Author: Hunter Stutz

One of the most sought after and dreamy titles of younger generations is becoming an “influencer” and getting paid to promote products and services via social media. Becoming a brand influencer gives them a sense of importance and influence for the brand(s) they are working for. It’s a fun way for them to make money, if they are efficient enough to monetize their efforts. How can a brand take this “trend” and large reservoir of influencers and use it to help promote your Amazon products? Let us walk you through some of the key areas you should understand and consider as you build your own influencer program.

1. Micro vs Macro Influencers
2. Finding Influencers
3. Influencer/Product Fit
4. Setting Expectations and Payment
5. Tracking Attributed Sales

Micro vs Macro Influencers: Which is Best?

Let’s determine our defined difference between a micro influencer and a macro influencer since there is an opinion factor here:

• A micro influencer in our case is someone who has between 1,000 and 10,000 followers and typically has a specific niche. They may have a smaller following, but their engagement is higher, their focus is more specific and more often than not, they are cheaper and more flexible to work with and contact.
• A macro influencer has 100,000 plus followers and are usually, celebrities, athletes, public figures, predominant figures in their communities, etc. Macro influencers are going to be more expensive to work with and much harder to contact and create a partnership with. Although, if you can afford to work with them, they payout can be nice.

*If you didn’t notice, I left out the range of followers between 10,000 to 100,000. “Micro” vs. “Macro” is loosely defined, but you get the difference between the two.

Pitted Labs recommends working with influencers who fall in the micro influencer category because they are easier to find, easier to work with, and generally have an active and focused following with great engagement.

Finding Influencers

There are many ways to find an influencer. You may already be following some, you can manually search on Instagram, YouTube, etc., or you can utilize an influencer platform and use data analytics to find your perfect influencer. There is no wrong or right way. What matters most is finding the correct influencer for your product and brand.

Influencer/Product Fit

Once you have identified if you want to work with a micro or macro influencer, now you need to find that influencer(s) that’s audience fits with your target audience. It may seem pretty obvious, but this is one of the most important steps to ensuring your influencer is best utilized and setting you up for a successful partnership. Here are some criteria you can use when determining or comparing identified influencers;

1. Do they fit within your micro/macro following decision?
2. How many paid/advertised posts do they have compared to organic posts? We don’t want someone who only has sponsored posts and stories.
3. What is their engagement like with their followers? Are their followers commenting and getting answered back?
4. Is your product something they would use without being an influencer?
5. Does this influencer fit your branding?

If your influencer can pass the test of all of these questions, you are ready to move to the next step.

Setting Expectations and Payment

Before you move forward, make sure you have identified what they will post (image, video, story, etc.), where they’ll post (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Stories, etc.), what they can/can’t say in their post, the timeline (when and how often), the duration of the partnership (when and how long you will be working with them) and the compensation model (paid percentage of sales, free product, etc.).

Tracking Attributed Sales

As a Seller:

One of the pains of using an influencer to promote your Amazon products is not being able to properly track sales from the influencer, that is where Amazon Attribution comes in. As the seller of your products, you can use Attribution to obtain analytics and performance of your external advertising driving traffic to Amazon. You need Brand Registry and advertising capabilities to use Amazon Attribution, but it provides many great data points such as click-throughs, detail page views, add-to-carts, units purchased, and dollar sales. Follow this link to learn more about Amazon Attribution.

As an Influencer:

For the influencer, you can have them utilize Amazon Associates. This is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program to help influencers monetize their traffic. This allows influencers to easily create links to direct their audiences to Amazon and get a commission from each sale depending on the category and product they are advertising. Follow this link to learn more about Amazon Associates.

A well-researched and implemented influencer marketing campaign can be exactly what your product needs to boost sales on Amazon, regardless if you are in the launching process or trying to rank for additional keywords. Before taking the leap of hiring an influencer, it is important to take all of the above mentioned topics and do proper research to have a successful partnership.

Climate Pledge Friendly

By 2040, Amazon has committed to reach the Paris Agreement and be net zero carbon, ten years ahead of schedule. Amazon has partnered with third-party certifications to create an Amazon specific certificate called “Compact by Design” and clearly display the “Climate Pledge Friendly” badge to inform customers about products that meet sustainability standards and have put efforts into preserving the natural world. This allows customers to shop for sustainable businesses and products. This is first of many Amazon certificates available to certify more products as ‘sustainable’ in the future.

