Amazon Product Launch
In today’s retail market, if we are selling a product through the internet, we have probably decided as well, that it should be available through the Amazon Marketplace. Perhaps we’ve already gone through the hoops of setting up an account, we’ve chosen our product and have actually listed it. NOW, how do we get people to find our listing so they can purchase it? How to launch a product on amazon? In this article, we'll be sharing about launching (launching means the big push) that product on Amazon.
Amazon Product Launch Guide
First Things First
At this point, let’s assume that we have everything else lined up:
Our products are listed.
Our stock is ready to go in the Amazon warehouse.
We have replenishment stock also because we are planning for success!
Now, all that's left to do is to really launch your product.
As we are all aware, getting products listed is only the first step, but usually nothing is really happening in the number of sales. We need some marketing power behind it.
So, let’s talk marketing: both inside and outside of Amazon. Here are some strategies we can use to get our products in people's search results and ultimately in their carts.
To Succeed: We Want to Build Momentum
Launching a new product on Amazon is definitely about momentum. We're trying to get sales velocity and consistency, so that Amazon's algorithm sees our product as ‘one’ that people want to buy. Amazon focuses on the customer. Therefore, if Amazon believes that the customer wants our product, then Amazon promotes it.
We should optimize our page by focusing on keywords and images. The more traffic we send to our page (Keywords), the more people buy our product (words and images), the higher our product will rank in organic search results. (Organic means searches that we do not pay for).
We want to aim for BSR (Best Seller Rank). As we improve our product's BSR week after week, we will begin to see that particular product climbing higher and higher in Amazon's organic search results. The higher it ranks, the more people see it, click on it and ultimately purchase it. The more product sold, the higher the rank. It’s a momentum circle.
Here are some ways to create views, clicks & sales. (Momentum)
1. Amazon PPC
Since we are launching a new product on Amazon, the most obvious marketing we can do within Amazon is PPC. (Pay Per Click)
PPC means basically that we are bidding based on a keyword that we think is relevant to the product itself. When we type a search word into the Amazon search bar, we will see many results show up and some of them will say “sponsored” beside them. This indicates that they are PPC ads. The listing company will pay for our click when their ad shows up in our search results and we select it. (they will pay whatever they have bid for that search phrase if we select or “click” their product.)
When we are launching a product on Amazon (using paid advertising), we should focus on the same keywords that we thought were relevant enough to enter in our listing description copy. (We already have product descriptions that use good keywords!) Our copy is written so that people can find us via relevant keywords, and those are the same keywords that we want to bid on for advertising.
Here are some tips for setting up effective PPC ads on Amazon:
Cover branded key terms so that people searching for us by name will find us easily.
Look at our competitor's key terms to get our products to show up under the “you may also like” section.
Set up a decent budget: - around $1000 to $1500 is a good monthly spend to start, when we are launching a new product on Amazon.
Hopefully, we are selling a product that is already taking in millions of dollars on Amazon and we want ours to be seen. We should throw our best fuel on it. Even when we first launch our product, the right PPC will help us jump to page one for those search terms and get seen by our potential customers.
2. Amazon Best Deals
If we are part of any exclusive programs on Amazon, or a rep has reached out to us, we should definitely take advantage of these opportunities.
It’s pretty easy to get a rep to reach out to us when we first open our Amazon store. We will be sure to push the Amazon representative for something called “best deals.”
This is something that they can help us enroll in. When we are first launching our product on Amazon, showing up on the Best Deals page will get us a lot more visibility early on. It's a great way to get more clicks, more buyers, and more momentum on the platform.
There are early reviewer programs and other promotions we can do, but these aren't really the best launch techniques. Once we have built some momentum with our product, we can start doing those things. Here we're really talking about things that can bring that early firepower for launching a product on Amazon.
3. PPC Outside of Amazon
When we are launching a new product on Amazon, don't limit yourself to internal Amazon advertising. Use outside marketing as well, to get our product out there in front of our potential customers.
We can use PPC ads on all major search engines: Google, Bing and Yahoo. We want to drive this ad campaign traffic to a landing page rather than directly to our Amazon page. Sending traffic directly to Amazon will hurt us with bounce clicks if that traffic doesn't convert. (Clicks without sales is negative.)
