Amazon Product Launch Sequence with Anthony Lee – Session 005

Richard Morgan
September 5, 2017

[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_3]
It is launch time and we’re zeroing in on the amazon product launch sequence to propel your product into the market like a projectile into orbit.

We will cover the preparation for your foundation of your listing (keywords, images, bullets and title), then we’re onto customer validation, next is making sure listing visibility is high for Amazon Tracking.

Then we move to stimulate your sales velocity so that once your product is up high in space you’ve lots of data to measure, observe and optimise. Just like a Space X launch guys – it’s a science!

What needs to be optimised for your Amazon Product Launch sequence?

Title and your canonical URL
Storefront URL has worked well for some
Images are super important
Bullets and Description for SEO weight and Amazon Tacking
Sales copy will persuade your audeince
Backend keywords are always important
Your reviews – the first 21 is important after that it’s the star rating
How readable your copy is for customers but also for spiders
Then optimsiing all of that for mobile which has its own rules

Customer Validation phase of launch sequence

Social proof – your reviews, not the whole story but Amazon research shows the 1st 21 – 50 are important to amazon tracking
Lower star rating products will outperform you if you have no reviews
Star rating becomes more important after the first 21 reviews

How to get reviews

Ask friends and family – it’s what you would do if you opened a brick & mortar store so why not the same for your amazon product launch sequence
A natural place to start to get your first reviews is your network
Facebook groups and forum communities are good to get people to rally behind whichever problem your product solves
Confirm with the group admin if you’re allowed to post promotional stuff
You can do a 10% discount and hopefully get reviews
Blogger guest posts is another route – they broadcast your product to their audience
This all takes a lot of time

If your time is short

This is against Amazon ToS – you don’t have to do this but we’re letting you know all options – how you run your business is upto you
Campaigns that are successful in getting reviews
Build your own email list – off-Amazon in FB groups etc.
If you have targeted your list to people who have or are going to buy your product
We will give you a free product if you give us a review – they review it and send a screenshot of the review to get the product
This has worked to get 35 reviews within 72hrs – it is against Amazon ToS and not breaking the law but is against Amazon rules
A lot of the big brands do this regularly
Upto you where your moral compass lies
None of this is ‘black hat’ – not harmful to people or others
You’re just asking for honest feedback

Facebook Ads

Take the address data from your customer data
Feed into FB and create a custom audience
You then run ads to this audience to get a reaction

Paypal Groups

This is a unicorn – I don’t know where to find them
Reddit has a subreddit – product for review – a nasty bunch
They demonise anyone who does anything against ToS
The Paypal group is – you get people to buy your product at full-price and you give them the price of the product

Appending emails

Manage by Stats is a service that can help get email addresses based on the data you can give them of your buyers
They take data and match it up with other data sources and match as best they can to get you a ‘most likely’ email address
Amazon tries to retain as much control over customers as they can

3. Visibility

You go onto a crowded Marketplace like Amazon and there are millions of eyes out there
Big brands have recognisability – Nike for example is know
How do you get past the big brands and in front of people’s eyes
You have to chip-away at it

Start with Auto campaigns on PPC to find out how people are finding your product

This will give you a view of the data on what people are searching to find your product
Give it 10 – 15 days to run
View the search term report and spot which keywords people are using
Also good for validating that the keywords you thought were going to work have worked
You need high-velocity keywords if you want to jump out of the gate with ads
Low-velocity keywords are good if you have a lot of long-tail keywords with many ads running (thousands of keywords) with 0.5-10% ACOS
Your velocity in your market – if the market is not selling x /day then you won’t get tons of sales – you need enough traffic

Manual Campaigns structure

Start running manual sponsored product ads
Phrase match ads have given Anthony good returns – broad was too broad and exact was too tight
Separate our campaigns
- Those we don’t expect to make a lot of money off as they are high competition BUT we need the campaign to build us visibility, we put that in it’s own campaign
- We pay for ads that we know we lose money on because we need to be on the page (with our ad) to maintain out visibility to buyers
- Shorter-tail keywords that we want to optimise and make money on
- Then we have the long-tail keywords in the thousands that are 4-5 words and low velocity but every now and again they hit and when they do they are profitable
- Focus on relevance in campaigns because this is how you get impressions and the algorithm is tied to relevance
Sift through your reports and data to define what’s relevant in your market
Subject matter keywords are important for relevance – fill out your backend fields to inform the Amazon algorithm to drive search to you and increase your impressions
Use few keywords with enough velocity for your product – 2 word keywords – optimise it using data from the campaign
Tells you if you’re at the point in your business to compete with guys on Page 1 competing for ‘Garlic press’ as the main keyword
If you can afford it – turn up the PPC and go for it – if not this will help you set your strategy
You go long-tail and the keywords are cheaper

