In today’s blog, we’re giving you the must-know information for Amazon sellers looking to improve their digital marketing strategy in 2022. 

Whether you are a new seller or you’ve already been in the game for a while, these are essential elements to master if you want to succeed on Amazon.

We recently covered this material in depth during an Amazon Ads Webinar hosted by Amazon and David Zaleski (our founder). You can listen to the entire webinar and Q&A here. 

Be sure to save and print this resource for your use!

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Changing The Game: Amazon Marketing Strategy

Many Amazon sellers take a one-dimensional approach to Amazon Advertising. These sellers rely solely on Amazon sponsored ads and the Amazon product detail page to gain new customers and generate sales.

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Traditionally, e-commerce sellers will use their additional external communication platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc.) to drive people to their e-commerce stores (outside of Amazon). 

It’s easy to get into this routine. Many sellers assume tracking, analytics, and the like are easier to manage on their websites. 

This may have been true years ago, but now there is a better way to tackle digital marketing for Amazon sellers.

Rather than using your high-converting digital marketing assets to drive people to your website, it’s time to start mixing things up and driving people directly to your Amazon store from your targeted online marketing channels. 

Additionally, we’ve found that re-engaging potential customers who reach the cart or checkout on your website but don’t buy by directing them to the Amazon product detail page is rather effective. 

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Many digital shoppers don’t pull the trigger on the sale because they don’t recognize the brand or have the same trust that most shoppers have with Amazon. Sending doubtful customers directly to the Amazon link can convert those who wouldn’t buy from your website.

The best digital marketing strategy is one that centers around your Amazon store. For this to be effective, you must first have a few things.

• A well-optimized product detail page
• A Comprehensive Amazon Sponsored Ads Strategy
• The ability to use Amazon Brand Analytics
• A proper understanding of Campaign Attribution

Let’s unpack how to master these elements for a well-rounded and effective digital advertising strategy. 

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Product Detail Page Optimization

You must get the product detail page right if you want to sell on Amazon successfully and want your marketing strategies and efforts to work. This age is the main source of data that Amazon pulls from to determine what shows up in organic search results - so take the time and effort to do this well. 

In general, you want to ensure that every product detail page includes optimized copy, high-quality imagery, A+ content when possible, and good reviews for better search engine optimization. We’ve put together a few guides on creating/adjusting your listing - you can find them here. 

Most sellers understand how to create a quality product listings. What can be more difficult is creating a listing that is not only optimized for a desktop setting, but also for a mobile device.

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Optimizing For Mobile

Because so many sellers are used to spending time on a browser, they can easily forget that most consumers are more mobile-dependent. 

Optimizing for mobile traffic is essential. 

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Not convinced? You can see how much of your traffic is happening on mobile by visiting the “Reports” section of Seller Central and clicking on “Business Reports.”

From there, click the “Detail Page Sales And Traffic.”

Click through all columns and ensure that the Sessions and Page Views fields are checked.

You can then see the distribution of sessions between mobile and browser. 

You may be surprised by how much of your traffic occurs on a mobile device.

This may not be as relevant for sellers with higher-ticket items. Many consumers purchasing more expensive items will use a desktop to ensure they research everything thoroughly. You should still optimize for mobile - but it may not be as essential to your business operations. 

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So how do you optimize your listing to ensure it’s mobile-friendly? 

• Strategic Titles. While it’s important to optimize your listing titles by including ample keywords, most of your title will be cut off on mobile devices. Be sure to make every word count - and to include the most searched-for terms at the beginning of the title. 

• Use Easy Coupons. Assume that mobile customers are trying to save time. Rather than offering coupons with a percentage off, try a fixed dollar amount off coupon. These are easier for speedy shoppers to do the math. The green coupon badge sticks out, which will help your clickthrough rate as well.

• Bundles. Bundles are great additions to your listing. If you’re selling multiple products, bundles allow you to upsell customers easily on mobile. Where desktop customers may be more likely to visit your storefront directly to research what other products you may have, mobile shoppers will appreciate seeing relevant products right there within their search. This is a great way to increase your cart value. Note: To use bundles, you must be a registered brand and have all inventory in FBA. 

