You need to refine your Amazon traffic before you drive it to your Amazon listings. Traffic that comes from outside sources is less likely to convert than traffic that comes from within the marketplace. This is because most Amazon users start product searches on Amazon itself.
If you send non-converting traffic to your Amazon listings, your performance score will take a dive. You may get an initial ranking spike from all the traffic, but the drop in your conversion rate will have a more powerful negative effect.
Driving external traffic to Amazon is a powerful tool for sellers to attract new customers and gain a competitive advantage. But you have to first refine your Amazon traffic to keep these advantages plus improve keyword rankings, get Best Seller Ranking, drive sales, and keep customers happy over the long run.
So here’s how you can gain a significant edge over what Amazon already offers your business.
Multi-Channel Opportunities to Refine Your Amazon Traffic
Amazon is the primary sales channel for most Amazon sellers. Amazon is the biggest eCommerce site with an enormous base of loyal shoppers. To build a thriving business on Amazon and make the most of external traffic, however, you must start by ensuring that you have excellent product listings. Optimize Amazon product pages with quality images, relevant keywords, and engaging copy. Use Enhanced Brand Content and Amazon Advertising tools as well if you can.
Once you are confident in your listing quality, you can start taking advantage of external channels to build a wider audience, refine that traffic, and send it to Amazon to purchase.
Now, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to refine your Amazon traffic. The channels and techniques you use will always depend on your business goals, the resources you have, your ideal customer, and the products you sell. Always choose strategies that align with your specific business.
Here are five powerhouse opportunities to refine your Amazon traffic:
1. Affiliate Marketing
This method is especially great if you are just starting out and want to build brand recognition. It’s a very effective way to drive purchase-ready shoppers to your Amazon traffic.
An influencer on social media, for instance, will refine your Amazon traffic for you as they promote it. Then you can filter them in just one more step if you want to make absolutely sure they are ready to buy before giving them the link to your product listing. Most of the time, however, if you choose the right influencers, they will have the power to immediately push the sale.
The right influencers will have loyal followings that match up with your target customer. Their audiences already trust their opinions, so there is usually no need to do further research. Online shoppers also trust Amazon and feel safe shopping there because of their A-to-Z Guarantee.
The Amazon Affiliate Program is another way to do this. Instead of creating affiliate links through a landing page, you can generate them through the program. You’ll also get a small commission on each sale this way – even if the shopper didn’t buy from you. Be wary of inviting others to join, however, unless you can guarantee that they are also taking steps to refine your Amazon traffic before sharing links to your product pages.
2. Social Media (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest)
Many businesses are taking advantage of social media channels for marketing. These platforms continue to grow in popularity, and are great places on which to promote your brand story and engage with potential customers.
These channels allow you to filter your audience based on demographics so you can target people who are most likely to buy your product. All you need to do is research the right groups and start posting. You can easily refine your Amazon traffic with a good engagement strategy for leads and by closely monitoring your social accounts. Then, if you use FBA, you can create social media promotion codes to send purchase-ready traffic straight to your listings.
If you’re using multi-channel fulfillment on a Shopify store, you can also tag your products on Instagram to turn it into a sales channel. Traffic will then be refined through your Shopify site, and Amazon will take care of fulfillment.
3. Off-Amazon Ads
An additional way to boost traffic and sales outside of Amazon is to use social media and Google ads. You can lower your advertising expenses this way because there is less competition to deal with versus Amazon. Just make sure to refine your Amazon traffic by sending people to a landing page first, where you can drive them down the sales funnel before you give them promo codes and links.
Social media channels have huge user bases that can potentially double your customer base in a short time. You have to work on them first, though, because you need an established following that trusts you before you can effectively launch products and market to them. Just throwing ads at them can be a huge turn-off, and therefore a huge waste of spend.
Google has a much larger user base than any social channel. It does not have a space, however, where you can research and engage with an audience. This is where a good landing page system comes into play. Traffic from Google is in its most unrefined form, so you need a few steps to draw out people who are going to buy from you.
You also want to have at least one landing page no matter your strategy because this is how you can track ad performance. You want to know exactly what ad is bringing in what number of people and how they are converting so you can improve your ad strategy to allocate your budgets more efficiently. You also want to capture their contact information.
4. Use Video
This actually applies to all channels, including Amazon, if you’re brand registered. Product videos are the next best thing to holding a product in your hands. Online shoppers usually have to base their decisions on static images that don’t really show them what it will be like to own a product.
Create professional product videos that show an item’s features as it is being used. You can start with an unboxing video that brings the customer into that experience. Then you can do multiple other videos for different uses in different situations (but make sure you do your research so you know the most popular ones for your product.) This will appeal to customers much more than flat graphics. They will feel more confident in making a purchase because they’ve seen the item in action, doing what they want it to do for them.
You can then use your videos on multiple channels, such as Facebook and YouTube. YouTube is one of the most popular video streaming platforms. You can turn it into a great marketing channel for your brand, as long as you respect their terms and the user culture. It’s also a great place to connect with influencers who can do a range of videos using your product.
5. Build Contact Lists
With your landing pages, you have a great opportunity to build lead lists. You can gather email addresses, Messenger IDs, and the like. This is an important avenue for engaging, providing value, and growing a loyal customer base.
It’s important to always keep in close contact with shoppers. This is how you learn what they want so you can sell it to them. This is also how you learn what they value so you can build trust with them and turn them into loyal customers. Then they will end up purchasing the product to give to other people and marketing for you within their spheres of influence. This is how you really grow sales.
Final Thoughts
Whatever methods you decide to try out, remember to never send raw traffic to your product pages. You must use these outside channels to refine your Amazon traffic. They will help you get a traffic and sales boost, but only if you send purchase-ready visitors. Then your Amazon conversion rate will improve, which will also improve your organic rankings.
Also remember that external traffic is a great opportunity to learn about and build long-term relationships with the people who are interested in your products. Sending them directly to Amazon makes them Amazon customers – you won’t have access to their information and you won’t be able to learn from them or freely market to them any longer.
Matt Harrison is the VP of Strategy of FreeUp, the preeminent freelance marketplace for hiring high quality, vetted talent. He has hired freelancers from around the world and built teams to service multinational brands resulting from over $100 million in web hosting company acquisitions. He currently lives in St. Petersburg, FL.
