Launching a product on Amazon is a very exciting and challenging feat. It is also a great milestone for every growing business. If it takes off, your Amazon launch can be a great sales-driving force for your business. But this is not all just a matter of listing your products on Amazon products for sales and is more complicated than that. There are a few things to do and to keep in mind to be successful in this. The next question that comes to mind is “where do I begin?”. Thankfully, we have here for you a complete guide to Amazon products and the launch.
First of all, let’s divide the procedure into 3 stages
- Pre-product launch
- Product launch
- Post-product launch
These steps will help us decide what needs to be done when. Let’s begin with stage 1.
Pre-product launch
Have you done your product research?
Some things are not easy to find because they are right in plain sight just like this question. Do hefty market research and understand gaps in the product market which you can monetise as new products or upgraded ones. Understand your target audience, region, price range, cost, promotional needs, and most importantly- competitors.
During the product development stage, all of these thoughts and considerations will lead you to choosing the right product. In the start, you may want to pick a product in a small niche with less number of competitors.
Building your brand
This is not optional for Amazon sales. Pre-launch you will need to build a face of the brand that holds credibility. Think about your brand’s virtues, goals, USP, Target audience and so on. Your brand’s theme should reflect in your packaging, copy, social media pages, themes and website. You will also want to have a content blog, reviews, testimonials and so on.
Determining sales target
You will need to figure your goals for sales and revenues. This is essential to devise a pricing model over your making costs, Amazon promotional costs, accessory costs and profit margins. Get your budget in order as well.
The importance of reviews
A large number of people are bound to scroll past new product listings on Amazon just because they don’t hold any reviews yet. Hence, reviews are now seen as a part of the pre-product launch. You can give early-bird samples to friends, family, colleagues to start off with. But it’s also a good idea to run ads to get volunteering people or influencers online to try out the product and leave a review.
Make the best product-listing page.
No last minute runs on these please; this is a very important step. You can even take months to prepare it.
- Take HD photos: Your product photos should be clear. Shoot them from different angles, in a neutral backdrop or preferably even in sunlight. You can even learn online how you can click great photos on your smartphone (since you might be just becoming.)
- Writing a description: Write a bomb description that sells the product to the customer. Compel and make customers realise that the product was missing in their lives. Research what the best selling competitors have written.
- The 3-5 bullet point rule: Write only between 3-5 bullet points on your product. This is the golden clickable standard.
- Use the keywords: They are your best friends now, research and use the right keywords for your product.
Get a buzz going before the launch
Grab attention and hype, do things like:
- Write blog posts about the product so the product coming into the market is a seamless experience for the buyers.
- Set up social media and try to spread the word. Set up a hashtag and use it regularly. Urge your potential customers to use it themselves.
- Post frequently, and about interesting things. Something funny, relevant, informative, cheeky or even sarcastic is good enough to grab attention. You can learn more from existing brands raging over Twitter.
The product launch
This is the moment we were working hard for! You should be feeling confident with your brand, product, listing page, etc. Ready to look at stage 2, visit the Amazon seller pages and get acquainted with their terms and policies.
Get a grip on the tools
The market is full of amazing tools that accelerate and aid your business’ growth. Majority of them are Amazon tools, Amazon analytics features, etc. These are created to offer the best compatibility and reliable support to even the newbies. Get a grip on the marketing, management and product tools.
Learn how Amazon advertising and Amazon brand analytics work. Get acquainted with the Amazon algorithm which gives preferences of high-ranking to products with high sales.
Optimise your listing
- Keyword research: Think of all the phrases or keywords related to your product, and list them down. Pick out the major keywords, and try to use a keyword tool like Google keyword planner. Additionally, also check out what keywords your competitors are ranking higher.
- Keyword optimization: Remember that keywords are your best friends? Once you have a set of keywords in hand, target these keywords in your listing title, bullet points, and description. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Understand what they are searching for and showcase your product listing in a way to make them click ‘buy’.
