren’t going to get much from the platform.
Do some high quality PPC training and spend a few weeks optimizing your bids to maximise the results, or hire a high quality PPC specialist to do it for you.
This will have the effect of removing your bid from keywords where your product isn’t performing, increasing it in ones where it is, and maximising the amount of high performing keywords available.
While it is a bit more costly than organic ranking, and will eat up some of your margins, this is a reliable and effective way to continue growing with little to no effort.
Have a Review Strategy
Social proof is a crucial part of pushing potential customers over the edge into becoming actual customers. Positive reviews are the most easy way to do this on Amazon by far.
On the other hand, negative reviews can reverse this immediately by putting people off ever clicking on your listing and damaging your brand reputation at the same time.
It is worth building a strategy to boost your positive reviews as quickly as possible, including email follow ups and leaflets in the package, as well as adding something of value to the product and of course, ensuring everything is manufactured to a high standard.
To learn more about your options here, take a look at our guide to gaining positive reviews on Amazon – but remember, never buy fake reviews! Customers can easily tell the difference, and if they buy a product with all 5 star reviews that turns out to be low quality, they will report you – and then it’s game over!
Ensuring Your Product Photos are Fit for Purpose
Clear, high quality photos of the product are crucial, as unsure customers will want to check every aspect of the product to be sure of what they’re buying. This is even more important for technical products where they may want to check the available cable connections for example.
It may be as simple as changing the angle or lighting, but if you really don’t have a clue then it might be worth hiring a professional product photographer to really take it to the next level.
Your main photo should stand out from the main photos of your competitors, in order to catch the searchers’ eye and stop them from scrolling right past. The remaining photos should focus on different benefits of the products – as well as the benefits of those benefits (e.g. – more connections = less time fiddling), and show some lifestyle images of the product actually in use in a way that will help the viewer to imagine themselves using it.
To learn more about this, check out our full guide to product photography.
Ensure Your Pricing is Correct
Strategic pricing is a bigger factor than you may think it is. In many ways, your price will give your product an expected quality level in the mind of the viewer.
You should factor in your target demographic and what they are likely to be willing to spend, as well as some in depth competitor research to make this decision.
A product that is priced too low won’t be profitable, but a product that is priced too high won’t be purchased – so don’t be afraid to split test this for a while to find your sweet spot.
Have a Social Media Promotion Strategy
This may be obvious by now, but over 70% of consumers use social media when researching a potential purchase.
This essentially means if you don’t have a social media marketing strategy for your Amazon product, that you are ignoring the bulk of your potential market.
Consider an in depth social media marketing strategy, either through outsourcing or via training an internal employee. Either way, it should be one of these options, as opposed to yourself or other staff simply posting once in a while. Social media is a full time job with a lot of opportunities that you will be missing out on by just doing it here and there.
This also of course ties into the point about influencers. You ideally want to be leveraging those, your own page and any other relevant source that is willing to share your products.
Focus on Organic Rankings
Organic ranking is the single most important metric when it comes to selling on Amazon. A high PPC bid may allow you to get higher visibility a lot more quickly. But it also takes margin from every sale and if you switch your PPC bid off, sales will dry up immediately.
Whereas a high organic rank may be more difficult to achieve in the first place, doing it in the right keyword will mean long term sales come rolling in at no extra cost.
The key is to ensure your product will convert well in the keyword first. You ideally need to be comparable or better than the competition in all of the following areas:
- Appealing and clear imagery
- Attractive and easy to understand title
- Well optimized description and bullet points utilizing copywriting techniques
- High review count with a strong score
- Competitive price
If you miss out on any of those things, then you may find you rank your product and it slides down again as people continue to choose the competition. But if you rank your product and all of these things are in place correctly already, you may find you maintain your rank in the long term, which is the single best investment you could ever make into your Amazon business.
For more information check out our page on Amazon organic ranking campaigns!
