“I want more sales on Amazon!” This is the battle cry of every seller, but the journey to get there is often overlooked. Numerous steps must be tackled before a consumer makes the decision to click “checkout”. One of the most crucial of steps is getting the right eyes to your product. But how do you drive traffic to your Amazon listings? Here are 8 tips and tricks to make sure that your target audiences find your wares.
Tip #1 — Ask Why Listings Aren’t Performing
If your products aren’t selling the way you want, start by getting introspective and explore reasons that might be stunting progress.
- Is there demand? Has demand waned?
- Are you indexed and showing up on the search engine results page?
- Are your images optimized?
- Is your copy optimized?
- Do you have reviews?
- Are your ads optimized?
- Do you have a traffic or conversion problem?
A successful listing has a balance of all these aspects. If performance starts to dip, take the time to investigate each of these and find your weak links. Let’s explore ways to tackle the last question: How do you increase traffic and eventually conversion for your listings?
Tip #2 — So Long Keyword Stuffing
Every year Amazon’s search algorithm gets more refined in its attempt to understand what searchers are truly looking for and the results that should be served for their query. It takes an advanced level of machine learning to understand that someone looking for a “cream highlighter” is probably talking about makeup and not an off-white marker for taking notes.
There is also a vast array of creamy highlighters to present in a search, so the algorithm is also trained to provide the highest quality results. This doesn’t mean that Amazon search prefers Maybeline and is ready to tell the world. A quality result to Amazon has a very specific quartet of features:
- Optimized Listing
- Advertising
- Conversions
- Reviews
Let’s break these down and explore best practices to succeed with each.
Tip #3 — The Layered Keyword Approach
If keyword stuffing is a thing of the past, what are the tactics of the future? Modern keyword usage requires research, critical thinking and iteration. Keyword strategies need to build on themselves and evolve as your knowledge of what works and what doesn’t expands. The first step is to create a brainstormed list of keywords.
Brainstorm A Keyword List
A good place to start looking for key terms is existing content online and offline. Explore:
- Product packaging — Beyond the product name, how is your product already being described?
- Existing reviews — If you want to know what words consumers are using to describe your product, see how they talk about your products and what features they are calling out as important
- Customer feedback — Customer emails and chat conversations outside of Amazon can give you a better understanding of how they relate to your product. Use this information to identify what problems they’re trying to solve and thus what terms they might be searching. Implement these terms to guide them to your listing.
Expand with Keyword Tools
Once you’ve got a list started, take it to a keyword research tool. There are many free versions out there and several tools designed specifically for search within Amazon. Your initial list will get you in the right ballpark, but these tools will help you expand beyond terms you might not have thought of. This step will also help you quantify which keywords you’ve generated are being searched for and eliminate terms that have less chance of driving traffic. When considering this, look at search volume, relevancy, trending, and the potential intent behind the search.
Reverse ASIN Search
The next step is competitive analysis. Once you’ve identified your direct competitors, the easiest way to go toe-to-toe with them is to figure out what keywords they are ranking for. If they are seeing success, a reverse ASIN search provides you with the list of keywords their ASINs are ranking for. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel if you can pluck out keywords for similar products that are proving successful on Amazon already.
Tip #4 — Create Keyword Profiles
Chances are high that your catalog contains products with similarities. Save yourself time by creating multiple keyword profiles that can be selected and combined in different ways to define the uniqueness of each product. As an example, imagine you sell make-up. You’re going to need a different end list of keywords for blush than you will mascara, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some overlap. In this scenario, your blush could be a combination of the following profiles:
- Make-up
- Blush
- All-natural
- Make-up palettes
The mascara could utilize some of those profiles, but include others that are more specific to that product:
- Make-up
- Eye make-up
- Lash care
- All-natural
These are broad examples, but you can start to see that by grouping keywords into relevant lists, you can efficiently apply your keyword research across a variety of listings. These groupings are also a great place to start when looking for keywords to target with advertising.
Tip #5 — Focus on Psychographics
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines psychographics as, “marketing research or statistics classifying population groups according to psychological variables (such as attitudes, values, or fears).” Limited characters and finite amounts of indexable keywords mean that you must be more strategic in choosing the right ones. To prioritize which keywords to use, take the time to ask yourself what drives your customers to search. Understand the issue they’re concerned about and how to show them your product is the answer. Knowing what drives a purchase informs the content you highlight in your listings, the keywords you select, the advertising you design and the placement of those ads.
Tip #6 — Use Every Applicable Data Field
Once you’ve saturated your title, bullet points, description, and search terms fields full of meaningfully chosen keywords, where do you go from there? Amazon provides a plethora of other fields specific to each category that allow you to provide customers with a more complete picture of the product.
In lieu of the ability to pick up a product and look it over, it’s important to provide the customers with details about color, flavors, materials, special features, and every applicable detail. Look through the product detail page or flat file and explore what information presentation options are available for your category and take advantage of every scrap of real estate you can.
Tip #7 — Apply Learnings from Ads to Listings
We could write a whole book filled with 100+ marketing tips, and we have! But for the purposes of increasing visibility on Amazon, there’s usefulness for your advertising beyond the life of the campaign. It’s hopefully part of your process to analyze your ads after they run to see what was useful and what should be changed in future campaigns, but have you ever thought about what those ads tell you about the keywords used inside them?
Keyword targeted ads are successful when consumers search for those keywords and choose to click your link. Your consumers have just told you what keywords will bring them to your product pages! Harvest your most successful keywords from ads and make sure they are featured in the listings themselves. That way, the success of the ads can live on well beyond the run time of the campaign.
Tip #8 — Incentivize Purchases
Amazon has several promotions to choose from that give customers that extra incentive to pull the trigger, as we discuss in our blog about Amazon’s 2022 Holiday Event Calendar. Clippable coupons are extra effective because they require little effort on the consumers part, needing only to check a box. Sometimes promotional codes can be confusing to use and leave them frustrated and unwilling to complete the purchase.
More to Come On Increasing Visibility On Amazon
Amazon provides a large array of tools and tips, but often success requires thinking outside the box. Information provided for one purpose can often have a greater value when looked at in a broader light. The key with Amazon is to never stop iterating because your successful competitors never will either. Your customers and Amazon itself continue to evolve every day and these are just a few of the tips that will keep consumers coming back for more.
The information discussed here along with much more can be found in our webinar Drive More Traffic to Your Amazon Listings: 5 Channels That Deliver, which was co-hosted with Sellzone. Want to learn more about driving external traffic to Amazon? Stay tuned for the second installment of this blog coming soon!
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