There’s obviously a huge emphasis on listing optimization and building out your listings to their most compelling version, but many other sellers forget about paying attention to their Storefront. If you are a seller with multiple products and you plan to build your brand on Amazon, let’s talk about how to improve your Amazon Storefront to do just that!
In this video by TurnKey’s Client Manager, Jenna Lieber, is sharing our best tips for improving your Amazon Storefront. One of the reasons we love the Storefront is because there are so many different features to bring your brand to life. For example, you can include different tabs and categories for your various products and their variations. This is also a great place for additional video and images, which are clearly tools for increasing conversion.
Don’t limit your optimizations to just improving your actual product listings, make it a priority to start building out your Storefront this week. Be sure to watch Jenna’s entire video to get all our best strategies and recommendations.
Do you have videos on your Amazon product listing? If you are Brand Registered are not utilizing that capability, what are you waiting for? Using video to connect, educate, and explain about your product to a potential customer is an invaluable way to sell! It’s easy to sell your product to someone in person because they can touch it and ask you questions. However, on a sterile Amazon listing, it’s challenging to make your images and copy feel compelling. That’s why using the video slot on your listing is a critical component to any great Amazon listing. So whether you already have a video up and want to ensure you are making the most of that resource, or you’re looking to add video, let’s dive in on how and where to use videos on your Amazon listing the right way.
Make Sure Your Intro is Strong
How many times have you started a video and, within 3 seconds, you realize it’s going to be a snooze and you click out of it? That first impression is everything, so here are some tips for a strong introduction:
Make a connection with the viewer and establish a bond. Example: “Hi, If you are like me you already know a healthy breakfast is the best way to start your day…“
Establish that you/your spokesperson is in alignment with the viewer. You actually care about their wellbeing.
Show that you understand their problem and show them how your product is the solution. Don’t focus on talking about your brand too much. Customers just want you to solve their problems and make their life easier. Tell them how your product will do that.
Speak to Your Demographic
Is the tone you use, the models, the location all speaking directly to your target customer? As a mom of three, when I see supermodels with perfect bodies showcasing shapewear or a swimsuit, I feel a little insecure that the product isn’t truly made with me in mind.
Adding testimonials to your videos will give your customers the social proof they need that people like them also enjoyed your product. This greatly increases your conversion rate. Someone else talking about your product and edifying your product is more effective than you trying to convince someone about the value of the product that you are selling
Close Strong
Tell them what action to take: Example: “If you are ready to remove those unsightly skin blemishes, click the button below.”
We are big fans of really utilizing your assets to the highest degree. If you go to all the effort of making a video, you can use that video all over the place. On your website, in Facebook Ads, on Instagram… everywhere! When choosing which platform to run your video ads, choose your biggest competitors and see where their customers are most engaged and where their followers interact with them the most. When you are a newer seller without much data, learning from your competitors is huge.
In Episode 8 of the Playbook for Amazon Podcast, Jeff shares about three different kinds of videos you can make quickly and inexpensively. If you haven’t listened to that yet, we highly recommend you head over to check that out. But to piggyback on what he covers in that episode, here are some other options for videos.
Do you sell on both your own website and Amazon? A major objection we hear from physical product sellers is that they don’t want to sell on Amazon because they don’t want to cannibalize their sales on their own site. While we totally understand this concern, we also wanted to provide you some rationale about why being on Amazon can only help your overall sales. So if you’re on the fence about selling both places, let’s dive into why we advise physical product sellers to have an Amazon presence.
The first thing people object to is simply the idea that if someone buys your product on Amazon versus on your website, you have a lesser margin on the sale after Amazon fees. This is completely valid, and there may be a percentage of buyers that hear about your brand from somewhere and then search to see if it’s on Amazon. When they find it there, they follow through because it’s just easier than going to a separate website. While those pesky Amazon fees do cut into your margins, what if someone hears about your brand and doesn’t go to the effort of tracking down your website? You lose the sale entirely. But if someone is able to type in keywords close enough to yield your product listing on Amazon, you’ve just made a sale that could have been lost.
