Refunds Manager Blog

It’s easy to assume that you have only two options when it comes to launching a new product: PPC and giveaways. But have you thought about using social media to drive traffic to your Amazon FBA listings?

Social media is not a quick and easy pathway to success, but it can help you gain outside traffic for your FBA products.

In this post, we’ll explore the pros and cons and we’ll also provide steps you can follow to leverage social media for your next launch.

Why use social media to drive traffic to Amazon listings

There are plenty of reasons why you might decide to use social media to market your Amazon FBA products. Here are a few common ones:

• Competitors are driving outside traffic
• You don’t want to rely on Amazon’s platform
• Your product isn’t ranking yet
• You don’t have many reviews yet and don’t want to run PPC ads

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This is a super awesome, in-depth guest post from the folks at AdBadger, a campaign management and optimization tool for Amazon PPC. 

If you’re tired of the same basic PPC suggestions over and over, we’ve got you covered. Here are 7 advanced Amazon PPC tips that your competitors likely still don’t know how to use properly.

1. Fine tune your auto campaigns
2. Make your bid calculations scientific
3. Diversify your targeting
4. Account structure is everything
5. Avoid keyword cannibalization
6. Refine your category targeting
7. Use PPC software

1.  Fine tune your Auto campaigns

You may not know this, but auto campaigns actually target both keywords and ASINs. 

So if you were to download a search term report and check out what those auto campaigns were targeting and the types of search term results that would come through, you would notice that some of your results in the customer search term column actually begin with “B0” like this:

All of the search terms that begin with “B0” are ASINs (“Amazon Standard Identification Number”). These auto campaigns are targeting customer search terms, but those ASIN targets aren’t necessarily what customers are typing into the Amazon search bar.

In fact, those are competitor products that are on Amazon. So your advertisements can actually be targeting what customers are searching for, or any other product that is on Amazon. 

What if you want to view your auto campaigns and how effective these keywords are versus those ASIN targets?

For any auto campaign that was created after November 15, 2018, you can actually click the targeting tab at the top of any of those automatic campaign ad groups, and you’ll be able to see the four different auto targeting options.

Let’s take a closer look at those Targeting Options

Those four auto targeting options are:

• Close match
• Loose match
• Substitutes
• Complements

Those first two targets, close match and loose match, are keyword targeting options which tell how closely the customer’s search term is related to your product.

The second two targets are product targets, so if someone would buy a different product instead of yours, then your product will be targeting those substitute items.

Complements would be something that goes along with your product. For example, if you were selling hair brushes, then hair spray might be a complement item. Your product ad will be targeting those complementary ASINs.
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This is a guest choice from Seller’s Choice Digital, experts in Amazon branding.

Product imagery is a vital part of selling online. Pictures communicate much more efficiently than text, making them a valuable tool that you can use to your advantage. A customer will normally check the product images before reading the description. This means that your first image is the first impression you make on the customer, and hopefully, after reading our tips, it won’t be the last.

The convenience of online shopping, unfortunately, takes away the customers’ opportunity to physically handle the product. This is a gap you need to fill with detailed and diverse imagery, to make up for the lack of seeing the product in person.

The benefits of well-produced product imagery are numerous, for example, good photos will show your brand. They’re also much more likely to be shared on social media than text is, making them more likely to be seen. This helps improve the reach and credibility of your brand. Another way to get your brand out there is by using Facebook ads. Consumers are also more likely to instinctively trust companies whose imagery they’ve seen before, yet another benefit of putting in a little extra work.

Here are a few tips you can implement when photographing and editing, to make the most of your visual marketing!

1) Know Your Specifications

Before making big decisions about your product imagery, do some research. You need to know the requirements and specifications for your photographs before ever picking up a camera. When you’re selling on a platform like Amazon, you need to look into their recommendations and requirements, not doing so might mean your images are rejected.

You should also plan what you’re using the images for. Is it a thumbnail? A header? Each of your photographs could have different purposes, meaning they require a different approach. Just remember to plan ahead to avoid big changes later on. To help you stay organized, you could use a product launch timeline.

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As an ecommerce entrepreneur, you do everything in your power to get more sales for your products. Since Amazon is one of your top channels, much of your marketing efforts go to getting more sales on Amazon. You run promotions and ads, and you create content. But have you utilized Amazon FBA affiliate marketing to grow sales?

