Driving-traffic-to-amazon-listing
In today’s competitive e-commerce landscape, simply having a product listed on Amazon is no longer enough.
To stand out and increase sales, you need a strategy to drive targeted, high-intent traffic to your Amazon listings from external sources.
In this post, we’ll explore the most effective tips to increase external traffic to your Amazon product pages.
Use these tips to send high-intent visitors straight to your product pages, and increase your conversion rate.
Let’s dive in!
Here are a few important stats to make a note of:
Combined mobile & desktop visitors to Amazon.com: February 2018 – April 2019 (in millions)
Image Source: Statista
Online retail business in the U.S. is rapidly growing. During Q1 2019, the Total E-commerce sales were 10.2%, which is probably the first time the online shopping market has surpassed a double-digit barrier.
In Q1, the overall e-commerce sales in the U.S. accounted for more than $137.7 billion. While a few retail product categories are still performing stronger than others: especially in the accessories & apparel division, 26.1% of overall retail revenue is generated online.
Amazon’s influence on customers’ shopping behavior has extended beyond its own platform. According to the latest survey report, 66% of respondents (who were Amazon users in the U.S.) Said that they began their product research right on Amazon.
The key factors that drive users to buy via Amazon are low shipping costs and pricing.
According to Similar Web, here is the traffic overview of Amazon.com in the last 6 months.
Image Source: Similar Web
If you look closely at this chart, you will see that 7.35% of traffic comes via Referrals, 6.01% through social media, 3.56% via emails, and 0.55% from display advertising.
Image Source: SimilarWeb
Image Source: SimilarWeb
This clearly shows that external traffic also plays a key role in boosting sales on Amazon. So, let’s understand how this can be accomplished the right way.
Quick Guide:
Well, firstly, capturing and bringing external traffic to your product listings is one of the best ways to stay ahead of the competition. Secondly, it helps you expand your business beyond the Amazon store and get brand presence and visibility across platforms.
Besides organic traffic, there are various reasons why driving external traffic is necessary.
Let’s have a sneak peek into it.
1. Helps you to stay ahead of the competition
Undeniably, optimizing your Amazon listings for organic sales is always your top priority. However, the issue is that every competitor of yours is doing it too.
Every day as we speak, the number of sellers is increasing under the “FBA bandwagon”.
The question that you may have now is how can you stand out in this competition.
You are not only in a constant battle to rank higher on Amazon SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) but your competitors also tend to bid higher for sponsored ads just to make sure that their listings come on the top as well.
The biggest drawback–they can buy sponsored ads even on your product listing!
To help your products to stay in a customer’s mind or perhaps leave that kind of impression for that matter, they need to be seen first in order to be remembered.
One of the most efficient ways to get your products seen and recognized by potential customers is through external mediums like blogs, social media, videos, etc.
This helps bypass all those Amazon-sponsored product ads that are trying to steal your visibility on Amazon.
2. Increases brand awareness
Another effective way sellers thrive and survive on Amazon is with their strong, distinguishable brand. Something, which separates them from others.
However, the hitch here is that Amazon gives fewer opportunities to achieve this. Obviously, because they want to promote their brand first to customers.
Understand that your Amazon listings have strict limitations. Hence, pushing those boundaries can be dangerous. Whenever you advertise apart from Amazon, you can be very creative. Create an exclusive brand voice, and turn it into a memory that people can remember.
When you build a brand, it helps you to distinguish your products from the rest on Amazon.
3. Drive more traffic and sales
Driving external traffic is one of the ideal ways to boost your sales on Amazon, and it helps you to build a powerful brand image.
If you are someone who isn’t ranking high on Amazon SERPs already, then, driving traffic externally enables you to boost your rankings as well as sales velocity. No wonder this strategy is amazingly valuable, especially for any new product launches.
However, if you are ranking on top for potential keywords on Amazon SERPs already, we still recommend you leverage external traffic to reach more prospects.
