Thanks to its competitive prices and fast delivery, Amazon has fast become a dominating force in retail and is now the go-to place to buy for millions of shoppers. As a result, brands big and small have signed up to Amazon to showcase and sell their products to an ever-growing Amazon audience.
But with popularity comes competition. More brands are selling more products on Amazon than ever before. And everyone is vying for attention from the same customers. So, how do you get your products to stand out and sell? The answer is straightforward: you need a well thought out strategy.
You cannot hope to succeed simply by listing your products on the platform, or indeed relying only on Amazon as your chosen channel. Here’s our top three tips for creating a profitable Amazon marketing strategy that works:
Amazon SEO
Like with all online advertising activities, your strategy should start with keyword research. Discovering the most desirable search terms will help more potential customers find your product listings. Amazon is a search engine and runs its own algorithm and, just like Google, its number one priority is to return the most relevant result to the user. You can use this to your advantage by optimising your product listing to include the maximum number of keywords, and providing customers with the most detailed and relevant information about your product and brand.
Product Listing optimisation
Your product listings should be optimised so that they are easily discoverable, relevant to the search terms they are optimised for and attractive to the user to encourage them to buy. The way in which you optimise your titles, product images and product descriptions is the difference between selling and not selling.
Your hero product image is the first thing a potential customer will see. So, make sure your product looks good, is well-lit and can be seen from multiple angles where appropriate. If possible, optimise the information on your packaging so that the most important details stand out, for example flavour, pack size or limited edition. The hero product in your main thumbnail image should fill 80% of the frame and appear against a white background.
The more well-optimised your listings, the higher you will rank – leading to maximum sales potential.
Amazon Advertising
As well as a solid Amazon SEO strategy, sellers should run Amazon PPC alongside their organic efforts to capture clicks and sales they may otherwise miss if they don’t get rank well organically. There are many different advertising options available on Amazon including product display ads, sponsored product ads and headline search ads. You should experiment to see which ad type yields the best return and encourages the most clicks.
These are just three fundamental ways to approach marketing and advertising on Amazon. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that for brands starting out and challenger brands in particular, that you invest in Amazon advertising services. It’s essential that you use paid advertising if you want to reach top ranking spots on the platform, as Amazon is a marketplace where competition thrives. Those who do well are usually spending a fair amount on paid media. Equally, you cannot rely only on Amazon as your chosen sales channel, and most brands will have their own ecommerce site as well as investing in social media advertising as a bare minimum.
If you’re interested in more in-depth advice on how to structure your Amazon strategy then have a look at our webinar recording or downloadable presentation entitled, ‘Helping challenger brands grow Amazon sales.’
This article was written by Rachael Staples, Marketing Director at Melody, an Amazon agency in London.
Image courtesy of Unsplash.com.
