Amazon marketing strategy

40% of online sales in the US happen on Amazon. 

That means that if you manage to hijack Amazon’s system, you can tap into a fantastic marketing opportunity. But many of the people who publish on Amazon don’t effectively use it to their advantage.

That’s understandable.

Amazon marketing is complex, and without guidance, many great products flop before they even have a chance.

But there are specific steps you can take to get your product in front of the eyes of exactly the people who want to see it.

With Amazon constantly growing, time is of the essence. 

Follow this full-fledged Amazon marketing strategy with steps and examples so that you can sit back and watch your sales climb.

What is an Amazon marketing strategy?

An Amazon marketing strategy is a system, a series of steps, that you can employ to market your Amazon products and sell more, doing less. 

This process will involve optimizing your page so that it’s the best it can be, perhaps investing in Amazon advertising, using your social media and personal websites, and more. We will outline each step in this guide.

The benefit of marketing on Amazon is that your potential customers have a strong buying intent. They know that they want to buy something, and they often know what they want to buy – a huge advantage for sellers.

You just need to learn how to tap into it.

High-Runner Marketing Strategy

Have you ever wondered how Amazon makes so much money, despite offering some of the lowest prices on the internet?

Amazon employs something called a high-runner marketing strategy, and if you learn how it works, you can use it to sell your products.

A high-runner marketing strategy is when a brand (in this case Amazon) pays close attention to the products that are doing well. Say, for example, a certain cell phone has been quite popular and often-searched on Amazon.

Amazon takes those sought-after products, and discounts them.

This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s exactly what draws people into the website. Then, once someone is already on the product page or checking out, Amazon offers accessories to the main product. 

To use the example of the cell-phone, when someone is checking out after having found their discounted cell phone, Amazon offers them other, related products. Perhaps they offer headphones, a charger, a speaker, a case, etc.

The prices on those accessories are, often, marked-up. They might be the most expensive on the market.

But typically, buyers won’t do the extra research on those accessories that cropped up at the end of their shopping journey. It’s rare that someone will pause to compare the prices of $20 phone cases if they just bought a $1,200 phone. 

The Amazon user will typically just add those accessory items to their cart as well, knowing that they will probably need them with their new cell-phone, and they’re most likely compatible with the phone they just bought since Amazon suggested them for purchase in tandem. 

That’s where Amazon makes their money- the high-runner marketing strategy.

And you can cash in on that.

Diversify your Products

Because of Amazon’s marketing strategy, the site will promote accessories to products that are popular.

You don’t want the products that your brand offers to become too niche, especially because Amazon’s method is based around referring products together. 

Another way to help people find your products will be to optimize your product pages.

Amazon SEO Strategy

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s essentially any process that allows a certain webpage to appear higher in search results. Most of the traffic goes to the first few search results, so it’s an important consideration for anyone selling online.

Here’s how to optimize your product page.

Include the following in your title:

  1. Brand name
  2. Color
  3. Key Features
  4. Material
  5. Quantity
  6. Size

Also try to prioritize putting the most important details first. What makes your product better than the competition? Those should be the first things you mention.

This helps your potential customers, and the Amazon algorithm loves it as well.

2. Perform Amazon Keyword Research

Figure out what people are searching for on Amazon in your niche so that you can include those words in your title and in your product description

These are the most basic keywords that describe your product. 

You may be able to come up with these without doing any research, and instead just thinking about the things people might search for when looking for your product.

For example, if you are selling a life jacket, jot down some terms like life preserver, floating device, life vest, etc. These are all the words people might search on Amazon in order to find your product page.

Another tip is to check out your competitors’ pages. Scroll down to find their products’ ASIN and copy then paste it into a reverse ASIN search. An ASIN search will reveal which keywords your competitors are ranking for. 

You can find more keywords by using Amazon’s suggested search. Simply search for your product in the Amazon search bar, and make note of what other keywords come up as suggestions.

There are also Amazon keyword research tools available if you are interested in doing your research that way. You can find a more comprehensive list of Amazon keyword research tools here. 

3. Follow fundamental on page seo strategies

Include your keywords in the following places:

  • Your Product Title
  • Your Product Description/ The Bullet Points
  • Backend Keywords

While many Amazon sellers include their keywords in the product titles and description, Amazon offers another option for including keywords that you should not forget- the backend keywords, or “invisible keywords.”

These keywords will not be visible to normal Amazon shoppers, but they will be visible to the algorithm.

To add backend keywords, go to seller central, choose inventory, then manage inventory. Choose the product you’d like to add keywords for, then choose edit. That will take you to a new page where you can choose the keywords tab. Then, in the search terms box, fill in your invisible keywords.

4. Analyze and Adapt

After your products have already been online for a while, click on reports at the top of the navigation bar. Then choose advertising reports, fill in your campaign, report type, and period of time, then choose create report. 

This report will tell you which keywords you’re ranking for, which keywords are converting, and additional keywords that you may not be thinking of. With this report, you can update your keywords and include the words that are working and delete the words that are not working. 

This data will only be available if you have an already-running ad campaign. We do recommend setting up promotions within the Amazon website, especially if you are a new brand trying to stand out. 

Amazon Advertising Strategy

If you are willing to invest money in your Amazon advertising campaign, then there are even more ways that you can create conversions and get attention for your products. 

Amazon offers ways to manage your own ad campaign that are straightforward and typically quite effective.

There are three types of promotions that you can buy from Amazon. They all work on a pay-per click basis.

Amazon pay per click advertising: Pay per click means that you will only have to pay for an ad if someone clicks on it. You usually pay quite a small amount, like a few cents or a few dollars, each time someone clicks on your product page’s ad. This method ensures that you do not have to pay for any ads that no one chooses to click on. 