How Do Products Qualify?

In order to obtain the “Climate Pledge Friendly” product detail page banner, you must be certified by Amazon’s newest sustainability certification called “Compact by Design.” This certification identifies products that have a more efficient design by removing excess air and water traditionally included in products. The qualifying products require less packaging, making it smaller, lighter and more efficient to ship. In the grand scheme, these small changes in packaging and size lead to carbon emission reductions when looking at the large quantities of shipping that Amazon does each day. Here are some graphic examples of Compact by Design  and Climate Pledge Friendly products:

To qualify, products must meet a specified “unit efficiency.” Amazon uses attributes such as packaging dimensions, item weight, and the number of units to determine the unit efficiency for each product. The unit efficiency thresholds are unique to the product category your product falls under, the lower the number, the better your unit efficiency. A full breakdown of the category thresholds can be found here (link).

Consumer Shopping Changes

Consumers will now be able to refine their searches to discover products that have the Climate Pledge Friendly badge and learn more about this new certification.

The addition of the Climate Pledge Friendly badge is a step in Amazon becoming more sustainable, as they have promised. The creation of sustainability certificates motivates sellers and brands to become more sustainable in their packaging. It also gives consumers the choice of making more sustainably-friendly choices when purchasing through Amazon.

As we approach Prime Day, additional badging elements such as these can be helpful for improving listing conversion rates and can be that “little something extra” your products can have to differentiate them from the competition.

Your product is finally ready to be sold online! Launching a brand and product on Amazon can be a very exciting step in getting your first online sales. You likely have been waiting for this moment for a long time and can’t wait to get the product live and available to your impatient customers. Although, it is important to stay patient just a little longer and include a product launch strategy to ensure success. Everything in your strategy needs to be planned specifically for your product(s) in the launching process. By knowing what the minimum requirements are for an Amazon listing, determining how to get your listing’s “Retail Ready”, and by creating the right types of PPC advertising campaigns to start off with, you can set your brand up for success and are on your way to having a well-developed product launch strategy.

Amazon Flywheel

The first topic that needs to be understood is what is known as the Amazon flywheel. Similar to the concept of the snowball effect, this is the concept that your Amazon business takes a lot of effort to start in the beginning and then continuously begins to build off of itself overtime once you get it spinning. This concept doesn’t have an end like the snowball effect does so the return in the long run pays off. If one section of the flywheel is focused on, it affects the rest of the flywheel. All of the following topics are part of this flywheel process which is why it is important to understand when launching a product.

Amazon Listing Creation Minimum Requirements

What are the requirements to create a listing on Amazon? (Remember, these are the minimum requirements and we recommend filling out the product information as detailed as possible.)

• Identify the correct category to list your product
• Have the title, manufacturer, product ID (UPC, GTIN, ASIN, etc.), brand, price, condition, and whether it will be Fulfilled by Amazon or Fulfilled by Merchant ready to go
• The main product image with a completely white background
• Miscellaneous information depending on the category you are selling in

Retail Readiness

One of the most crucial aspects to launching a product – and arguably most challenging – is getting those first few reviews. While a lot of this component can be out of your control, there are a few tips and tricks we recommend to help gain those initial reviews – all within Amazon’s TOS.

• Vine (need Brand Registry): Enroll your products in Vine to generate reviews from Amazon’s best reviewers. This program allows you to give away up to 30 units of a single product for Amazon “voices” to receive in return for a review. These “voices” are vetted customers by Amazon and tend to be blunt and honest in their reviews. Don’t expect to get all 5-star reviews.

• Early Reviewer Program – Standalone listing vs variations: The Early Reviewer Program helps you get up to 5 reviews with Amazon offering customers who purchased your enrolled items a small reward ($3.00 Gift Card) in exchange for providing feedback on your product. The program is only available to either a standalone ASIN or an entire variation grouping. To take advantage of this program, use the Early Reviewer Program on individual ASINs before you put your products into variations. Once you have gotten your five reviews per ASIN, go ahead and consolidate them. For example, if you have 2 products in your variation, implementing this trick allows your product variation to get 10 consolidated reviews instead of only 5.

