by Jessica Dahlquist, Director of Operations | Accelerators, Coaching, Motivation Monday
A Quick Note From TurnKey:
As of October 10, 2019, Amazon Giveaways is no longer a feature hosted by Amazon. We loved this strategy so much and are sad to see it go. That being said, the principles that made the giveaway effective still apply:
- Leverage social media, email lists, etc. in order to send people over to a landing page to collect even more customer email addresses.
- Use squeeze pages to share more information and connect with customers. Video is a fantastic medium to include on the landing page because it gives you the unique opportunity to talk to your customers and pitch to them as if you were in the same room.
- Offer a discount code to people who watch the video.
So don’t worry just because Amazon isn’t offering this feature anymore. You can still find ways to incorporate the aspects of this strategy in order to impress your customers and increase sales! If you need more support, we have lots of other strategies to help you grow your sales, so don’t hesitate to reach out.
On a scale of 1-10, how nervous do you get when it comes to staying compliant while trying to get reviews? I know…it can literally leave you feeling helpless as your niche is getting more and more saturated and you don’t want to overstep with any shady strategies that will get you slapped on the wrist. The rules surrounding customer reviews and giving away products have definitely changed in the Amazon world over the years, so how do you know what’s okay and what is not?
While there’s a whole list of terms you must adhere to on Amazon’s website, at TurnKey we try to focus on what you CAN do to get results, and not just what you can’t do. One of our favorite strategies is utilizing Amazon Giveaways. The giveaway is literally hosted BY AMAZON, and as long as you follow their rules, you are good to go. Our clients have seen huge returns by running Amazon Giveaways. We are talking $1k in product for $10k in trackable revenue from a Giveaway.
So what’s the secret? Well, it’s important to first know HOW to set up an Amazon Giveaway. We walk you step-by-step through how to do that on Episode 2 of our Playbook for Amazon Podcast. Then once you understand the process, how do you actually make it result in massive returns?
Our #1 tip for running a successful Amazon Giveaway is to include a promotion for customers that don’t win the giveaway. By giving them a discount for entering, you’re much more likely to have an immediate customer or a customer down the road.
And if you want a bonus tip… we love adding educational videos to the squeeze page for the Giveaway. This is your chance to connect with your customers, appeal to their emotions, and get them to buy into the “why” behind your product. Make sure your video focuses on the benefits of the product and how they will feel after they use it. That’s exactly how we 10x’d our investment for the client I mentioned above.
If you haven’t already given Amazon Giveaway a try, we HIGHLY recommend this tool for getting more sales and in turn more reviews. If you want more information on Growth Strategies, we have a course designed specifically for the seller who is looking to GROW!
Need a bit more help generating the reviews you need to gain sales? Check out our Review Generation Accelerator for step-by-step strategies to increase your review numbers!
by Jessica Dahlquist, Director of Operations | Accelerators, Coaching, Full-Service, Motivation Monday
We hear from Amazon sellers every day who are intimidated and overwhelmed by their competition on Amazon. They feel like there’s no way that they can compete against the big brands who already have a following when they are just getting started. This type of thinking is something we like to call a scarcity mentality. It’s the idea that you have to either win everything or you get nothing.
Let me tell you a little secret about SCARCITY MENTALITY…it will not make you money! While you are spending so much energy worrying about someone else, you could use that energy to focus on improving your listings and growing your traffic. So promise me you’ll switch your energy to something that is worth your time, right now! Got it?
I guarantee your competitor is not doing everything right on Amazon and there’s plenty of room for opportunity for YOU to shine. Don’t worry about what they are doing, but instead let them educate you on what’s working and not working for customers, and take that information to improve your listing.
Here’s how to put this motivation into action: go to the listing of a competitor who intimidates you. Then, you’re going to make an old-fashioned list of pros and cons. First, write down all the things that you love about their page, their product, and their engagement. Do they have great images? Are they really personal when responding to questions? Are their bullet points engaging?
Next, put on your customer hat and write down all the things that you’d feel their listing is lacking if you were looking to purchase their product. Are there too many keywords stuffed into their description? Is their product missing any key components that your product offers? Are their images sterile? What are customers saying in the reviews about where this product fails to deliver?