When you fill in your daily budget on these campaigns, consider that the more money you put in that box, the more Amazon will advertise your product. So, if it’s in your budget, you could technically put any number you’re comfortable with. However, a good rule of thumb is to not bid more than 10% of your product’s value. 

This type of advertising is cost effective, so it’s accessible to any Amazon sellers.

Amazon sponsored product ads

If you are only hoping to sell one particular product, or if you are a beginner selling on Amazon, then we recommend using Amazon sponsored product ads.

With these ads, you will choose one of your keywords, then bid on it. Then your product will come up at the top of the search results whenever someone searches for that keyword.

To create a sponsored product, go to the campaign manager tab and choose create campaign, then choose sponsored product.

You will then choose the keyword you want to bid on. In the image above, the keyword that ZIHNIC bid on was presumably “sound cancelling headphones.”

Amazon display ads

These types of advertisements are relatively new compared to the other two types. 

Display ads come up on the right side of the page when someone is looking at a similar product. 

To create these ads, go to the same campaign manager tab, then choose create campaign and sponsored display. 

This is another type of ad that is a good fit for people who are beginners, or who are hoping to promote just one product. 

Amazon sponsored brand ads

Brand ads appear on the top of the page after an Amazon user performs a search and they typically aim to promote a brand rather than one specific product. 

As you can see in the image, the user searched “sound cancelling headphones” and the brand ad didn’t mention a specific pair of headphones, but rather a brand aimed at creating headphones that you can wear while sleeping. The user may not directly purchase from this brand in this case, but perhaps they hadn’t heard of it before, and they may turn to this brand in the future when looking for similar products. 

We recommend this type of ad for seasoned Amazon sellers who have the budget to spend on promoting brand awareness. This recommendation is because advertising your brand doesn’t always have a direct return on investment, like you’ll see with advertising one particular product under a keyword. 

Amazon Social Media Strategy

Remember that you don’t only need to promote your product within Amazon’s website. There are ways to direct traffic to your Amazon listing from social media as well. 

Here are some tips for getting social media users to check out your Amazon product.

1. Connect with influencers 

You can get in touch with influencers on influencer website portals, or even by just searching for influencers in your niche and reaching out to them via DM’s or email.

You can promise an influencer a free product in exchange for a review, or pay for a sponsored post on their page. 

We talk more about marketing with influencers below when we talk about affiliate marketing.

2. Do a giveaway

Many people search for the #giveaway hashtag on all social media sites to see if they can win something for free. 

You can use this to get followers on your brand’s accounts by posting that anyone who follows you or comments on a certain post is in the running for the giveaway. 

Alternatively, you could ask an influencer to do a giveaway, in which case the giveaway looks a lot more legitimate, so people trust it, and all those influencer’s followers now know about your product, even if they don’t win the giveaway.

3. Mind your hashtags

In the same way you did keyword research, you can do hashtag research to figure out what people are browsing in your niche. 

Similarly to keyword research, you can do this by either using a hashtag research tool, or paying close attention to the hashtags your competitors are using. 

4. Do a social media ad campaign

The most direct and quick way to promote your Amazon product on any social media site is with an ad campaign. 

Advertising on any websites like Facebook or LinkedIn means that you tap into a goldmine of data- AKA, your product ends up on the screen of exactly your ideal audience. 

Here you can create Facebook ads, here you can advertise on Instagram, click here to advertise on LinkedIn, and here you can advertise on Twitter. 

Amazon Affiliate Marketing Strategy

Any influencer (or, really, any person) can set up an affiliate link through Amazon. This link will be specific to each person, and if anyone follows that link and buys that Amazon product within 24 hours, the person who created and promoted the affiliate link will get partial commission.

Affiliate links are a win-win situation because whoever promoted the link stands to gain commission from the sale, and it also gives people an incentive to promote your product. 

When you reach out to influencers, ask them to promote your affiliate link, directing them to the Amazon affiliates program if they aren’t already a member. 

Instagram is tricky, because you can’t include links directly in posts. When working with affiliate links, it’s best to reach out to influencers who have over ten thousand followers, because at that point they can utilize the “swipe up” feature on their stories and insert the affiliate link.

You may also want to use other advertising strategies such as promoting links in Facebook groups, in a blog post on your website, in an email blast, or on LinkedIn posts. 

Recommended resource: Affiliate marketing for dummies

Amazon reviews strategy

You may think that you can’t control your reviews section, but there are some strategies you can put in place to clean up your reviews section and make it the best it can be.

Early Reviewer Program

For $60, you can enroll in the early review program. This program allows certain shoppers to write reviews on little-reviewed products in exchange for Amazon credits. 

Automated Seller Feedback Request

Amazon offers the option to allow your account to send out an automatic feedback request as soon as your order is delivered. That means that along with getting their product, your customers get a message asking them to please rate what they received. 

By enabling that feature, you may find that more positive reviews roll in, because more people send in reviews who are satisfied with their order, not just people who felt angry and incentivized to write a poor review. 

Amazon Vine

This program brings some of the most trusted reviewers on Amazon to write reviews for new items or pre-release items. 

With more reviews, your product gains more trust among viewers. It also helps that these reviews come from trustworthy reviewers and not just anyone who gets their hands on your product. This gives you a little more control over the quality of the posted reviews. 

Amazon Marketing Services

Do you want someone to create a full, customized Amazon advertising plan for your product, then execute that plan with a team of professionals? 

Get in touch with us for effective digital marketing with real results. We will work with you to create a complete strategy, then work through that strategy step by step. 

Amazon marketing may appear daunting, as there is a lot of information to sift through. But once you break it down and understand the steps, you can tap into one of the greatest ecommerce giants ever created.