• Friends and family – Friends and family are always willing to buy your product and leave a review on Amazon. Utilize these valuable connections by having friends and family purchase the product and leave a review. The key to correctly implementing this strategy is to make the entire customer journey purchase as organic as possible. Amazon will flag reviews if they think anything is fishy about the review.

• Request a Review – Once an order has been placed and delivered to a customer, you will find this tool in the order details. Amazon will then send the customer an email requesting product and seller reviews for that order.

• Current Brand Customers – Send out an email to pre-existing customers informing them about your product launch on Amazon. This mainly helps drive sales for the launch, but in tandem with the other tools and strategies you have set in place, this can be a review generation strategy.

The difference between Amazon and any retail store is the way the customer can examine the product they are about to purchase. In retail, they can touch and feel the product, smell the product, see the product and sometimes even taste the product before they buy it. On Amazon, they are only able to use their eyes, making your digital content even that much more important to show what your product is, how it is different from competitors, and why they should purchase your brand versus another maybe even more well-known brand. Take advantage of high-quality images/infographics to help inform your customer and portray your product.

Pitted Labs Pro-tip: If getting a high-quality, professional white background image is too difficult or expensive, consider using a digital rendering.

Product Launch Advertising

You have a new product, now how in the world do you get eyes to your products? Advertising is your answer. Remember the flywheel in the beginning of the blog? It’s important to call out the importance of going all out as soon as you start advertising and not trying to “test the waters” with advertising. Increase your advertising spend from the very beginning and your flywheel will thank you later down the road.

Advertising can be one of the trickiest processes when launching a new product, but there are a few ways you can set yourself up from the beginning to ensure you are taking advantage of as much advertising real estate as possible on search term queries and product detail pages as well as targeting the correct keywords and products. Keep in mind, your campaign options are limited if you don’t have Brand Registry. The types of advertising you are able to create are;

• Sponsored Product campaigns
• Sponsored Brands campaigns (need Brand Registry)
• Sponsored Display campaigns (need Brand Registry)

Here is Pitted Lab’s 4 – 8 week product launch advertising strategy;

1. Create auto campaigns
2. Create manual keyword targeting and manual product targeting campaigns
3. Use a keyword research tool to identify keywords to initially target in your manual campaigns
4. As needed, pull search term reports to identify which keywords customers are actually searching for and which keywords and ASIN’s are converting and move them to your manual targeting campaigns. Once you move the keywords/ASIN’s to the manual campaigns, don’t forget to put them as negative targets in your auto campaigns.
5. Adjust bids daily and according to your advertising goals. E.g. depending if you are focusing on sales, driving impressions, etc.

The following image shows what the campaign structures can look like for each product:

Overlooking your product launch strategy is a sure way to prevent your product from reaching its potential and scaling it quickly. Always remember your Amazon flywheel when making a decision. Through having the basic information needed to create a listing, then getting your listings ‘Retail Ready’ and having a plan of attack for PPC advertising, you are creating a proper product launch strategy. Be sure to check out all of our blogs on our website and linked in this blog to get an even better understanding on some of the topics mentioned. Better yet, contact us and have us help you create your unique product launch strategy!

Amazon has an incredibly complex A9 algorithm used to rank products for customer search terms. The algorithm is generally regarded as a “black box” and can make or break your success on Amazon. One thing we do know is great copy is an essential factor to the algorithm. By knowing the functional differences between Google’s algorithm and Amazon’s algorithm, understanding your product and audience, utilizing third party tools for keyword research, identifying keyword placement prioritization and knowing what Amazon’s copy recommendations are, you are on your way to writing great copy for your Amazon listings.

Google vs Amazon Algorithms

An entire novel could be written about the differences between the Google and Amazon algorithms so let’s keep it simple here. Google’s is designed show the most RELEVANT results, while Amazon’s is designed to show what will CONVERT to a sale. This is important for brands to keep in mind because keyword stuffing doesn’t really work (certainly not long term). If you add the keyword “tennis shoe” to a shampoo product, it may show up somewhere in search results for a little bit, but will ultimately lose ranking because that listing will have likely never converted when customers search “tennis shoe.”