• Add Ons. To access this tool, you must have an account manager through Amazon’s marketplace (this is a paid program). This is worth it for larger-scale sellers already seeing impressive revenue. These add-ons are similar to bundles but allow customers to add one or two relevant products to their cart while browsing another item.

• Quality Imagery. Images assist your conversion rates. They build trust and help your customer understand your brand and product better. A healthy listing will include infographics, lifestyle photos (ideally featuring real customers), white-background images, and 3D renders. Your infographics should showcase your product’s benefits, not the features. Lifestyle photos give customers social proof, and detailed product images help your customer gain trust by visualizing every aspect of your product. 

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• Keyword Placement. Your well-researched keywords should be all over your listing. But you have to do this wisely. Do not simply list keywords in your title. It looks unprofessional and messy. Craft a logical title that flows well and includes as many keywords as possible without being overwhelming. You can insert more keywords by visiting the “more details” portion of your listing and filling in the “item type keywords.” 

We now know that A+ Content gets indexed - so put relevant keywords in your images and in the backend data for those images. Additionally, adjust your Canonical URL to use the best keywords that you want to rank for. This URL is used by Google and other search engines to determine how relevant a given listing is. Use it to your advantage! 

The key is to ensure throughout every aspect of your listing, things are search engine optimized and filled with relevant keywords - but also sound natural and engaging. Leave no stone unturned and do so tactfully. 

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Amazon Sponsored Ads & Digital Marketing

Once you’ve optimized your listing for both desktop and mobile, it’s time to start considering how to set up your ads. There’s a few variety of ads that you should be concerned with: Amazon Sponsored Product Ads (Amazon’s PPC) and external advertising driving traffic to your product detail page. Let’s unpack the key elements you need to do this effectively.

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Brand Analytics & Your Amazon Ad Campaign

One of the tools you need on your side as you begin advertising is Brand Analytics. This is a tool available to any Amazon seller who has registered their brand through Amazon. If you haven’t done this yet - now is the time. Almost all the tools we’ll be referencing from here on out require brand registry. 

Using Brand Analytics is easy and helpful. It gives sellers the ability to analyze marketplace data that will assist you in finding the right keywords for your ad campaigns. 

To do this, you’ll use the Amazon Search Terms tool, which is accessible within Seller Central. It allows you to enter your primary keywords to visualize the search terms used in conjunction with your given keywords. 

Within this search, you can see the SFR (search frequency rate), which showcases the search volume for any given term. The lower the SFR, the higher the search volume. You can change the range or your search - I recommend searching on a monthly range to start and then expanding to a quarterly range. 

Showing a wider range of searches gives you the whole picture. Some seasonal products, for example, require a change in keywords throughout the year to ensure continued success no matter the season. Keep an eye out for this if your product falls into that category. 

You can download this report. Once you’ve done so, use a Keyword Density Analyzer to help make sense of the data. 

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The analyzer will scour the data and reveal the phrases used the most (count) and the density of these keywords. 

So how do you put all this data into practice? There are many ways to do this, but here’s our tried and true strategy for creating PPC ad campaigns on Amazon. 

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Exact Matches: Use the highest performing 3-word phrases here. This should account for 50% of your Amazon Sponsored Products budget.

Phrase Matches: Use the best 2-word phrases here. Use about 30% of your Sponsored Products budget on phrase matches.

Broad Match Low Bid: Use the best single-word terms here. Allocate around 20% of your budget here.

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This strategy is aggressive where it matters but still invests in exploratory campaigns (broad match). 

Remember to study the results of your campaigns and adjust your strategy as you go. 

Many Amazon sellers include Instagram digital marketing, FB ads, and Google ads in their digital marketing strategies when everything can be covered using Amazon marketing services.

