ecommerce-optimizer.com/amazon-launch-sequence
The Amazon Product Launch sequence is one that can be done a variety of different ways. There is no 1 best way. The method in this article may not be popular at the moment but it keeps our margins where they belong and charges up the listing right out of the gate
As consultants, we are not always there for product launch and assume accountability later. We still need the knowledge and momentum for a launch or re-launch. The following is a readers digest version of our secret sauce as applied to Amazon listings.
We do not launch with massive giveaways or promos. We have no desire to compete for cheap buyers. There is little to no competition on Amazon for premium buyers, yet they are everywhere. Amazon Primes' main demographic is not cheap buyers.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is a key component to dominating any playing field. How can you ever reach the top of anything if you have no idea what you are up against?
We put a lot of effort into profiling the competition and strive to understand their strategies as well as they do. Leveraging their strengths and weaknesses to our advantage has created endless additional opportunities for clients over the years.
While our methods and process may vary between different industries, when we are finished with this key phase, for the most part, we have a very clear path forward.
The only measurement of how good (effective) a listing is, depends on how it stacks up against top competitors. The person or company building your listing may tell you they created a masterpiece, but if it does not stand out as better than the top performers in your category, you will never get to the top and stay there.
If you are not in the top three sellers on page one, then you should be constantly looking at the listings ahead of yours. Look for things they do better than you do and find a way to incorporate it into your listing. Those ranking ahead of you should always have a target on their back, but remember you do as well!
Experience has shown us that doing this over and over will create a bullet-proof listing. Study their reviews and Q&A's looking for pain points that your product solves and address it in your listing.
We suggest taking full page screenshots of the top listings, store each on its own tab in an excel spreadsheet and reviewing it quarterly for changes Ask yourself, how well it is optimized for relevancy(keyword targeting)? How well does it convert (messaging & sales)? How does it stack up against the top sellers?
If you are not creating listings designed and optimized to compete at the top right at launch, then you are only lengthening the learning curve and postponing your success.
Metrics To Focus On
We always start with keywords. Listed below is an outline of what data points we gather during this crucial step. We start by identifying the top converting keyword phrases for the product both on the marketplace and elsewhere.
There are many different methods and tools available for gathering the data points. We use home grown tools. A simple Google search will normally reveal both free and paid tools for revealing the data you will need. See our Ultimate List of Marketing And Design Resources for links to all of the tools necessary and more to do your job.
Profile the top sellers in multiple marketplaces. Reverse engineer the listings of the top 10 sellers for those top converting keyword phrases, revealing:
Audience
Demographics
Motivations
Pain Points (Reviews)
What information is important to them(listing Q&A's)
Opportunities
Hidden or potential traps
Untapped or saturated markets
Strengths & Weaknesses
Speak To Your Avatar
While doing your research, have your Buyer Persona Worksheet handy, filing in the details as they become clear. When you have a clear image of your buyer, an avatar. It becomes easier to tailor your message to their motivations.
Create A Buyer Persona
Make a detailed list of the best thing about each listing that stands out to you, then try to improve and optimize this into your listing. It is human nature to find all of the bad things others do. The first exercise that we give to any client is to identify what their competitors do right. You have to be better for a competitive advantage.
Using Results To Create Your Listing
The information revealed during your competitive research should tell you what you need to say, how to say it, who you are saying it to, how to best get your message to them, what they expect, how to motivate them, where to find them, obstacles, and opportunities. If you have kept good notes, your listing can almost write itself as you should now know what to say and how to say it to appeal to your audience.
We make a careful review of all of the product pictures. Utilizing this info, we know exactly what and how to create a listing that will launch and compete at the top optimized, targeted and converting.
When you launch a new product on Amazon, assist Amazon in properly categorizing your listing by thoroughly filling out every relevant back-end field. Your ultimate goal is to stand out, above and separate from all of the competition. Creating an optimized listing is key to your success.
Focus On The Goal
Create additional value or perceived value and give buyers a reason to pay full price. It is a proven fact that people will gladly pay a little more for added value or the perception of it.
Your goal is to be able to grab their attention, make them say 'oh wow this is just what I need, I need to order this now', motivating them to press that buy button before the thought of scrolling south to the reviews even crosses their mind. It is very important that you get this. The success of your product launch depends on it.
Social Engagement & Targeting
During this time, we identify relevant groups, forums, media, influencers where we can put ourselves in front of our target audience. We get involved, build trust, gain acceptance and most importantly, start building out our list and pixel data.
This drives our launch or relaunch right out of the gate with zero reviews. This traffic is warmer traffic so getting reviews from them is easier after the purchase. We focus this on places we have identified as places to target and speak to our audience. This can be on FB, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Forums, Q&A sites, YouYube, etc...
If running ads, the key to success is very targeted, segmented subgroups of your larger audience. Run 8 subgroups specifically targeting the motivation of the smaller group using a lower daily budget ad as opposed to a 200$ per day ad targeting the entire group.
Additionally content matching must be targeted Do not target pet lover groups if you are selling dog accessories. Instead target dogs groups, even specific breads with the ads themselves targeting the different motivation for the different sized or breed dogs.
Never Waste Traffic - List Building
Maximize all traffic by first driving them into your funnel with your opt-in The reality of the situation that Amazon propaganda fails to tell you is that
Amazon only has 330 million members while 3.3 billion people are on social media. That means for every FB ad run by Amazon sellers, they are losing people from their funnel that do not buy on Amazon like myself. E-commerce is changing.