Instead, set up a landing page that will take people straight to Amazon, but only after they decide they want to buy our product. This is a great way to build up our sales percentages on Amazon, and that's great for—you guessed it—momentum.
4. Email List
If we are a new brand, we are not going to have an email list, and it’s something we should think about building as we establish our business.
If we are an already-established brand moving into the Amazon Marketplace, whether we just have a brick-and-mortar establishment or a separate ecommerce store, we likely already have an email list. We can leverage this list to drive traffic to our Amazon listings.
Offering incentives to people who are already aware of our brand can be an easy way to build momentum.
For example, “We have some exciting news to share: our product is now available on Amazon! For being a valued customer, we'd like to give you exclusive access to this product right now.”
Offering discounts or other special offers through our email list is a great way to launch our product on Amazon. Many people aren't using their email list effectively— we shouldn’t make the mistake of ignoring the customers we already have.
5. Social Media
Everyone is aware of the importance of social media in today's marketing landscape.
There are many ways of utilizing social media when launching a new product on Amazon. We can do storytelling or overall branding (when someone is looking us up) and we can do ads.
EXAMPLE 1: One of the most beneficial ways is using influencers. Early in my career, I was working with a brand that had a big budget. They were paying a youtuber $10,000 just to share (introduce) their product on his YouTube channel and ultimately linking back to their listing on Amazon. At that time, I thought they were crazy. I mean, a lot of brands don't have a $10,000 budget for the whole year. (These were the really cool lighters that worked with plasma.)
We created an affiliate link and there was a code that people could use to get a little discount on these lighters. The youtuber unboxed the product and shared the affiliate link.
For that $10k, we saw $80k in sales. My mind was blown. In those early years, I stepped back and thought “Okay, maybe this social media thing really is something I need to learn.”
What's more, besides the $80k in sales, the momentum that it created by getting that many sales in a short period of time set us up to become a top seller on Amazon with that product.
EXAMPLE 2: Here's another success story. I was working with another brand that had a great e-commerce site which was doing several hundred thousand dollars before he even decided to launch a product on Amazon. They also already had a really strong Instagram presence.
We would use his Instagram each time we would release a new style or color, saying “This is exclusive to our Instagram audience: if you use this code , you will get xx% off.” That helped us successfully launch new products on Amazon. We'd get those all-important first sales and build incrementally to start ranking.
I also want to briefly mention that it's important to steer clear of controversy. I try to help brands navigate issues and stay out of trouble. If you are not a social media expert, consider working with one to help you maintain your image.
Think about your social media. Think about your email list. Think about what you already have to leverage as a brand. Maybe you’ve been building a different way, but now you could use what you have built and leverage it again for Amazon.
These off Amazon tactics are huge when it comes to a successful launch of a new product on Amazon. If there's a lot of competition in your niche on Amazon, using outside marketing can make a huge difference and help you break through.
6. Launching Service
A launching service can be a good way to get our product off the ground. What we are doing when we work with a launching service is paying a site that already has a lot of buyers in their database to list our product. They'll say “Hey, we have this product available for a very steep discount—claim this code and go buy it!”
It's a ‘loss leader’ to our brand, in the sense that we are giving away the product for really cheap or even free, but it’s an advantage to our brand because the product is getting a lot of conversions really quickly, or even spread out over time, and that results in a product climbing in the search rankings quickly.
There are a lot of popular launch services out there, like ‘Viral Launch.‘ We may want to consider these if we are in a very competitive niche and want to get a lot of conversions quickly.
Conclusion: Momentum and Consistency
Everything I've talked about here is about building momentum and consistency with our sales.
It's not necessarily about our absolute numbers. If we are getting one sale a week by using these strategies, we've created consistency, and that's going to help our product build momentum over time.
If we are using tools like ‘AMZ Tracker,’ for example, to track our keywords, we'll see that those keywords are climbing in ranking as we get more sales.
Ultimately, launching a product on Amazon is just thinking about all the ways that we can get buyers to start buying that product early on—even if it comes at a cost—to gain that momentum. We are creating an environment for a product to rise in Amazon's algorithm.
Start thinking about what tools you have that can be used for a successful launch. Start building an email list if you don't have one. Get your social media in gear. When I meet with brands, I look at what tools they have at their disposal that we can use to make their next product a successful launch.
Think inside Amazon and also think outside Amazon. Good luck with your launch!