These easy-to-implement tips, tricks, and tactics can help you crush your 2023 goals and beyond. 

Table of contents:

1. SEO
2. Amazon Advertising
3. Reviews
4. Amazon A+ Content
5. Videos
6. Giveaways
7. Social Media
8. Affiliate Marketing
9. Reduce Add-on Items
10. Subscribe and Save Program
11. Lightning Deals
12. Prime Day Prep
13. Optimized Product Images

Ways to Increase Amazon Sales:

1. SEO

In order to drive organic traffic to your Amazon listings, consider these top 4 rules of thumb:

• Include the right keywords: Do keyword research through Amazon VC reports, competitive analyses, data providers like Viral Launch, and Merchant Words. Remember, not all terms are created equal!
• Strings of text: Amazon queries the detail page for strings of text rather than individual key words. You want to include the exact phrases consumers are typing into the search bar.
• Avoid Brand Speak: Avoid using company jargon on your detail pages. Just because your marketing team calls a product X doesn’t mean consumers do.
• Amazon Guidelines: Keep in mind that Amazon may have unique guidelines for each product category and, in some cases, will enforce those guidelines. Your goal should adhere to those rules as best you can while optimizing for the A9 algorithm.

Amazon SEO Facts:

• Amazon has surpassed Google for product searches (2018), with nearly 60% starting on Amazon. This is likely even higher as of 2023.
• Amazon ads have a CVR rate that is 3.5x higher than Google’s.
• Amazon SEO is different from Google. It’s often wise to optimize for long-tail keyterms on Google. Amazon’s algorithm is driven by sales.

2. Amazon Advertising

• Rules-based advertising could be synonymous with advertising optimization. Rather than spending valuable time and resources to manually adjust keyword bids base on certain advertising criteria, a rules-based system increases one person’s band- width exponentially. Rather than monitoring each ASIN for each brand, they can simply apply a rule to each ASIN or to a product family to get results for that brand’s unique advertising strategy.
• Rules-based advertising also streamlines the process of effective keyword discovery. By running rules on hundreds of keywords, our advertisers can quickly hone in on the most efficient keywords to make the budget go further.
• SellerApp advertising software helps our advertising team set rules (i.e. optimize) for over 20 different advertising metrics for our 3P partners on Amazon.

Take advantage of external advertising.

• Hulu Advertisements, Twitch, Snapchat, Instagram, OLV, etc.
• Leverage existing advertising or create new video advertisements and use them to drive to the product detail page on Amazon.
• Utilize advertising on YouTube by effectively advertising products through leveraging the followers of influential YouTube creators. Just make sure you target relevant videos with relevant traffic.

Myth: Focusing advertising on top-selling products means more growth.

Dedicating efficient and intelligent ad spend across a wider variety of products will actually grow your brand in a more effective way and will reach a larger audience for your brand to resonant with than continually throwing money at top-selling products.

Recommended to read: 12 Best Amazon PPC Optimization Tools for Sellers.

3. Reviews

Why Reviews & Ratings matter:

• Ratings and reviews are major reason Amazon commands 60%+ of new product searches.
• They are the top 2 drivers of conversion ratios.

Consider in-package inserts.

Leave a card thanking people for their purchase and ask for a review. You can use a card insert for quality assurance purposes as well. If there’s anything wrong with the product you can give them clear instructions about where to go and who to contact. That way, you’re a step ahead of potentially negative product reviews and can gather more positive ones while you’re at it. However, be mindful there are strict rules here— your request should be framed in a “neutral manner.” You don’t want to be penalized by Amazon.

Take advantage of brand loyalty.

People love your brand. Ask them to tell everyone else! You can take advantage of brand loyalty by creatively asking consumers to leave a review for you on Amazon. You can do this on your website or on social media. People love supporting their favorite brands, especially when they’re asked in a fun and creative way.

Use Amazon Vine reviews.

Amazon Vine is like incorporating precious metals for your investment portfolio. Make this a piece of your reviews & rating strategy if you haven’t already.

Always respond to customers who leace negative reviews (usually 3-star reviews or below).

While Amazon doesn’t let brands respond publicly to negative review, responding to poor customer feedback in private shows customers that you care about their business.

4. Amazon A+ Content

Utilize A+ Content on Amazon.

• Just a few months ago, Amazon announced the merger of Enhanced Brand Content and A+ Content (EBC was the SEller Central version of A+ Content for Vendors). The two were essentially the same anyway, so besides the name change and the addition of a few modules, the interface is the same. Read more about the merger here.
• A+ Content is a high CVR driver because it highlights your unique value messaging. Having A+ Content can help your listings stand out from the competition, as well as give additional product information to the consumer.
• Not only does A+ Content look great, but it can improve your SEO rankings as well, since the SEO backend behind images in A+ Content indexes with Google. It’s a great platform to communicate using graphics, additional images, and more.

Consider A++ Content if it’s available to you.