Going along with this same idea, some people don’t feel comfortable shopping on websites they’ve never heard of. In an age where credit card fraud is a major issue, Amazon tends to be the most trusted shopping site. People already have their payment info logged in and they are literally one click away from an impulsive purchase. Sellers want to eliminate as many barriers as possible to get someone to purchase.
Making it easy for customers to to find your product, put it in their cart, check out with ease, and trust that they can get the product on their doorstep reliably and in a short timeframe, is what makes shopping on Amazon a customer’s #1 preference if given the option. To be honest, if I am shopping on a seller’s website and go to complete my purchase, but my purse is in the car and I don’t have access to my credit card right away, I will typically just abandon my cart. Sale lost. But there have been countless times when I remember while waiting in the carpool line that I need to order new supplements, and I pull out my phone, easily find the ones I want, and less than a minute later the purchase is done!
Here are some tips for sellers who are still concerned about if Amazon is the right fit:
If you have a large catalogue of products, only list your top sellers. Don’t waste time on less profitable or less popular SKUs. Spend your time and money on listing the ones that will offer you the most return. That way, even without having all your products there, your brand has a presence on Amazon when someone searches for you.
Check the potential in your niche. Not every product is a homerun on Amazon. Heavy, hard to ship items (unless you go the FBM route), products with tight expiration date, merchandise that is so unique no one would think to search for them, and SKUs that are doing less than $10k per month are typically not a good fit.
If you’re worried about profit margins after the Amazon fees, you can always list the retail price slightly higher on Amazon than it is on your website. Many customers either won’t compare the prices at all or, if they do, they figure the speed and ease of Amazon make the price worth it.
While every case is different, and we’re super happy to give you our honest assessment as to your potential on Amazon, we believe that it is in the best interest of most sellers to have a presence on Amazon, even if they are already doing well on their own site or in retail. The exposure you get being featured on Amazon’s platform is unmatched by any other sales channel in the world! Don’t miss out on the opportunity to grow your audience beyond those who have already heard about you, and reach the millions that click “Add to Cart” on Amazon every single day.
For many, Amazon PPC elicits feelings of being overwhelmed and confused. Some struggle to hone in on the right keywords, and ad budget is left on the table. Some are overspending on key terms that are expensive and not converting. Some are confused whether to do manual or automatic campaigns. Plus, things are always changing in the Amazon landscape. We totally understand the confusion and we want to help get you on the right path.
Our #1 tip is to hire an expert. You can’t possibly become an expert in PPC, when your time and attention is divided doing so many other tasks as an Amazon seller. We talk to a lot of people who feel really confident with off Amazon marketing, but on-Amazon their experience is limited. There’s no reason to spend hours learning the ins and outs of Amazon PPC, plus spend hours every week managing it, when you could hire an expert to do it for you the right way. While this is a critical part of a seller’s Amazon business, it is truly one of the first things you should relinquish to an expert.
If hiring an expert isn’t in the cards at the moment, here are three more tips for executing at a high level with your PPC.
Focus on the right keywords. We recommend running manual and automatic campaigns with the same keywords. This seems counterintuitive, but when Amazon runs automatic PPC campaigns for you, it’s based on their extensive knowledge of their own algorithm. Once you see which automatic campaigns are working well, plug in those same keywords in manual campaigns, and adjust the bids according to your goals. That way you can trust it’s a strong keyword for the product AND you have more control over the budget than you do with automatic campaigns..
Test out various PPC features. Amazon has recently rolled out a series of new Amazon PPC features — among them the intriguing options ‘Campaign Bidding Strategies’ and ‘Adjust Bids by Placement’. For example, with dynamic bidding, Amazon adjusts your bid according to the probability of a sale. This means you have the opportunity to: Bid Down, Bid Up and Down, or do Fixed Bids. If you are looking to more effectively utilize PPC, trying out new features could be the change you’ve been looking for.