If not, we’re giving you the rundown on how you can find affiliate opportunities for your product and reach out to affiliate marketers directly to forge new business partnerships that are mutually beneficial.

What is Amazon FBA affiliate marketing

Amazon FBA affiliate marketing allows digital publishers to earn affiliate revenue from the products they recommend from their blog posts, social media posts or other content. Affiliates earn 10% for the sale of most products—not only the product they recommended but also anything the customer purchases at that time. 

YouTubers, bloggers, podcasters and other types of digital publishers can sign up to be an affiliate marketer and drive traffic to any product they choose, typically something that aligns with the needs of their audience.

Here’s a fee schedule with what percentages affiliate make per certain items and categories. Amazon sellers are not charged additional amounts in order to pay affiliates. The cost is already covered with your FBA fees. 

What kinds of FBA products does affiliate marketing work for?

When affiliate marketers drive traffic to your product listings, they’re essentially marketing your product for you, in exchange for affiliate commission. Typically, these content creators earn most of their revenue from advertising (usually Google’s AdSense or from YouTube ad clicks) and they are looking for easy additional sources of income.

The best opportunities for affiliate marketing fall to products like these…

• Hobby products – There are thousands of websites dedicated to helping people learn or master a new hobby like sewing or DIY home renovations. These types of sites are very likely to use affiliate marketing to monetize their content. 
• Outdoor or sports gear – Similar to hobbies, products that are outdoor or sports gear are a great fit because there are lots of sites that cater to your target audience.
• Lifestyle, fashion and beauty – Lifestyle bloggers, fashion bloggers, and beauty bloggers regularly make product recommendations and post product reviews, making their content a perfect fit for affiliate marketing.
• Health and wellness – People with a certain health condition or fitness goal are likely to purchase the products that their favorite blogger or YouTuber recommends. 

How to find and reach out to affiliate marketers

If your branded FBA product is a good fit for affiliate marketing, the next step is to get more affiliate marketers linking to your listing. 
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Today, we’re covering our top Amazon copywriting tips for FBA entrepreneurs who know that when it comes to product listings, there is always room for improvement.

Your Amazon product pages are the lifeblood of your FBA business. They need to pull in as much organic traffic as possible and convert as much of the traffic as possible. We’ve talked at length about your product imagery can help achieve both higher click throughs from search results pages as well as higher conversion rates.

But what about the copy?

Your copy has a HUGE impact on your click throughs and conversions. We know that you’re busy, so we’ve designed this post to be easy to skim so can quickly check your familiarity with these concepts. After you’ve read this list, go through all of your product listings and see if they are implementing these best practices.

1. Differentiate your product from its competitors

To really make your product stand out, it needs to immediately be clear to shoppers why and how it is different from its competitors. Imagery is absolutely one of the best ways to do this, but you can achieve this in your copy as well.
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Maybe you’ve launched a couple products on Amazon before, and you want to stay current with the best strategies for your next launch. Or maybe you’re launching a product for the first time and you want to avoid newbie mistakes. Either way, you’ll learn something in this post, which helps you learn how to market your private label or branded product on Amazon.

The basics of launching a product on Amazon

This is a quick overview for the newbies (skip this part if you’re experienced). The benefit of launching your ecommerce product on Amazon, instead of a Shopify or BigCommerce website to start, is that you gain access to customers of Amazon.com, estimated to be 300 million.

There are an estimated 2 million sellers on Amazon. For any product, there are thousands of search results.

The search term “ice cream scoop” yields 4,000 results.

At the most basic level, you have two core strategies when launching your product:

1. Try to show up on page 1 of Amazon search results
2. Try to get external traffic to come to your Amazon product listing directly and buy your product (without searching for it first)

Within those two main strategies, there are of course other strategies.

Try to show up on page 1 of Amazon search results:

• Organic ranking (optimize your listings for search terms)
• PPC traffic (spend on Amazon ads for relevant keyphrases)

Try to get external traffic to come to your Amazon product listing directly and buy your product:

• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing, including blogs, videos and webinars

And yes, within each of those strategies, things get complicated.

Task list for your Amazon product launch

So which core strategy should you choose? Try to rank in Amazon search or build up external traffic?
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