A++ Content, or Premium A+ Content, offers additional content blocks and features to brands, like allowing embedded video and additional lifestyle images. However, it’s only available to certain brands by request. (And these are typically brands selling large amounts of product on Amazon). Entry price points vary anywhere from $250K to $500K. Learn more here.

When to use A+ Content:

• Use it on high consideration products.
• Remember that A+ Content is inherently complicated. • Take in mind the sensitive nature of A+ Content.
• Be mindful of the higher ticket price.

Remember these best practices for content:

• Always put keywords in the images meta keyword section. You need to reap those SEO benefits!
• Label images you upload with a keyword.jpg. Again, even more SEO clout.
• Amazon does not index A+ Content for search—Google does, so leverage Google search terms for the actual content text.
• STAND OUT. Images that capture attention are really the only things that will be read or seen by consumers, so you must get those images right.

5. Videos

Benefits of video:

Videos can be uploaded by brand owners at the top of the page, or by third-party sellers and others in the “Related Video Shorts” below the description. Above-the- fold videos will display at the bottom left of the uploaded product images as a thumbnail. Brand owners can use this content to push brand messaging, instructions, or general product information.

The Related Video Shorts section, however, recommends even more creativity through these different video types:

• Unboxing
• Product demonstration
• Setup
• Troubleshooting
• Comparison
• How To
• Other

How to add above-the-fold videos:

• For above-the-fold videos, you’ll need to be a registered brand owner. This will give you access to A+ Content uploads. Although Amazon says that approval may take up to seven days, videos seem to be approved and live the same day they are submitted.
• Step 1: Log in to Amazon Seller Central and navigate to the A+ Content page under advertising. Note: if you don’t see A+ Content in your advertising menu on Seller Central, check your permissions. If you have full permissions and you still don’t see it, you do not yet qualify to add this content.
• Step 2: Enter the relevant SKU and click, “Get Started.” This will provide you with two options: Create A+ Content Description or add video.

Clicking on “Add video” will bring up a second screen where you can upload the relevant information. You’ll need to have the following ready for upload:

• A 3GP, AAC, AVI, FLV, MOV, MP4, or MPEG-2 video file for upload.
• A thumbnail image in a 16:9 aspect ratio and a minimum width of 192 pixels (JPEG or PNG). If you do not provide a thumbnail, Amazon will generate one automatically.
• Video title and video description.

6. Giveaways

What is an Amazon Giveaway?

An Amazon giveaway is a service that helps sellers on the platform raise product awareness and Amazon sales using a sweepstakes. And luckily for you, Amazon’s platform does most of the heavy lifting, making giveaways very easy to set up and run. All the giveaway host has to do is decide what your brand would like to give away and choose the entry requirements.

Follow these best practices for Amazon giveaways:

• Build up excitement about your giveaway at least 48 hours in advance to the actual event.
• Use all the tools at your disposal social media, influencer marketing, and email blasts to notify your potential customers of the giveaway.
• When the giveaway is over, re-engage your customers who didn’t win. You can do this by offering them a discount code or some other incentive to stay loyal to your brand.
• Of course, make sure you have measurements in place both before the giveaway starts and after it ends to track the effectiveness of this giveaway so you can adjust for future ones. SellerApp software can help you monitor sales.

7. Social Media

Organic brand posts best practices:

• Leverage your brand’s social media following by creating social posts and disseminating them through your various accounts.
• Make sure to add a call to action that links to product detail pages
• However, make sure your organic posts are relevant to your consumer base! If there’s a traffic increase to your Amazon pages but not a conversion rate increase, you’ll see a decrease in your product ranking on Amazon. One way to mitigate this is by linking to a page with a discount codes instead of directly to your Amazon product page. That way, you can separate more serious potential customers apart from the rest.

Sponsored posts best practices.

• Support a social media campaign by sponsoring advertisements that have a specific call to action and target your key consumer base.
• Make sure to retarget brand purchasers 3 weeks post-purchase on social media, es- pecially if your product is dispensable or needs frequent replacements.
• For new customers, make sure to target specific segments. On Amazon you can tar- get groups according to a variety of demographics like age, interests, and previous browsing history.

8. Affiliate Marketing

What is affiliate marketing for ecommerce?

• Affiliate links are links you provide to influence affiliate partners who then promote your products on their own platforms (websites, blogs, social media channels) to leverage their niche audiences on your behalf. Affiliate marketing is a great way to acquire new customers, enhance credibility, and see a good ROI.
• We often found that affiliate traffic had 6-7 times the conversion of normal traffic at Walmart.
• According to the Global Web Index Blog, 44% of active Instagram users say they use social media to conduct brand research.
• Affiliate marketing “Best” lists can often be picked up by Amazon and Google and featured on the search pages. This is part of the onsite associate program.
• The way the blogs link to Amazon strongly influences Google SEO.