You can also utilize A/B campaigns as you continue to evolve your strategies to test out new keywords and budgeting strategies. When it comes to PPC, the spending allocation and keyword strategy that we’ve outlined is a good foundation. Every business is different, however - so start there, test it out, and make adjustments as you go until you find that sweet spot (which will change over time).

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Brand Referral Bonus Program

Amazon Sponsored Products is not the only tool you should be using. As we mentioned, utilizing external marketing channels to direct customers to your product detail page is helpful as well. Amazon actually rewards you for doing this through the Brand Referral Bonus Program!

This program is available for stores registered as a brand with Amazon (as previously noted, this is critical for any serious Amazon seller). Enrolling is the perfect way to improve your advertising efficiency. 

When you run ads from external platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest) and convert customers from those ads, Amazon rewards you with this discount that can be utilized for future advertising. 

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Most sellers are paying a hefty amount in referral fees - this program offers a bonus applied as credits to any future referral fees. This 10% credit can drastically reduce how much you are spending in advertising. While there are exceptions to this program, you should enroll to gain rewards for converting external traffic on the vast majority of listings.  

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Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution is another program that is available to any brand-registered sellers. 

To enroll in this program, head to the “Advertising” section of Seller Central and click the “Campaign Manager.” From there, click the “Measurement & Reporting” icon (five bars) and then click “Amazon Attribution.”

This will equip you to set up unique links for social media ads. 

Building out these campaigns that drive traffic over to your product is critical. You need an omnichannel presence to reach customers in as many places as possible. 

A multi-faceted approach to marketing that uses a combination of channels to drive customers to your Amazon store and your website, and to retarget customers by sending them back to Amazon, is essential in 2022. 

Many customers who find you on social media will likely already be looking for you on Amazon. By now, Amazon is the trusted online store for most consumers. If you’re not on there or not showing your audience that you exist on Amazon, you may loose customers. 

Your best bet is using every channel you can to direct customers to Amazon. Each channel requires a different form of advertising. Professional video creatives will do best for more video-centric channels, like TikTok or Instagram. You may be able to get away with graphic creatives on platforms like Pinterest or Facebook - though video is trending upwards. 

The key here is using everything in your arsenal to guide people to your Amazon store.

Amazon Attribution helps you do this effectively by using specific URLs and analytics to inform and organize your campaigns on other platforms.

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The Canonical URL & Attribution 

The Canonical URL is helpful because it communicates to the search engines (and shoppers) precisely what your product is before they even land on the product detail page. 

You can see your current Canonical URL is by searching your ASIN number in an Amazon search. When you highlight the URL in your browser, you’ll see a list of keywords in the middle of the URL - that’s what we’re referring to.

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You can change what this URL says (within the title portion) to ensure it contains the keywords you want to rank for. Since this URL takes the first five words of your product title, you can change it by editing your title to include the top five keywords first.

Additionally, you can create unique URLs for specific marketing campaigns to help track where your conversions are coming from. You can do this within Amazon Attribution by creating an Ad Group and using the custom link developed there. Attribution links include a code at the end to analyze which campaigns are effective and which are not.

Traditionally, sellers would direct customers to their stores so they could visualize all the data and determine which sites were most profitable for campaigns. Now, with Attribution Links, you can do this directly within Amazon. This opens up a new realm of possibilities for Amazon sellers. 

You can also use third-party tools to monitor Amazon conversions from external sources (Google, Facebook, TikTok, etc.), which helps you to drive profitable traffic to your Amazon detail pages. One of the tools we use is PixelMe - which is excellent for larger sellers who want to organize this data more effectively. If you’d like a free trial, use the code ECOMHUB to grab one!

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Conclusion

Marketing effectively on Amazon in 2022 requires a multi-faceted approach that takes advantage of everything Amazon has to offer and draws traffic from a variety of other sources. For best results and high product sales, all sellers should be using Amazon Brand Registry, Amazon Attribution, and Bonus Referral. All larger sellers should be using SAS Core as well. Looking for more help? Check out our blog for more detailed guides on everything from keyword research to product inserts and everything in-between. Remember to access the full webinar too for all this and FAQ with David Zaleski.

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