Listing Optimization. While everything we’ve discussed above is important, the #1 most important thing for successful PPC campaigns, is having a fully optimized listing. Regardless of your budget, without a great listing, the clicks you drive from Amazon PPC won’t convert, and you’ll have a high ACOS. Click here to learn more about our PPC management (which includes listing optimization), apply for our services, and make sure you’re set up for success.
While hiring an expert ASAP is always our recommendation for ensuring that you are competing at the highest level on Amazon, give these three tips a try and see what a difference they can make. Unlike our competitors, when we manage PPC for clients, auditing their listings and making sure they are fully optimized is our first stop. We want to make sure that if you are spending money to drive traffic to your listings, that once a potential customer arrives on your page, they are going to be sold! Good luck!
What does it take to successfully manage your PPC Ads on Amazon? It seems like there’s no clear answer, and that’s why so many sellers do it incorrectly. They overspend on keywords that don’t convert or they don’t have the ad budget to make an impact because they can’t generate the sales. While there can be some uncertainty with Amazon PPC, we’ve had some incredible results with our clients, as we manage PPC the TurnKey way. Today, let’s look at one of these clients.
A client came to us in early 2019 struggling with their PPC. They knew they wanted different results, but didn’t know how to achieve them on their own. They hired TurnKey to help them identify the holes in their PPC management and alleviate that stress in their business.
The first thing we did was pull the data from 2018. From January to October of 2018, they spent $203,000 in ad dollars. In return, they were generating $871,000 in ad-related sales. Their ACOS was at 23% when we started with them. So, we had our baseline and a very healthy budget to work with and gather data from. Please note that while this particular client had a large amount of capital to dedicate to PPC, you don’t have to have a massive budget in order to see real results. It’s a matter of using your budget wisely.
Next, we analyzed the campaigns they had been running and began generating a plan. At TurnKey we build campaigns according to the following tenets:
Start with low risk keywords
Strive for easy optimizations
Run multiple types of campaigns (automatic, manual, branded, etc…)
Add negative keywords into campaigns
A huge pitfall we see with sellers is that they set up campaigns once, and then never revisit them. They don’t have the time to devote to monitoring the success of the campaigns, analyze the data, and make ongoing adjustments. But, that is what truly makes the difference between throwing money at ads that might work and strategically utilizing your ad spend.
When we work with PPC clients, we are doing the following on a regular basis:
Optimize ads on a weekly basis
Harvest new keywords, including negative keywords
Adjust bids and budgets to build PPC profits
Continuously expand and build new campaigns
There are some things about Amazon that are incredibly predictable and other things that are unexpected. When a seller fails to analyze the data that Amazon provides, especially the analytics related to PPC, they are leaving so much on the table when it comes to revenue and maximizing their ad budget.
So, how did TurnKey change the game for this client? Well, in 2019 in the same timeframe of January to October, this client increased their ad budget by just $40,000 and raised their ad-related sales to $1.2M. That’s $350,000 in growth, and that is JUST in ad-related sales. Not only that, but their ACOS was reduced to 20%, a number our client felt really good about.
It might seem like PPC is something that you can figure out, or you can set up automatic campaigns that will be “good enough.” Let this case study be a lesson to all sellers out there who are winging it. When you hire someone who specifically manages PPC full-time and is an expert at doing it the right way, you will see the benefits.
If you’re uncertain about what kind of results you can expect from Turnkey, you can try us month to month and just see. We bet that after a couple of months, you’ll never trust yourself to do it on your own again. Stick to the tasks you are truly gifted at and trust us with your PPC.
We’d love for you to be our next case study and success story. To learn more about our PPC Management and apply for our services you can head over here to chat with a member of our Client Success team. Let’s see some big numbers from you in 2020!
