Amazon marketing is a book of 3 chapters – comprising everything you need to promote and sell your product and consequently outrun your competitors.
These three chapters are, the Amazon SEO, which helps you optimize your product pages for higher organic visibility, the Amazon Advertising, which helps you promote and advertise your products and lastly the External Marketing platform that helps you with a competitive edge.
While these three seem quite simple to understand, let’s take a detailed look into each to understand the aspects involved in the elements.
Amazon SEO
With the internet becoming the go-to space for information, 90% of the time, people often search product prices and listings on Amazon or search platforms before making a purchase decision, whether online or offline. Thus, the products that rank higher on the Amazon search result page or SERP get the most clicks and conversions. As more and more product searches start directly on Amazon, bypassing Google, Amazon SEO is one of the main things to focus on as a seller. SEO would help you rank your product pages as high as possible on the search result pages of specific queries, bringing your listings higher visits and possibly higher converts. These rankings and listing presence on the search result pages are mainly affected by three important factors. These are:
Keywords- Almost every SEO today is a gamble on keywords. The more relevant and clever keywords you have on your page, the higher the rank you will get by the platform algorithm. Keeping a check on what your target audience searches for and understanding their search result keywords, therefore, is the epicenter of Amazon SEO. It is therefore advisable to identify and incorporate the complete variety of keywords and search terms in your listing in order to rank higher and gain better visibility.
Product Text- When you have selected your set of keywords for your Amazon marketing strategy, you must make use of them to write informative yet compelling product texts. Product texts here refers to the title, bullet points, Product Description, EBC/A+ content, and reviews. All these must be optimized keeping both human and machine in mind. It must have all the necessary buying related information, communicate the appropriate advantages and benefits of your product, and should be presented in a readable and receivable format for your target audience. At the same time, it must also define the intent of your product for the algorithm to ensure that it ranks it for the right audience at the right time.
Positive Sentiment- Your product listing must seem reliable and authentic to both people and algorithms. This could be achieved by keeping things positive and professional in the reviews and Question and Answers section of your product page. Try to give the best service you can and answer as many questions related to your product as possible. When you address unanswered questions regularly, you keep your page updated and understandable to the changing mindset of shoppers. Acknowledging positive feedback and collecting reviews and ratings also help in crafting the positive sentiment that you desire for your product.
Amazon Advertising
Amazon advertising helps you attract audiences from almost all phases of the funnel. You can create various types of advertisements with Amazon advertisement infrastructure and also link them to multiple landing and listing pages. The uniqueness of Amazon Advertising is that it addresses your target audience very precisely by ensuring effective conversions. You can optimize your marketing messages, content, and imagery to make them compelling and engaging enough to attract your audience. There are usually four formats in which you can create ads – Sponsored Product Ads, Sponsored Brand Ads, Sponsored Display Ads, and Video Ads. Let’s unravel them one by one.
Sponsored Products Ads – Available to both sellers and vendors, sponsored products ads are displayed in the prime places of Amazon search results for its exact set of keyword usage. You can use it to showcase your products in the beginning, the middle, or at the end, and even next to your search list, to attract more clicks. It follows a bidding system so that the prime advertising estate can be accessible or purchasable to all merchants.
Sponsored Brands Ads – Headline Ads or Sponsored Brand ads are used to showcase a list of products with your brand’s logo and messages as a banner on the platform. Clicks over these banners can be linked to specific landing pages such as your product pages or Amazon shop or brand pages. Similar to Sponsored products, Sponsored Brands ads also follow a bidding format and is deployed in response to targeted keywords.
Product Display Ads – These are ads that appear on the product pages, on the side panels, or in the recommended sections. Product Display Ads are shown just below the Buy Box and have the ability to snatch ripe to buy customers straight off your competitor’s listing. These are deployed on specific products and categories via interest-based targeting.
Video Ads – Amazon’s newest addition to its ad formats is video ads. Video ads engage the customers at a multi-level to explain the benefits and features of the product. You can find these in between the search result pages to attract shoppers. Like brand ads, video ads are also linked specifically to their product detail pages or Brand pages to drive sales.
Amazon External Marketing
Amazon External Marketing functions as your daily tips and tricks of marketing guide. These include PPC Advertising off Amazon on platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., and content targeting through email marketing, newsletter, blogs, and expert forums. Occasional tricks of introductory coupons and discount deal strategies are also counted under the Amazon external marketing strategies. All of this, when deployed efficiently, would give you the competitive edge even over your toughest competitors. Amazon also incorporates promotional tactics like lightning deals, buy one, get one, combo offers, percentage off, etc. on AMS to ensure that its sellers compete with sellers off Amazon fair and square.