Unless you live under a rock, it’s no surprise that Amazon is a dominating player in the eCommerce market. As an Amazon third-party seller, you know that cutthroat competition exists in the global marketplace. With more sellers joining the Amazon bandwagon, how can you stay afloat and reach your ideal buyers?
An exciting moment for any business owner, launching a new Amazon product means you can finally position your great products in front of millions of buyers. But even if you already have momentum due to your stellar products, you may not reach your full potential without a proper Amazon product launching strategy. You can guarantee a successful new Amazon product launch by following a step-by-step plan that stimulates Amazon’s algorithm and addresses the unique challenges that new Amazon products will face.
You must complete five stages when launching a new product: market research, preparation, the launch, post-launch, and expansion. If you follow this structure, you can ensure that your product lands in a customer’s Amazon cart. Let’s explore each step a bit further.
Stage 1: Amazon Market Research
An integral part of your Amazon product development process, market research is an organized effort to gather information about your Amazon target audience. You should utilize all the information you can obtain about your target audience. If you want to stay competitive in your business market, use the following market research checklist.
- Map out how your Amazon products can solve everyday issues that your buyers face
- Determine the core message you need to deliver to buyers (consider what would motivate an Amazon customer to hit add to cart?)
- Define your product or brand’s buyer persona (who is your target audience?)
- Conduct an Amazon competitor analysis to establish product differentiation
- Check the compliance reference tool to ensure product listing eligibility and required documentation
Stage 2: Preparation
Preparation is key to the success of your product launch on Amazon. Even if you have a product that you’re positive will make a lasting impact, a poor launch can negatively impact the product’s opportunity for success in the market. Prepare by understanding how to create and optimize a listing, strategically pricing your product, and managing your inventory.
Amazon Listing Creation
- Add a product listing on Amazon: Alternatives include, self-service via Product Feeds Overview or Operations Team through New Item Set Up service
- Category verification: Ensure you categorize your Amazon product properly up to the browse node level.
- Variations: If the product is a slight alteration of an existing product on Amazon, create a child ASIN as a variation.
Amazon PDP Listing Optimization
- Detail Page Creation: Define the title, bullet points, product description, and imagery following the category-specific style guides. Adhering to Amazon policies are imperative to keep your account health metrics in good standing
- A+ Content: Design and create A+ Content that aligns with Amazon policies.
- Remember to highlight frequently asked questions in the A+ Content.
- Utilize A+ Content to showcase other items in your catalog.
- Add new products to top-selling ASINs. (Example: Wssxc Store).
- A+ Comparison Chart: Include a new item in the A+ comparison chart of a top-selling item to drive additional traffic
- Video Additions: Include a video via Upload and Manage Videos
- Brand Story: Tell your brand’s story across all the products in your Brand. Add your logo, brand picture, business description, and answer any questions.
- 360 View: This feature helps bridge the physical and digital worlds by enabling customers to interact with products more directly.
Remember Amazon Keyword Optimization
- Review Brand Analytics to find the highest-ranked search terms in each category
- Sponsored Products: Add applicable best-performing search terms from Sponsored Products reports
- Analyze Best-Selling ASINs within the category to find appropriate keywords in the detail pages to replicate search appearance. Contact your Account Manager to get additional search terms to add
Consider Your Amazon Pricing Strategy
- Decide on pricing strategy: value-based vs. cost-based vs. competitor-based pricing
- Set automated pricing in place if you have a competitive pricing strategy
- Forecasting deals strategy: Analyze if the product would be included in coupon or deal strategies in the future to set the initial pricing to define the best margin
Inventory Management
- FBA: Create shipment to Amazon Fulfillments centers (Prepare shipment to Amazon)
- Check on Inventory: Ensure inventory is at the Fulfillment center and is in “available” state on Seller Central
- MEN/SFP: Ensure the inventory is available in your US warehouse and is in “available” state on Seller Central
Stage 3: Launch Your New Amazon Products
After your preparations are complete, it is time to launch your product. Once live, you’ll need to drive people to your PDP page or direct-to-consumer website. As a rule of thumb, you should make it easy for consumers to see your product through tactics like social media ads.
Traffic Driver Strategy
- Set up a “New Products” section in the brand store and drive traffic to ASIN directly from the storefront (see Advertising Strategy)
- Manage your Customer Engagement: Self-service email marketing tool that allows you to engage with brand followers
- Opportunity Explorer (OX): Feature to help discover relevant keywords that customers are searching
- Vine: generate reviews from Amazon’s best reviewers using Amazon Vine ($200/product)
- Get trusted reviews on your products within days and without sales
- Drive traffic and improve conversion – 90% of customers read and use reviews when making a purchase decision
- Better understand your customers
Amazon Advertising Strategy
- Advertising Timeline: Request launching a new product on Amazon PDF from your SAS Account Manager
- 90 Days: Kick-off strategic planning
- 60 Days: Align on and establish launch goals
- 30 Days: Prepare for Campaign launch(es)
- +1 Month (always on): Improve search discoverability through budget & keyword optimization (Did our efforts help enhance discoverability of your product?)