Product and Audience

Understanding your product’s specifications and target audience can make writing relevant copy much easier. Have you ever heard the term, “explain it so a 2-year-old can understand?” That’s exactly how writing copy for your Amazon listings should be. Keep it specific enough where your audience is informed about your product but won’t be left in the dark if you use too specific of jargon. As always, keep the tone “on-brand”. Same goes when writing copy towards the correct audience. If you are writing copy for an industrial tools brand vs a baby toy brand, your tone, content, and intentions are going to be different for these two audiences.

Third Party Tools for Keyword Research

There is so much data available to you as an Amazon seller, but how do you crunch down all of the big data? Utilizing third-party tools like Jungle Scout or Helium 10 can save you hours of manual labor crunching the numbers. With these tools, you see data such as estimated search volume of keywords, estimated total revenue of the search term, average revenue, pricing, reviews, and most importantly, identify which keywords are driving sales for your competitors. Use this data to determine which keywords are most relevant to your product, drive traffic and are not too competitive to rank for organically (at least in the beginning), to put into your copy. See our blog to learn more about Helium 10’s keyword research tool ‘Cerebro’.

Keyword Placement Priority

Amazon has a priority of where to place your most relevant keywords once they have been identified. The A9 algorithm indexes keywords according to where they are located, here is the order of importance:

1. Title
2. Bullet Points
3. Product Description/A+ Content/Enhanced Brand Content
4. Backends of listings (search terms, subject matter, etc.)

Amazon Copy Recommendations (and Pitted Labs Best Practices)

As per the wording, these are Amazon’s recommendations. As with many areas on Amazon, there are gray areas between what Amazon recommends, what Amazon actually enforces, and what works best. Here are Amazon’s recommendations when writing titles and bullet points and what we at Pitted Labs follow as best practices.

Amazon Title Recommendations:

• Titles must follow the recommended length of your product category characters, including spaces (Precise and fewer than 80 characters).
• Titles must not contain promotional phrases, such as “free shipping”, “100% quality guaranteed”.
• Titles must not contain characters for decoration, such as ~ ! * $ ? _ ~ { } # < > | * ; ^ ¬ ¦
• Titles must contain product-identifying information, such as “hiking boots” or “umbrella”.

Pro Tip: Amazon creates a canonical URL for every new ASIN based on the copy you upload the first time. This URL is extremely important for SEO and you can force what goes into it by only adding 5 words to your listing the very first time you upload it to Amazon. Once it has been uploaded and the canonical URL is created, you can adjust the copy as you see fit.

Amazon Bullet Point Recommendations:

• Keep bullet points clear and concise with less than 1,000 characters for all of your bullet points combined.
• Naturally contain keywords, but first priority is to communicate clearly and help customers make a buying decision.

Pitted Labs Best Practices:

• Titles – Keep titles precise and around 150 characters, including any variation information such as size, scent, color, etc. at the end of the title. Include the brand name at the beginning of the title and keep natural flow of verbiage through entire title with previously identified target keywords.
• Bullet Points – Using all 5 bullet points, call out what differentiates your product from competitors and tell them why they should buy your product vs all of the others out there. Fill this copy with the remaining keywords that you did not use in the title. The more detail and precise, the better. We recommend keeping every bullet point under 270 characters. We want a customer to be able to look at the bullet points for a brief moment and be able to learn something they didn’t already know about the product to keep them reading the rest of the bullet points and decide to make the purchase.

Writing copy for your Amazon listings is a simple step that goes a long way. By understanding algorithm functionality differences, the product and target audience of the products, how to harvest and identify the correct keywords to add to your listings, the keyword placement priority, and knowing Amazon’s copy recommendations for titles and bullet points, you are set to write the perfect content that will get you set in the right direction. Last but not least, don’t forget to be creative.

Covid-19 caused a shutdown in the beginning of March 2020 that came as a surprise to most and impacted everyone. More so, it disrupted what we thought at that time to be business norms. Shoppers flocked to online stores since traditional retailers were either closed or mandatory lockdowns prevented shoppers from leaving their homes. Businesses were flocking to obtain any online sales they could to stay in business and prevent their top line from tanking as a result of lost retail sales. Businesses had to pivot and adapt almost overnight, except for the few who were deemed as essential businesses. Looking back on the 1^st wave and hearing speculation of a 2^nd Covid-19 wave coming sooner rather than later, what did we learn and what can we do now to prepare and be ready when it comes?