A smart marketer sees this and adjusts. Your funnels should contain multiple payment channels so that your potential customer can pay via whatever means they are most comfortable with.
For example, Amazon, Stripe, eBay if you sell there also, and maybe PayPal. This way you are not potentially wasting your money on traffic that won't convert because you only choose Amazon. You win with more sales and options that cost much less than Amazon.
You can still MCF via FBA if you must.
SEO For Traffic:
SEO is the number 1 priority for everything we do because it drives traffic. We build out several different traffic drivers, properties, profiles for off-site traffic. Amazon now rewards off Amazon traffic, social mentions, back-links etc... Bing and Yahoo, while both a small % of total worldwide search volume, are much easier to rank on and still drive 562 Million retail products searches yearly
Long Tail As A Conversion Driver
Lastly, we build out an enormous detailed, long tail PPC campaign, exact match, one or two penny bids most of the time. Contrary to popular belief 95% of all sellers have no business dumping a ton of $$ into bidding on 1 and 2-word kw phrases because you cannot compete against big businesses with bottomless budgets.
Outside of Amazon, it is widely known that the money and savings are in the long tail. Amazon itself does 57% of its sales from long tail search phrases. Long tail converts better, ranks faster, costs pennies but has low search volume so you need a ton of phrases.
Long Tail List Creation
For example, tennis rackets, go to scientificseller.com and use their free keyword tool that provides Amazon buyer search terms, let it run overnight. While it is running, read their faq and follow their process, export your list when finished so you can get it for free.
Then go to a site like Wordstream and use their free keyword grouper. Your goal is multiple subgroups of 2 to 4 similar keyword phrases. Take those sub-groups to answethepublic.com and run each subgroup separately Do the same on lsigraph.com, keeping the subgroups separate. Other sites used to develop out the longtail are ubersuggest.io, Soovle.com, Keyword.io, keywordin.com, SEO Keyword Generator, kwfinder (paid), SEMRush (paid), Serpstat (Freemium), Wordtracker, keywordmonster & others. For over 500 different marketing and design tools, see our detailed resource Marketing and Design Tools for 2019
Your goal is upwards of a thousand 3 to 7-word keyword phrases with each subgroup becoming its own ad group, exact match, bid no more than 2 cents per phrase.
Tennis rackets right now are avg CPC of 70 cents with a vol of 60k searches a month and a difficulty level of .98, next to impossible to rank for. Graphite men's tennis racket right now has zero bidders, 1 penny puts you first on every search and a difficulty of ZERO.
One conversion and you will rank naturally for this phrase. Seer Interactive recently did a study that showed 83% of the converting keyword phrases convert 1 time a year and account for 8.7% of the total PPC spend. Keep your margins in your pocket with long tail
Timing Is Key
This is best utilized as a pre-launch strategy. Start this process as your order goes into production so you have time to be thorough, detailed and well entrenched in relevant groups.
The more effort put into each area on this list before launching, the more successful your launch will be! The ultimate goal is to launch with most of the learning curve behind you while coming out of the starting gate with momentum and excited buyers waiting to purchase at full price driven by your recommendation or the implied trust of Influencers.
The Amazon Launch Sequence is an integral part of successful Amazon selling. For additional reading, see our Ultimate Guide On Amazon Ranking
Who is Joe from ecommerce-optimizer.com
The driving purpose behind Ecommerce Optimizer is the desire to help businesses of all sizes succeed on the internet. E-commerce is still an expanding frontier of constantly changing variables. Companies of any size can openly compete in areas once reserved for businesses with the deepest of pockets.
Ecommerce Optimizer is made up of a group of professionals considered subject experts, spread all around the world. Together they form the team behind creator and founder Joe Reichsfeld. Joe is an E-commerce consultant, mentor, and marketer with 40 years of solid business experience in many different areas both online and off-line. Together, they have applied their expertise to assist many businesses in dominating niches, expanding into multiple varied markets while becoming sector leaders.
Ecommerce Optimizer
His success in business before the internet combined with over 18 years of E-commerce and Internet marketing, gives him a unique perspective and at times unconventional approach. He focuses clients on mastering the fundamentals, mining the value hidden in data, monetizing under-utilized strengths and automation. The detailed direction he contributes combined with his no-nonsense approach and ability to enable a business to become a disruptive driving force are highly sought after by business people from sole proprietors to CEO's of very well known brands.
As a single parent, Joe had his hands full raising his sons but they made it to adulthood and Joe managed to survive.. Outside of work he donates time to teach others about technology and how to use it, efficiently accomplishing what they are seeking. He loves the outdoors, enjoys spending time with his sons, exploring Arizona's secrets and woodworking.
Joes' focus has remained the same. Take advantage of technology, data, and his experience assisting business growth and profitability to help others.
The close of 2018 brings a new direction for Joe and the Ecommerce Optimizer Team. The commitment to assisting business growth and sharing of knowledge continues to mature. Ecommerce Optimizer is going to change the current webinar model that sellers follow for learning, offering a better alternative. How many notes can you take in 3 days? How much do you clearly retain and apply?
Ecommerce Optimizer will offer learn at your own pace workshops, available to you all of the time, learning and reviewing at your own pace with a very low monthly membership. It will take the average sellers years to spends what they now spend on one seminar. Stay Tuned... our first set of Workshops will be a set of 50 workshops, each focusing on a different method of driving traffic to your site or listings.