- +1 to +5 Months: Generate awareness of launch through investing in high-impact awareness solutions to educate customers (Are customers aware and actively engaging with your brand?)
- +6 Months: Re-market and Grow your base through modifying audience segments to reach new & existing customers (Were we able to reach new and existing customers and grow long-term sales?)
- Sponsored Products: Create an automatic campaign to gather search terms and run it for at least 3 weeks (to collect enough data) and then move well-performing keywords to a manual campaign
- Sponsored Brands: Include new product next to top-performing ASINs in Sponsored Brands campaign. Ensure the ASIN is included in the brand store in a “New products” section and drive traffic directly
- Sponsored Brands Video: Create a campaign to promote a new product through a video
- Store Spotlight: Sponsored Brands now allows you to feature Store pages in your creative, helping shoppers more easily discover the different product categories available within your Store. You can showcase up to three Store sub-pages in your Sponsored Brands campaign and you can customize the headline along with the sub-page image and label
- Create Keywords that drive brand awareness, education, and purchases through branded and unbranded keywords.
- Ensure Social Media Ad Campaigns are in place (Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Pinterest Ads)
- Use Amazon Attribution to measure the impact of off-Amazon traffic channels
Stage 4: Post-Launch Amazon Strategies
Continue optimizing and scaling your marketing and advertising strategies post-launch. Maintaining the relevance and frequency of your product in your consumer’s minds is crucial. Through merchandising and marketing tactics, you will continue creating sales opportunities for your product.
Amazon Merchandising Strategy
- Buy One Get One: Showcase the new product through an existing popular product creating a Buy One Get One Promotion
- Set up a limited-time, “buy one (or many) get one free” offer to spotlight a new product or to get your current customers to buy differently
- Coupons: Create a coupon discount to drive traffic through banner visibility
- Deal: Create a deal to improve the ASIN conversion rate (i.e. Lightning Deal/7 Day Deal)
- Prime Exclusive Discounts, if FBA
- Social Media Promo Codes: Create a custom promo code and receive a unique marketing page to share with customers through social media, emails, or influencer marketing
- Brand Referral Bonus: Earn 10% of product sales via non-Amazon marketing efforts (i.e., Facebook, Instagram)
Amazon Marketing Strategy
- Anything in the Buy Box: Account Manager to add – customers can select and add these to their cart at the time of purchasing the base ASIN. The base ASIN can be a top-selling item or complementary product
- Manage Your Experiments (A/B Testing): Run statistical experiments on changes to two separate listings of an ASIN to validate the best customer experience option and experience in the short term
- Virtual Bundles: Sell bundles of complementary FBA items without packaging them together. These “virtual bundles” help customers discover and buy more products from your brand
- Amazon Lifestyle: Help buyers discover the new product and see what is new from your brand with a post featured on the detail page and items within the category.
- Amazon Lifestyle’s Instagram handle: Connect with Account Manager to submit a 1080x1080px lifestyle image
- Amazon Lifestyle storefront: Connect with the Account Manager at least 30 days in advance of launch if you are planning any of the following marketing activations for this product
- Deal or Promotion: You plan to run a promotion or coupon campaign for at least 7 days with a discount of at least 30% off one or more products.
- Celebrity or influencer activation: You are working with a celebrity or influencer that has at least 500K followers and will be driving traffic directly to your products or brand store on Amazon
- Social campaign: Your brand has at least 50K followers on Instagram and will be driving traffic directly to your products or brand store on Amazon
- Amazon Associates: Create a submission to get the product featured in Associates Newsletter. Contact Account Manager to get requirements and process description. Create a Social media promo code or deal to increase chances to get inclusion in the newsletter
- Influencers: Find trending influencers within the industry, analyze if they are a good fit for your brand, and send a brief, concise and memorable message including key information that would catch their attention and sell your brand
Stage 5: Amazon Product Expansion
Don’t limit yourself to exclusively American consumers when you have a truly remarkable product. If Americans love your product, the rest of the world will too. Expand your market with Global Amazon Marketplaces!
- Amazon Global Selling: Claim your listings on International Marketplaces.
- Amazon FBA Export: Make your inventory available for customers in global marketplaces.
Additional Resources for Selling on Amazon
If you want more information on best practices for a new launch, try looking through these valuable resources.
- Title guidelines from Amazon
- Product detail guidelines
- Image guidelines
- Pricing Strategies to accelerate your sales
- Create Successful new products with Opportunity Explorer
It’s Time to Execute Your New Amazon Product Launch!
Your hard work creating an excellent product for your consumers is ready to pay off. By following these strategies and tactics, your product is ready to dominate the marketplace and drive sales for your company! If you need extra assistance from a team of dedicated Amazon marketing professionals, contact Premiere Creative or dial (973) 346-8100.