Rather than depending on Amazon solely, external traffic paves the way for you to take control. By mastering the various ways to drive traffic to Amazon listings, you’ll have successful launches, boost your sales, and have a long-term relationship with your customers.
4. Boost your keyword rankings and BSR
So, here is a straightforward formula. High traffic = Increased sales.
Since sales velocity is one of the crucial factors in Amazon’s A9 algorithm, it frequently converts to higher rankings. This in turn, also boosts your BSR (Amazon Best Sellers Rank).
External traffic is like a supplement to Amazon’s organic traffic. Anything that you add to drive your listings is a bonus. Rather than relying on potential buyers to look for your products, you can find them yourself and reach out to them to generate sales.
5. Helps you to diversify your customer base
Applying the right Amazon SEO strategies and driving sales through them make sense. But, know that when the customers purchase your product on Amazon, they are not your customers. Instead, they are Amazon’s customers!
In order to be successful, it is vital to have a sustainable business model. You’re not just there to sell products–but you are there to create a powerful brand. This can only be possible if you leverage external mediums.
6. Amazon might reward you
Most sellers claim that Amazon rewards you for driving a good amount of external traffic to its product listings.
Though this statement has not been proven or confirmed, it makes sense. When a seller directs traffic externally to Amazon, it also helps the company to gain more customers, helping the sellers grow and the company’s revenue as well.
7. Skips the internal competition
Selling on a marketplace like Amazon is turning out to be even more competitive than it ever was.
When you send traffic from outside to Amazon listings, you certainly have a huge advantage over your competitors. When executed the right way, you don’t have to race with other products on Amazon SERPs. Instead, you are sending visitors straight to your listings.
When it comes to Amazon product listings, traffic sources can be classified into two main types, which include:
1. Internal traffic source
As the name implies, “internal traffic sources” are mediums within the Amazon channel a seller can utilize to improve rankings of their product listings on Amazon’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
Now, note that these are sources that every seller must optimize before looking for external traffic or traffic outside Amazon. So, this comes as the first priority.
Internal traffic highlights three vital aspects or factors:
A. Amazon SEO
Organic rankings always hold a distinctive place. They play an important role in getting potential buyers to reach you. Therefore, optimizing your product listings with the right content and keywords is vital. It impacts the rankings directly and helps increase both sales and traffic.
Here’s what you can do to improve your product listings:
For detailed tips on how to execute Amazon’s SEO for your product listings, click here.
B. Amazon Product Reviews
A potential buyer always looks at a product’s ratings and reviews before making a purchase. Undeniably, product reviews are one of the important factors to increase sales and visibility on Amazon.
Good reviews boost your ranking and further, adds social credibility, helping potential shoppers to trust what they’re about to pay for.
However, getting them can be a little devious, especially if your product is new in the market. In such a phase, Amazon review trader websites can be of great help. Nevertheless, make sure you comply with Amazon’s guidelines and read up on their review policy.
So, here’s what Amazon’s guidelines say:
Amazon doesn’t entertain incentivized reviews. This is a good thing because it paves the way for healthy competition.
Have a good email template ready and a follow-up email as well, post the order is delivered. But don’t send spam the customer’s email ID.
When it comes to sending emails, it is vital to follow the best practices. However, we recommend you to send only two emails at max. Once for confirming the order and the other after the product has been received. Avoid sounding ‘friendly’ or ‘spammy.’
C. Amazon Sponsored Products
Amazon features an incredible marketing and ad platform to help sellers increase their product visibility.
Sponsored Products are a great way to promote your product listings with keyword-targeted ads. They show these on top of, on the sides, or within the search results, and in product detail pages.
Amazon PPC (pay-per-click) or Sponsored Products utilizes an auction-based model for pricing. It is a program where you set the maximum amount you desire to spend for ad clicks. Now, the ideology is simple – the higher the bid, the greater are the chances of your ad being displayed.
Since money is involved, you need to run a few small test ad campaigns first. This will help you refine or fine-tune them. Mastering it takes a few weeks or a few months.