What Didn’t Work

Let’s start with what didn’t work so we can end on a positive note. To keep it simple and to the point, here is what we found didn’t work:

• Not having a well-established D2C distribution
• B2B with independently owned stores
• Not having an established national distribution in major Food Drug Mass chains (FDM)
• Amazon PPC (which we will discuss later)

Brands that did not have a strong and well-established D2C distribution did not have that layer of protection. It’s important to note that a well-established D2C strategy includes more than having a killer website and/or Amazon listing. In retail, unless considered an essential business, many brands saw a sudden drop in sales because of the majority of independently owned stores that shut down leading B2B to not produce the “normal” and expected sales, except for essentials who had well established national distribution in major Food Drug Mass chains (FDM). These national distribution chains like Target and Walmart saw growth in almost every department they sell in because traffic was funneled to them in unprecedented numbers.

During this time, adjustments needed to be made to adapt your campaigns to new KPI’s. Not adjusting your PPC and DSP campaigns could have led to a higher spend and lower conversion rates as the amount of traffic going to Amazon dramatically increased. Knowing this, if you had campaigns that were not specific enough or able to adapt, you probably felt those repercussions. We discuss later about how to solve some of these issues.

What Did Work?

Now for the fun stuff, what did work for us. The first and probably the most obvious answer to our overarching question is diversifying e-commerce channels. Brands that already had diversified their e-commerce platforms didn’t take as hard of a hit. With Amazon changing the algorithm virtually every day and without notice to sellers, changing the priority of products being shipped out, setting ‘Limited Stock’ inventory, and sellers losing Prime shipping for a period of time, many ventured to find other platforms to sell on and it worked well. It created a great opportunity for other platforms to take some market share away from Amazon. From this, we saw a rise in platforms such as Walmart, Shopify, Target and more. In short, consider expanding your horizons as a safeguard to protect yourself. Just like any smart stock investor, you should diversify your e-commerce channel “portfolio” to hedge against these kinds of marketplace swings.

With Amazon restricting many sellers and products from being sold through Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), or at least delaying shipping times by a month or two, the next best way to sell on Amazon is by doing Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM). By having FBM listings built out and having logistics nailed down, you can be prepared to pivot your distribution from FBA to FBM with the click of a button. Selling FBM gives you more control over your shipping time and procedures in these cases. We also found that Amazon temporarily gave the buybox to FBM offers, even though an equal FBA offer was active, since they knew FBM offers would most likely get to the customer sooner. Don’t get too comfortable with using FBM though, because you’ll want to utilize all the perks Amazon provides when using FBA once it is running normal again. Check out our blog about ‘Setting Up Self-Fulfilled Offers on Amazon (FBM).’

PPC Insights

Kenshoo’s VP of Client Success, Kevin Weiss, had a few insights they found worked during Covid-19.

“We learned that shipping delivery windows must be monitored and acted upon quickly by ensuring that your PPC ads are running for products with delivery dates as close to ‘normal’ as possible…conversion rate can swing by 50 pts in either direction when delivery windows change, which will obviously affect ACoS significantly…this is not something that Amazon reports in any API nor to advertisers, so it is often overlooked.”

He also stated;

“Single ASIN Ad Groups (a.k.a. “SAAG Method”) as a structural best practice became increasingly important as supply chain issues became more widely pervasive for advertisers…with this structure, advertisers can better control their campaigns to ensure that targeted keywords are triggering ads for the best possible ASINs in the catalog.”

As every brand can have different wins/losses with advertising, we recommend researching to find exactly what performed well for you specifically during the 1^st wave. Internally, Pitted Labs found Amazon DSP to be a valuable asset to use because of the unique ad placements on Amazon.com and relatively “un-messed-with” audiences (compared to the A9 algorithm).

