In recent years, Amazon has been making efforts to create a more personalized connection between shoppers and brands. Features such as A+ Content, Amazon Live, Amazon Stores, and Amazon Posts provide shoppers opportunities to evaluate brands alongside products when making their purchasing decisions.
Furthering that initiative, shoppers now also have the ability to “follow” specific brands on Amazon.
What Happens When Someone Follows a Brand?
When a person follows a brand, they opt in to receive notifications from the brand. These notifications may include whenever the brand launches a new product on Amazon, publishes a new Amazon Post, starts a livestream, or runs an exclusive promotion.
On the brand’s side, these communications are managed through the Manage Your Customer Engagement tool and Amazon Posts.
How to Follow Someone on Amazon
To follow a brand on Amazon, search their brand name in the search bar, click into one of their product detail pages, then click “Visit the [Brand] Storefront.” Once on their Amazon Store, just click the “Follow Button.”
How to Find Who You Follow on Amazon
If you ever want to review which brands you are currently following, simply navigate to Your Account > Profile. On your Profile page, you will see a “Who You Follow” section.
Requirements to Enable Follow Option
Your brand must be enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, which requires an active U.S. trademark. Once you’re registered, you gain the ability to create Amazon Stores. When you create an Amazon Store, you automatically gain a “Follow” option to display on your storefront.
What Results Can You Expect from Amazon Followers?
When Amazon launched the Manage Your Customer Engagement tool, Kaspien ran a one-month test to promote a new product for one of our partners. At the time, our partner had 1,700 followers.
Campaign Results
- 29% sales lift for the ASIN while the campaign was running (Manually tracked. Amazon does not currently report sales lift within the tool.)
- Reach: 545
- Open Rate: 21.47%
- Click-Through Rate: 0.92%
- Clicks: 5
- Unsubscribes: 1
It’s notable that the campaign had only 5 clicks, but we still saw a strong sales lift, suggesting that some shoppers may view the email, then search for the product at a later date. Additionally, any sales increase driven by this campaign helped improve product rank, boosting organic traffic and sales as well.
7 Ways to Gain Amazon Storefront Followers
Gaining followers on Amazon can clearly be beneficial. So, what can you do to actively encourage more people to follow your brand?
1 — Amazon Storefront
Amazon Brand Stores offer a curated digital storefront removed from the competition. Stores now display a Follow option in the nav bar on the left side of the nav bar.
To encourage more followers on your store, you can upload a custom image into a module with a call to action; however, that space may have better uses. In general, Amazon Stores can be seen as the landing page, rather than the ad itself. The Brand Store should be optimized to welcome, engage, and convert shoppers. To grow followers, you should leverage other programs, such as Amazon Live.
2 — Amazon Live
Amazon Live is a free, self-service livestreaming platform on Amazon. Brand registered brands and their authorized agents can run livestreams from the brand’s channel. These livestreams can appear within the brand’s listings, Brand Store, competitor listings, Live Now row on the Amazon Live page, product category pages, and the Amazon home page.
Not all of these placements are immediately available; brands must “level up” their Amazon Live rank to unlock high-visibility placements. To level up, brands must live stream regularly, have engaged audiences, drive sales with live streams, and apply for approval.
To gain followers through Amazon Live, make “follow our brand” a recurring call to action throughout the livestream. You should also have a team member monitor the livestream chat while the speaker presents, and they can answer questions and encourage shoppers to follow as well. This strategy works best when you can also offer exclusive discounts to shoppers who follow your brand, such as offering a unique promo code for that audience.
3 — Amazon Posts
Amazon Posts are an Instagram-like feed that appears within your Brand Store, your product listings, competitor product listings, related post feeds, and category-based feeds. Your posts feed may not appear until you’ve published 10 posts.
Amazon Posts include the brand name and logo, image, “show product” button, caption, and tags, which are automatically generated by Amazon.
To gain followers with Amazon Posts, be sure to include the follow button your posts. You can also encourage shoppers to follow your brand within the caption. Similar to Amazon Live, promising exclusive discounts is a great strategy for winning followers. Additionally, don’t be afraid of having a strong brand personality shine through in your posts. Tying emotion into marketing makes your content more engaging.
4 — Media Gallery or A+ Content
Venturing into a more creative tactic, you can add an infographic style image to your listing media gallery that encourages shoppers to follow your brand. This image can highlight the perks of following, such as being the first to hear of new product launches, deals, and exclusive promotions.
If your product needs every image in the media gallery in order to showcase all its features, you can instead promote the follow option within your A+ Content. Shoppers who read A+ Content do so because they still need more information before making a buying decision. Showing them that you have something akin to a loyalty program can help win them over.
5 — Sponsored Brand Ads
Staying on Amazon for one more tip, the simple use of Sponsored Brand Ads can support follower growth. Sponsored Brand Ads can direct to your Amazon Storefront. Once there, shoppers will see the follow button. This is perhaps an indirect tactic, but more traffic will likely correlate to more followers, and Sponsored Brand Ads drive additional sales anyways, so it’s a win regardless.
6 — Social Media Posts
Expanding beyond Amazon, we have also seen success in promoting the follow option via social media. In the campaign results we shared above, the brand encouraged their followers on social media to also follow their brand on Amazon. Using social media to promote Amazon sales is a simple tactic, but it’s free and it works.
7 — Influencers
Last but not least, let’s turn our attention to influencer marketing. Influencers have been used to promote products on Amazon for many years now because they help brands reach highly relevant audiences, build trust, and boost listing traffic. It’s a simple step to require your influencers to encourage their followers to follow your Amazon Storefront in any of their sponsored posts.
While you won’t be able to attribute follow growth directly because Amazon keeps follower information anonymous and aggregated, you can monitor for correlations between an influencer’s post and an increase in followers.
Learn More About Amazon Marketing Strategies
So, that’s it. Seven tips for how to grow your followers on Amazon. If you found this helpful, consider subscribing to our weekly blog newsletter to stay up-to-date with the latest Amazon news and strategies.