After you’ve gathered adequate data from your test ad campaigns, start evaluating your campaigns to learn what keywords worked well for you. Tweak your campaigns based on the data you analyze.
Keep performing ad tests unless you determine what works best for your selling business.
To ensure that your products get a good response from potential buyers, here are a few tips to make a note of:
1. Make your product listing more competitive
Be it internal or external, ads have always been a great way to increase your product sales. Unique products grab more attention than the ones that are not. Consequently, if you are selling similar products just like other sellers do, try to be different from them. How can you do that? Well, who doesn’t like a discount or a few color options? In the end, this method should help you achieve some conversions.
2. Focus more on Amazon SEO
As said above, Amazon’s SEO is important to help boost your organic rankings. It gets your listings to reach the right audience who are looking for a specific product. Likewise, it helps when driving external traffic. Your listing should look perfect in every way to grab the attention of a potential buyer.
3. Don’t miss learning about Amazon Buy Box
Amazon Buy Box is what you need to learn about too. Study its guidelines and the tricks to win it with the help of some repricing tools.
Recommended guide: How Repricing Fits into your Amazon Growth Stack.
Amazon Buy Box is nothing but the box, which appears on a product’s detail page where a customer gets to add item(s) to their cart. It is highly competitive. Therefore, the best way to win it is to set competitive pricing or offer good discounts. In addition, you need to have an incredible merchant history.
Besides promoting your products inside Amazon, as a seller, you should also be very well aware of how to promote your products outside Amazon. Though there are plenty of ways to execute this, the ones listed above are great and legitimate.
1. Give affiliate marketing a shout-out
Believe it or not, affiliate marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive external traffic to your Amazon product listings.
Besides sellers, affiliate programs provide a great advantage to bloggers, influencers, and online marketers. Affiliates have the power to influence people to buy products via the product links they give, helping them to make money as well.
Amazon Affiliate Program is exclusively designed to work similarly. As soon as the affiliate links are created, they can send visitors directly to your product listing page, enhancing your sales as well as offering a small commission in return.
Undeniably, Amazon has become highly competitive. There are thousands of sellers competing out there.
Selling your product largely depends on what kind of audience is seeing your listings? Now, this can be hard to achieve organically, making you spend more on ads and email campaigns.
Though the money spent on them is also great, the Affiliate Program works even better because it helps you to fetch potential buyers from places you might not have been able to reach out to.
Related Post: Analysis of Amazon Affiliate Program and Amazon Selling
What should you do?
Since influencers/bloggers already have immense reliability with their subscribers or followers, promoting your products through them makes sense.
In simple words, potential buyers are arriving at your product page from someone they really trust. Also, they are arriving at a place that is trustworthy–which is Amazon.
And if the product is of great use and of amazing quality, your sales are sure to rise.
You might make good sales on Amazon. However, if you aren’t leveraging its Affiliate Program, you are losing a fantastic opportunity to boost your FBA sales.
Amazon’s Affiliate Program doesn’t just increase revenue for an affiliate partner but also for a seller too.
The moment they approve you for its Affiliate Program, you’re all set to create links. These links can be used on your own website.
When buyers click on these links, you also get to earn money even if they don’t purchase your products.
Additional Read : What is Amazon Listing Hijacking? How to Prevent it?
Well, if they go to Amazon via your links and browse other products and make a purchase, you will earn a small commission on every purchase.
Affiliate links can be shared on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to increase your probability to make sales and earn a commission.
However, be extremely careful while linking your own items though. There are special Amazon’s Participation Requirements, which you need to read through to ensure that you aren’t violating their program’s policies.
Say, for instance, you will be violating Amazon’s policy if you encourage your own family and friends to make a purchase via your links.
2. Instagram – Using it as a mode of marketing
Ever since Instagram has entered the market, they have gained immense popularity. It has taken the social world by storm and has taken a sweet spot for e-retailers. It is a great platform to attract millions of customers out there.