- Keyword tracking: To ensure your keywords are working well with your listing, you need to start tracking the keywords, and see how they are performing. Monitor the performance of the metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), number of clicks, and conversions. You can eliminate the non-converting keywords, and optimize the listings with the high-performing ones. Target those keywords in your ads which you wish to improve.
Directing in external traffic from listings
Assuming that you have set-up various social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, Whatsapp, etc) and have a running website; you are going to be receiving inquiries and leads from all of these sources. Which you will then be required to redirect to your source of purchase- Amazon.
Your website page can be used as a cool informative page to learn more about your product. You should be having a professional looking website, with high resolution photos, animations, great UI/UX, engaging blogs and content. For your website blogs, consider leveraging the AI writer by Picsart to effortlessly create compelling and informative content that complements your professional-looking website.
3) Post Product Launch
Are you ready to do some testing and optimizing?
In this step you will be looking at your performance and finetune it accordingly. Monitor your product with the Amazon product ranking tool.
Pay attention to which social media platforms are working better for you. Invest more in those, if you have managed to get a good following on any one of them then you can go ahead and run paid ad promotions on it. You should also be building up an email list by now.
Running and monitoring ad promotions
A large portion of the post-production launch step is going to be monitoring the ads you have live. Clearly they are all going to be working differently based on which time, location, medium, keywords, copy, demographic, product, etc they are for.
This is also a crucial step because you need to maximise your profit and engagements on each paid ad that you run, and divest from ads that don’t work well.
This should also help understand which keywords work well since keywords are always going to be an important factor that you should keep tweaking depending on your product’s life cycle.
Creating social proof
Like previously discussed, reviews are going to be one of the most key things for your business to run. If you already have some reviews pre-launch then you can hit the ground running. Post the launch, you will still need to keep gathering more reviews, which is the daunting task. Amazon reviews have their own rules and regulations so make sure to check with that before you use different methods to start receiving reviews. You can also sign up for Amazon’s own paid program that can help you get reviews (Amazon early reviewer program).
These reviews are cumulatively going to add up to the credibility of your brand and make it a lot more desirable. Also considering that running an Amazon PPC Campaign is going to be hard without sufficient reviews.
Don’t ignore inventory refills
It can be tempting to leave inventory refills till the last minute but you run the risk of running out in the middle of demand. Hence it is important to keep a good eye on it and prepare a schedule to get it taken off regularly.
4) Discussing marketing strategies.
Marketing is an important step. The purpose of marketing is to peak the customer’s curiosity and create retention followed by action. If you have the budget for it you can even consider hiring a marketing team.
Few things to remember when launching a new product on Amazon:
- Sell them the benefits not features
- Analyse how various sales channels function
- Target the correct demographic on social media platforms. Understand what they receive from your product
- Focus on what the customer needs and wants. It will always drive your sales.
Influencer marketing
People are more likely to buy a product that has been recommended to them by an influencer who used it and that’s how influencer marketing comes into the picture. With the rise of social media, this is a very concrete way today to market your product via influencers.
Facebook marketing
Facebook has been coming up with it’s own features like the Facebook marketplace or Facebook shopping page. This has become a space for sellers to advertise in a virtual market. There are also groups and pages on Facebook that can be used for the same. Facebook ads have a great reach as well.
Run Amazon PPC Campaigns
Thinking from the POV of visibility; Amazon PPC campaigns are your best bet. (especially for a newly launched product).
- To improve the ranking, target the keywords in your campaigns that perform well.
- Target even a competitor’s product or brand to help reach a broader audience.
- Use bidding strategies to improve your sales performance and reach the right audience.
- Consider your budget while running your PPC ad campaigns. Organize and schedule your campaigns so you don’t waste your budget bidding against yourself.
In closing,
The product launch steps will let you know how to take your product through the launching stages but the marketing strategies will teach you how to keep it there. Amazon is a great place for any business no matter how big or small, if you use the right techniques and if you have the right knowledge it could be the missing ingredient for your recipe.