Now take a look at your product. I guarantee that your product has a UVP or unique value proposition. What makes your product stand out? What problem does your product solve that your competitors’ product doesn’t?
Finally, go back to your listing and look at it from the perspective of a brand new customer. Do they fully understand the VALUE and BENEFITS of your products? Do they know how their life will change when they buy it? Are your bullet points highlighting not just the features, but the benefits? Once you ask yourself those honest questions, make the changes that create a clearer reflection of your brand. Once you do that, you can feel confident that you came to compete no matter who you are up against.
If you want more information about what you can learn from your competitors, check out a recent episode of our podcast, Playbook for Amazon. In Episode 9, we cover “How to Study Your Competitors to Beat Them”.
by Jessica Dahlquist, Director of Operations | Coaching, Full-Service, Motivation Monday
We hear from budget-strapped Amazon sellers every day, who feel like they are hemorrhaging money. They are desperate to get their sales up, and they don’t know how to do so on their own. They would love an Amazon Fairy to come and sprinkle some magic fairy dust on their listings and make their products sell! But they don’t have the time or experience with Amazon necessary to make that happen on their own. Sound familiar?
The thing that many of these sellers don’t realize is that there is no shame in asking for help. In fact, behind every success story you’ve ever heard about, is a team of people supporting that successful person’s vision! The key is to recognize that you don’t know what you don’t know and seek out people who can help fill in the gaps on the road to success.
TurnKey’s founder, Jeff Lieber, saw the need in the market to offer sellers more support in growing their sales. He started by consulting for his friends who were struggling on Amazon, and sure enough… after a few months of his tips and tricks, sales started to turn around for them. In fact, those earliest consulting clients (William Painter and EcoQube) are STILL with Turnkey today.
So, if you already feel like you aren’t making enough money, when do you bring in an expert to help? Well, just like anything in business, you have to be willing to invest in the long-term vision of a product. If you know your competitors are doing $100k+/month on Amazon and you’re at $10k/month, you can feel pretty confident that if you have a good product and you’re willing to do the work, there’s room for significant sales growth and it’s worth trying to make room in the budget to hire an expert to help you to become a key player in the niche.
Hiring an expert will cost you money, but it will SAVE you in three areas:
- Time: The only thing we cannot buy more of is time and an expert can make your path to excellence so much more efficient by showing you exactly how things should be done the right way, versus you trying to figure things out the hard way.
- Optimization: If you were to hop on a call with one of our TurnKey team members, we could probably suggest 3-5 things right off the bat that we would improve about your listing, and that’s without even going into the backend. When you hire an expert they will bring things to your attention you may never have even thought of, and those details can make the difference in thousands of dollars in sales per month.
- Potential: You may not really know how your product will do on Amazon. The truth is some products crush it on Amazon while others fall flat. You could waste years trying to get your product to the top of the leaderboard not knowing that you were already close to the ceiling in your niche. When you bring in an expert, we can help manage your expectations and understand your product’s full potential on Amazon in a much shorter time frame. This will help you decide how much you should invest in developing this platform.
Now that you recognize you need an expert in your corner, the key is to be sure you are getting the level of involvement you need from that expert. At TurnKey, we offer options ranging from full-service Amazon management to one-on-one coaching, to accelerator courses, all the way down to monthly group coaching to ensure that we can meet any business where they are. We even offer PPC Management and done-for-you services.
If you’ll remember, earlier in the article I mentioned EcoQube, founded by Kevin Liang. Kevin was originally a full-service client who really valued the insights and growth we provided for his business. It allowed him to reach heights on Amazon that he always hoped were possible. Over time his needs changed, and when it made sense for him to launch an in-house Amazon management team he became a one-on-one coaching client. TurnKey is here to support sellers all along their journey. If you want to hear more about Kevin’s story and experience working with TurnKey in all our different services, tune into the Playbook for Amazon Podcast Episode 3.
If you’re considering hiring an expert, I urge you to take the plunge. Don’t sit around wishing you knew how to crack the Amazon success code when there are people who have already cracked it for you! Want to know what level of Amazon support you need? Apply today and we’ll analyze your business and come up with a plan that will meet your needs. There’s no risk and you might just get the Amazon fairy you’ve been dreaming of!