Leverage affiliate marketing on Amazon:

• First, you’ll need an affiliate marketing tool that can help you keep track of sales and attributed purchases. Amazon Associates has an affiliate program that can integrate easily with Amazon product listings.
• Then you’ll want to create a tag that goes into a detail page URL of a product you’d like to promote. To learn more, contact Amazon’s Product Development team to have Affiliate Tags created that’ll help differentiate and sort your products so that poten- tial influencers can see them.
• Next, it’s a good idea to leverage AMZTracker to build Super URLs that can provide you with more data than simply conversions and clicks.

Measure success.

There are a few key metrics you’ll want to keep track of to know whether or not your affiliate links are effective.

• Click volume on an individual product link.
• Conversion after the click.
• Cross purchase analysis.

9. Reduce Add-on Items

How add-ons affect Amazon sales:

• The simple truth is, there are many products with low ASP’s and disproportionate fulfillment costs. These items are often sold as ‘add-ons’. This status can also be Amazon’s shot across your bow indicating the financials just don’t make sense. You could be on the path to CRAP if you have too many add-on items.
• Amazon add-on items are the types of small items that are cost-prohibitive to ship by themselves. In fact, these items can only be purchased if customers add them onto an existing item, bringing their total order to $25 or more. These types of products are often office supplies, snacks, and hygiene items. Amazon quickly realized that the shipping costs it was paying on these items were higher than the fees it was receiving. Since Amazon isn’t in the business of losing money, it introduced the add-on program—causing controversy among both sellers and customers.

10. Amazon Lightning Deals

Make the most of Lightning Deals.

Amazon Lightning Deal is a type of flash sale which appears under a section on Amazon’s homepage called ‘Today’s Deals.’ Here, consumers will find limited quantities of products that are steeply discounted and must be claimed within a specific time.

What boosts you can expect from Lighting Deals:

• According to Jumpshot, Amazon hosts close to 1,500 to 2,000 Lightning Deals per day. That’s over 45,000 in a given month!
• A product sees an approximate 65% boost in sales the day of the Lightning Deal on average. The next day, the boost is still there but it drops to close to 39%. On day three, it’s down to 22%, and 19% on day four. By day six the boost is lower than 10%, and continues the downward trend back to its original sales numbers over the next eight days.

11. Subscribe and save program

Things to know about Subscribe & Save program:

Subscribe & Save allows brands to essentially create a subscription for their product through Amazon. It allows customers to receive a 5% discount per subscription until they’ve built up 5 different subscriptions. After 5, they receive up to 15% discount on orders.

• Subscribe & Save does NOT apply to Lightning Deals.
• Subscribe and Save items had twice the retention for new customers as non S&S.
• Subscribe and Save evens out seasonality.

Subscribe & Save has two types of orders:

• Signup orders, where customer’s first order after subscribing to a product in the S&S program. (Note: S&S doesn’t appear unless you’re the Buy Box offer.)
• Replenishment orders, which are set up to automatically deliver at a time interval the customer sets up. Customers can choose monthly intervals from 1–6 months.
• S&S increases conversion. With one of our brands, we saw twice the repeat customers with S&S compared to traditional orders.

12. Prime day prep

How to prep for Prime Day 2023 now:

• Focus your time and energy on optimizing products that are already performing well rather than trying to get rid of products that aren’t performing so well.
• Make sure you’ve got all the deals and promotions that you want to offer lined up because there’s often a waiting period after you create a deal for it to go live on Amazon.
• Make sure you’ve got a customer service strategy in place to respond to last minute problems and keep customers happy.
• Use the above mentioned strategies to optimize your listings, create promotional campaigns, and advertise your product.
• Prime Day is often super crowded. One growing strategy is to deal pulse, focusing your deals in the weeks leading up to Prime. That way, on Prime Day, you can just ride the traffic.
• Brands that win Prime Day promote the weeks going into Prime Day, allowing them to ride the traffic wave. Post Prime Day, they promote again.

13. Product Images

Get your hero images right.

• 90% of users look at every image on an ASIN page.
• The main image should call out main important information of the product. It’s the
• first thing people see about your product!
• Make sure the image is mobile friendly.
• Make sure the pixel size and everything else is correct.
• Make sure your images and clear, sharp, and well lit.

Give the product context with image stacks and glamour photos.

• Amazon allows up to 7 product images on a given listing (and even more when users click in for certain product categories).
• Show the product in use in a lifestyle image. This will help consumers understand how the product can be used, and also give them an idea of how the product occupies space.
• Show the product in action. If it’s a container, show it filled with something. If it’s a clothing item, show how it fits when worn.

Utilize 360 images if applicable.

360 spin images help give high-definition renders of a product. These are especially helpful with products that customers would want to feel and get a better scope for the shape and size before actually buying. Not every listing needs a 360-spin image, so be strategic about what makes the most sense for your brand.

Conclusion:

By following these simple tricks, tactics, and tips, you can grow your Amazon sales significantly in 2023.

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