Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Increasing Amazon sales is more complicated than ever — especially for entrepreneurs without platforms like large social media followings, email lists or YouTube channels. What with Amazon prioritizing driving external traffic, the days of simply optimizing your keywords and listing are long gone.
With that being said, you can still increase your sales on Amazon, even if you’re a new Amazon seller. Here are a few ways to do it:
Related: 3 Essentials for Taking Your Amazon Sales to the Next Level
Amazon influencers
With the influencer marketing industry set to grow to over $21.1 billion in 2023, brands of all shapes and sizes selling on Amazon can take advantage of Amazon Influencers. Amazon Influencers have actually been around since 1996 when Amazon launched its affiliate program called the Amazon Associates Program.
Now, along with the Amazon Influencer Program, Amazon has influencers across blogs, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and beyond that Amazon sellers are partnering with to drive sales. Amazon Influencers work so well to drive sales because they create content covering the full spectrum of brand awareness to buyer intent.
Even if selling on Amazon is just a side hustle, there are Amazon Influencers who will fit your budget and can help you increase sales on Amazon. Not only can you get up to 10% cash back from Amazon for referring external traffic with your Amazon Attribution link, but the commission paid to the Amazon Influencer comes from Amazon’s referral fees and not from the brand. This is the type of content you will want to focus on:
-
Best lists: Consumers who already know what they want and are ready to buy go to the number one and number two search engines in the world, Google and YouTube, to search for the “best” of what they are looking to buy (for example, “best candles for a power outage”). Then, they watch or read and buy one of the recommendations. Your goal is to show up on as many of these “best lists” as possible.
-
Advertorials: Advertorials are product reviews with click-worthy headlines. Instead of a normal product review article like: “Brand X Ring Light Review” the advertorial is: “This $20 Ring Light Makes Your Selfies Look Professional.” This type of content not only does well on social media, Google News and Apple News but also in search results. Plus, the type of person who will read this content will want what you have to sell.
-
Amazon Influencer storefront videos: Amazon Influencers drive traffic from their platforms on social media back to their Amazon Storefront where their audience can purchase their recommendations through idea lists, videos and photos. The key here is videos, because not only do they do a great job at highlighting why someone should buy your product, but they are eligible to show up on your product page as well as the Amazon Influencers Storefront.
Speaking of external traffic sources eligible for the brand referral bonus program, enter Google Ads.
Related: How to Get Your First 100 Sales on Amazon
Google ads
Although savvy Amazon Sellers have been using Google Ads to grow their sales and drive traffic to their Amazon listings for ages, they recently became much more attractive since the launch of the Brand Referral Bonus Program. That means Amazon is paying you to run Google ads on your product listings to increase sales on Amazon.
Apart from tapping into the number one search engine in the world, Google, running Google ads on your product listings can also boost the organic traffic on Amazon SEO of your keyword rankings. This is because Amazon knows what keywords consumers enter Amazon through, and this translates to your product being more relevant for those keywords on Amazon. In other words, if you’re struggling to rank for important keywords on Amazon, running Google ads can help immensely.
In the past, Amazon sellers were averse to running Google ads or leveraging other external PPC channels because they couldn’t track the results. Now, as mentioned earlier, Amazon sellers can use their Amazon attribution links to track results.
This is what you’ll want to focus on:
-
Amazon/On Amazon: Run exact and phrase match targeting on keywords like: “Potato ricer Amazon” and “ring light for selfies on Amazon”
-
Buyer intent keywords: Run exact and phrase match targeting on very specific buyer intent keywords like: “recyclable french roast k cups”
-
Best: Run exact and phrase match targeting on keywords that indicate the customer is looking for the best of what you sell like: “best pillow for bed sores”
-
Top-Rated: Run exact and phrase match targeting on keywords like: “top-rated plant protein”
Driving external traffic goes a long way to boost your unit session percentage and educate the Amazon A10 algorithm that you should be relevant for your most important keywords. That said, if you want to increase sales on Amazon, you’ll want to avoid the biggest mistake I see.
Related: How to Increase Your Product Sales on Amazon Today
Stop copying the big brand best-sellers
This one likely goes against what you’ve learned, but you’ll want to stick with me. If you look at the top sellers of what you sell, copy their images and product descriptions as well as download their keywords from your favorite Amazon tool, you’re making a big mistake.
This is because they make mistakes in everything from copywriting, art direction, keyword selection and more, but they get away with it due to brute force and significant budgets. Apart from having thousands of reviews, their products are talked about in major publications and by mega influencers — and their ads appear everywhere where your products do not.
So, what do you do instead?
-
Get good at selling: This entails learning copywriting, color psychology, art direction and more. Your listings need to blow theirs out of the water.
-
Build your brand off Amazon: Make sure you’re building an email list, an audience on social media, traffic to your website and getting PR for your brand.
-
Focus on buyer intent: Don’t go after the broadest keywords with the largest volume. Instead, boost your unit session percentage by focusing on keywords that people search for that indicate they already know what they want.
Selling is tough, but you can increase sales on Amazon with these proven methods.