You can utilize Instagram feeds or story advertisements and use it for your business to grow. You can popularize your products on a big scale and to the right audience.
Not many know that most amazon sellers lower their PPC (Pay-Per-Click) expenses by investing more in Instagram ads. This also overcomes all the unwanted competition.
Recommended guide: How do Sellers Benefit from Amazon Shopify Integration?
3. Create a wonderful product video
About 1/3rd of internet users spend most of their time watching videos. A good video has the capability to influence people if done the right way.
Now, if you are already a registered brand or trademark, and you are also a part of the Amazon Brand Registry program, then you are lucky.
You can take advantage of its Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) video feature. Not a lot of brands are utilizing this incredible feature the way they should. It is one of the most ideal and effective ways for your products to be unique from your competitors.
What should you do?
Since most customers are looking for ways to lower their risks of making a wrong purchase decision, your product video can help them with that. If you are not a pro at doing this, then hire a person who can do it for you.
4. Promote on deal websites
There are plenty of deal sites where you can promote your products on. Who doesn’t like a deal/offer? These websites can also be considered as a part of your target group metrics.
Slickdeals.net is one such website where you can promote your product. It is one of the biggest communities that offer deals and coupons in return for a review. Its members share deals, coupons to others, and cover a wide range of products.
What should you do?
If you offer a good discount, there are high chances for your products to show up on their featured list or any front page section of a deal website. Eventually, this will get you good traffic to your product listings and sales too.
When you are finding it hard to figure out the right ways to promote your Amazon products, undoubtedly, websites that offer deals should be your first point-of-action.
5. Facebook Ads – This is a must consider mode of marketing
The entire world is on Facebook today, and we should not miss a platform like this. You can advertise your products on Facebook and see the results for yourself. But also note that it can have a few drawbacks.
If you already have an established Facebook group or community, then Facebook ads can work wonders. Your Facebook page is a great platform to showcase your products to the right audience with ease.
When you advertise your Amazon products on Facebook, you are reducing the time required to spend on launching or introducing a new brand. Also, it increases sales, and when your product sales increases, your organic rankings on Amazon SERPs also go up.
But here is a common mistake most sellers tend to. They send traffic directly to Amazon listings. When you do this, you are actually lowering your chances of being successful. The reason why we do not recommend sending direct traffic to your listings is that you will not be able to track your Facebook ads accurately and its effects on your clicks, views, target audience, etc. So, when you don’t have these demographics with you, how are you ever going to know what kind of people are interested in your products, and who are making a purchase? Men or women? Nothing.
That’s why it is good to execute your Facebook ads this way:
When you create a Facebook ad, use fun and clean images to display your products. Keep your ad text snappy, short, and yet compelling. Once your ad is live, start tracking how your ad campaign is performing. The stats will help you show what works and what doesn’t. You can then tweak your campaign and keep learning various ways to make your sales better.
6. Use Google Ads
Though social media sites are the best way to drive external traffic to your Amazon listings, you cannot overlook a giant like Google too.
Be it searching for information or looking for the right products, Google has always been the first place for all of us. You will be fascinated to read what a study report from Statista reveals. According to this survey report, 63.2% of internet searches in the United States search on Google, and 93% of them use Google on their mobile phones.
At this point, as a seller, you might wonder why should you even think of Google when you can just focus on Amazon platform to popularize your products? Why would we even want to expand besides Amazon?
Well, there are multiple advantages of using marketing channels apart from Amazon. It helps you to grow your business. Even though your first priority should be to optimize your traffic as well as conversions within Amazon, you cannot miss out on Google.
Amazon offers sellers lots of tools to help them access thousands of buyers who are “primed” to make a purchase. But the moment a potential shopper buys your product on Amazon, he or she isn’t your customer. It is Amazon’s!
Also, remember you will violate Amazon’s policies if you contact its customers for promoting or marketing purposes. However, the case with Google Ads is entirely different. If you use it wisely, you can also collect the contact info of potential customers.