AMS as a tool for your Amazon Product Launch Sequence

You can use it to test Headline ads for keyword research
AMS will tell you which keywords are High, Med or Low traffic keywords
What you do is:
- Find you main three keywords for the product
- Go for only Mediums and High traffic keywords
- Setup a manual campaign
- Put your product in as Merchant Fulfilled
- Wait for the early morning
- Run that campaign to get an idea of what your cost per click will be
- Click on your own ads
- You learn if your product is ‘relevant’ enough to show that ad
- You get a sharper idea of the ‘suggested bid price’ as Amazon gives you a guide but it can be high meaning you bid too high

Rather than look at cost per click – see it as an investment to get to Page 1 – once you’re getting organic sales then you can scale back your PPC
You have all these places (Headline and Right rail) you can put your product but not profitable.
The average consumer needs 7-8 ‘touch points’ before they buy – the more they see you the greater your chance to sell
Visibility offers you more sales – builds a pipeline of people
You start to become a ‘viable’ brand as they see you more and more around the big brands – you’re building your reputation in the eyes of the buyer
You need to put yourself out there as much as possible
Leveraging all the paid marketing channels Amazon can give you is the best way to maximize your `amazon dollars
AMS is not a silver bullet – it is a key channel for visibility during your Amazon product launch sequence
You need to put in the dollars and the time to make a return

4. Sales Velocity Stimulation

How you get noticed first, added to cart and purchased is by ranking for highly relevant keywords and a crucial part of your amazon product launch sequence
Amazon algorithm ranks products on sales velocity, sales history, conversion rate and listing interactions
Looking for product that people will like, have liked, will buy and have bought
Prioritises products based on keywords for products that appear to be popular

How do you affect the algorithm?

You stimulate this with signals by running promotions during your amazon product launch sequence
Coupons make your product more attractive to entice buyers and stimulate a temporary high velocity sales
You maintain control of where you send these coupons
The canonical URL can be manipulated so that it has the desired keyword phrase in it and then running the promotions to that URL
You can also use your storefront URL – you can put your desired keyword in the search box and hit search then grab that
URL making it a keyword embedded URL which attributes the sales velocity to your product for this keyword telling the algorithm you are relevant

Twitter links are not as laser-targeted but Amazon does like social sharing aspects too
Influencer traffic – reaching out to Youtubers and bloggers – but this is short-term and not sustained traffic
These things will help drive a short-term velocity rank to get you started – strategy should involve both short and longer-term approaches
Use an external service such as Zonblast – large list and they put your product in front of them

Mail followup sequences for your Amazon Product Launch sequence

Glues your reviews
This is your review machine in reaching out to your buyers
3rd Party services out there that integrate with the API and allow you to communicate with your buyers
Figure out what emails you want to send and keep it short
1st Email – be helpful and say thank you (FAQs or instructions)
2nd Email – appeal for feedback – unbiased opinion on the product – any suggestions for improvements? With links back to the review or back to you directly
Pay attention to the metrics – open rate is important
Keeping the same subject line means the email provider starts to spot them as spam and stop delivery
Open rates dropping – change the subject line
Anthony uses ‘cashcow pro’
Avoid snake-oil copy
Develop a relationship with your buyers – build a connection
Make customer service an important aspect of your business – can save you from poor reviews
People leave product reviews but send it in Feedback and not Reviews section – you can go back to them and ask them to re post it into Reviews section by just asking them
Amazon can see this as manipulation but it’s grey
One-off personal communications should be okay and moving your review from feedback to the correct section is usually fine

Measure for Success

See what progress you’re making or not with your amazon product launch sequence and sales
To optimise anything your need to know your Measures
Get familiar with your reports
Conversion Rate is king
Session to Sales ratio
ACoS and clickthrough for ads
Know what your total advertising costs are compared to your unit costs
Do your numbers at the beginning
http://www.dannymcmillan.com/freebies
If you know your numbers you won’t get caught out by cashflow problems

Reid and Wright publishing for Anthony’s books
Anthony@Sixleaf.com