Inventory Limits

Lastly, Amazon has recently announced they are putting ASIN-level FBA inventory ‘Limited Restocks’ on sellers starting August 16, 2020 to prepare for a wild Q4 with Prime Day / Cyber Monday / Black Friday / Holiday shopping all falling within 3 months of each other. To prepare for this, keep an eye on your Inventory Performance Index (IPI). Sellers below an IPI of 500 are subject to the most strict ‘Limited Restock’ according to Amazon. You can find your current IPI under the ‘Inventory Dashboard’ on Seller Central. Run a ‘Restock Report’ to find your ‘Limited Restock’ numbers. To best prepare FBA inventory in preparation for Q4: 

• Send inventory no later than September 1^st
• Expect inbound delays of up to 4-6 weeks
• Utilize Amazon’s new virtual bundles tool (see our blog “Amazon Virtual Product Bundles” to learn more)

Of course, this is all speculation, but we must learn from history. Even though we can’t plan for something like this to happen, we always need to stay nimble and be able to adapt. We would rather speculate now and be prepared for the upcoming months versus panicking and falling behind the curve if everything points to that direction again. As big and dominant as Amazon is, they have never dealt with this before either and are figuring out the best way to cope.

With all of the information floating around online about keyword research, finding and utilizing external tools is essential for all Amazon sellers and brand owners – whether you are new to Amazon or a seasoned vet. There are a vast amount of tools out there for sellers to utilize and they all have their differences. Let’s review one of our go-to tools, Helium 10’s Cerebro – Reverse ASIN Lookup tool.

OVERVIEW

What is the Cerebro tool? It is a reverse ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) lookup; call it reverse engineering for finding related keywords. By plugging in an ASIN, you get keywords related to that specific ASIN(s). Deriving from the Latin term “cerebrum” simply meaning brain, Cerebro is the brain behind this suite of tools. Using this tool for keyword research also helps in finding keywords that you may never have thought of or even considered to be profitable or efficient keywords, but the numbers don’t lie. 

PURPOSE

The Cerebro tool is an effective and efficient way to find keywords that your products are currently ranked for, or have been ranked for recently, and what the organic rank is/was. Better yet, utilizing this tool helps find which keywords your competitors are ranking for and where they are most likely getting their sales from. You can never say with 100% confidence that you know exactly which keywords your competitors are getting most of their sales from, but from the search volume and ranking capabilities of Cerebro, you can create a good estimate.

From this tool you also get useful data such as: how many of the keywords there are total for that ASIN(s), how many of those total keywords are sponsored keywords, how many are organic keywords, how many are Amazon recommended keywords, the monthly search volume of each keyword, the organic ranking of each keyword, how many competing products there are for each keyword, and the list goes on!

HOW-TO/IMPLEMENTING

As simple as simple gets, start off by entering at least one ASIN and clicking the “Get Keywords” or “Get Competitors” tabs. We are here to talk about the “Get Keywords” tab. After clicking and letting Cerebro do its’ thing, you now have access to all of the keyword information you need below. From here you can apply filters and advanced filters to refine the large amount of keywords that populate to a small, refined, and usable list.

As a little tip, the first round of filters we apply are:

• Search Volume set to “300-Max”
• Organic Rank set to “1-20”
• Match Type refined to “Organic”

This is done to make sure that the keyword is being searched at least 10 times per day, the ASIN(s) are ranked in the top 20 for those keywords, and that they are only ranked organically for those top keywords. Depending on how many filtered keywords are at this point, the advanced filter can narrow the list down further. 
By clicking the “Get Competitors” tab, you will get a pop up window of Helium 10’s analysis of competitors.

PRICING

Even though you need a subscription for Helium 10 to access this tool, it is well worth the cost. The power of this tool only gets stronger when you start implementing it with Helium 10’s other tools their subscription includes like Frankenstein, Scribbles, Magnet 2, Follow Up, and Profits. They do offer a free plan that includes using each tool a specified amount of times. If you are hesitant at all, go check out the free plan and see what it’s like for yourself.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Without a doubt, keyword research is one of the most important steps and concepts to hammer down if you want to become competitive and profitable in your market and eventually get those organic sales funneling in. Through using a tool like Cerebro, you can find the proper keywords, faster, efficiently, and with confidence knowing the data behind each keyword. 
For being such an easy tool to use, and the power of the data you receive, this is a no brainer. Every level of expertise can utilize this software and in a matter of minutes be able to get a wide range of related keywords.
Having difficulty doing keyword reasearch or writing listing copy for your brand’s products? Reach out to us here and a member of our Account Management team will reach out shortly to walk you through this critical process.