Well, the trick is to connect Google Ads and your amazon product listings via a “landing page.” This is exactly the place where you can connect with your customers. There are different tools that can help you create an attractive landing page in no time. So, you don’t have to be worried about that.
If you have already worked with Amazon’s Sponsored Products, then Google Ads will be easier to understand.
What should you do?
When it comes to Google ads and Amazon ads, Keyword Research plays a very important role, as it affects your organic rankings. One wrong move, and it is over. Not only is your hard-earned money involved but also your time and efforts. Besides this, a wrong step can also bring your product’s organic rankings down.
Note: Before running ads, make sure that your Amazon product listing page is optimized and attractive enough to help bring conversions. If this is not done right, the money that you have invested in Google Ads will go in vain.
7. Show Your Products On YouTube
When we say “YouTube,” what’s the first thing that hits your mind? Videos? Movies? Fun? Music? Absolutely true.
But as a seller, see YouTube from a different perspective. It is one of the largest video streaming platforms in the world with a huge audience base. So, why not leverage it to benefit your selling business? Makes sense right? You can market your products to increase your Amazon product sales.
YouTube has certainly paved the way for sharing content, media, and news. While most sellers think that they’re using different social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook for marketing their products, they don’t realize how competitive the e-commerce field is.
The policies keep changing, and the strategies that you have been executing today will not work tomorrow. Therefore, it is vital to use every opportunity that comes at your door.
And what could be better than YouTube?
Add your Amazon listing pages and website (if you have) in your videos. Doing this will help potential buyers to navigate to your store directly.
8. Contact bloggers
Blogs are one of the best ways to bring external traffic to your product listings. They are great for bringing visibility to the right audience and bring in more sales.
While it is always a great idea to have blogs for your selling business, getting bloggers to write about your products is super flattering. It is a wonderful opportunity to reach their audience and get them to buy your stuff!
But here is a bitter truth–if you have tried emailing the influencers, you will know how time-consuming it is to approach them and get a yes from them. So, it is important to ask them the right way. Else, be prepared for a “silence” or a “no, thank you” email.
What should you do?
Like video influencers, bloggers will know how to write and promote your products in the best possible way.
Though most blogs have their contact details clearly mentioned in the footer or header, making it easy with just a click of a button, there are certain blogs that require detective work. Now, if you cannot find a proper way of connecting with them, check for their social pages and contact them from there.
Before you think of driving external traffic to Amazon, here is a common mistake most sellers tend to make and why you should avoid doing it.
BIGGEST MISTAKE SELLERS DO: Sending Traffic Directly To Amazon product Listings
So, why shouldn’t you be doing this?
Well, for 2 important reasons:
When you send traffic directly to your product listings, it also hurts your Amazon rankings. External traffic sometimes sees low conversion rates when compared to internal traffic. So, when you send traffic directly to your listings, it will increase views but will bring down your conversion rates.
And as far as the Amazon’s A9 algorithm is considered, many experts believe that conversion rates play an important part in organic rankings. So, when this goes down, it also impacts your rankings. So, what you might have thought to boost your sales (via external traffic) literally backfires here.
That’s why it is crucial to create LANDING PAGES.
Rather than driving traffic directly to Amazon listings, it is important to send them to your landing page first.
This helps you achieve two things:
If your main goal is to increase sales and rankings, then Amazon-specific landing pages are the best option. To help you design this, tools like Landing Cube comes in handy. It provides you with single-use promotional codes in return for a customer’s email.
There are sellers who have been performing incredibly well on Amazon alone. However, relying only on its platform can turn out to be risky. Also, it leaves most potential buyers untapped. When you think of marketing, it is vital to diversify your channels rather than putting all the eggs in a single basket.
To build an incredible brand, leverage different traffic channels. External traffic enables you to create better relationships with your customers.
Additional Resource:
Boost Amazon Sales with SellerApp Insights!
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Thank you for sharing the great ideas.
Glad you liked the blog.
Well done!! Exactly what I was looking for.
thank you, SellerApp.
Thank you.